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.

EDEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Tedious look at life of Paris D.J. still oddly compelling.

Eden (2014)
Dir. Mia Hansen-Løve
Scr. Mia Hansen-Løve, Sven Hansen-Løve
Starring: Felix de Givry, Pauline Etienne, Greta Gerwig, Golshifteh Farahani,
Vincent Macaigne, Roman Kolinka, Hugo Conzelmann, Vincent Lacoste, Arnaud Azoulay, Arsinee Khanjian

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Whilst watching all 131 minutes of Eden, at least forty-one of them unnecessary, I kept asking myself if a rambling dramatic immersion into twenty years in the life and career of a D.J. was something I really needed to see. After it was over and done with, I had to grudgingly conclude that yes, it was.

In spite of its longueurs, the picture has so many evocative sequences which capture an indelible sense of time and place and yes, introduced me to a world I'd otherwise have had absolutely no interest in knowing anything about. Yeah, okay. I was glad I stuck with it. It's not a bad picture and I suspect that those who actually care anything about house music might even love it.

In a nutshell, it's the Inside Llewyn Davis of the dance club scene. Though that's a perfectly appropriate encapsulation of Eden, I hope nobody thinks I'm suggesting it's even a public hair as great as the Coen Brothers masterpiece. It's not. It barely registers half of a crab louse in those particular sweepstakes.

What we have is the not-so-inspiring story of Paul (Felix de Givry), a promising young literature student who should really be listening to Arsinee Khanjian who plays his continually disappointed and disapproving Mom. She keeps encouraging the lad to finish his thesis, especially since his academic advisor is so high on him. Alas, Paul is far too high on electronic music as well as the drugs and sex that go along with it, that he pretty much wastes two decades of his life instead of getting an early jump on his writing career. (Though at least he does garner enough life experience to actually write about something, no matter how empty it is.)

Ah, such is the folly of youth. Paul does, however, have one hell of a good time. He has several main squeezes (Pauline Etienne, Greta Gerwig, Golshifteh Farahani) amongst the bountiful pickings of babes in the dance club scene and he certainly creates some cool sounds in the Parisian garage tradition along the way, including a très cool tour of America.

Paul also has the fellowship of his best friends and collaborators: brooding visual artist Cyril (Roman Kolinka), the good-natured D.J. partner Stan (Hugo Conzelmann), the often hilarious Arnaud (Vincent Macaigne), a baby boomer club impresario who also has an obsessive penchant for Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls and, of course, Paul's friendly contemporaries in the scene, Thomas and Guy-Man (Vincent Lacoste, Arnaud Azoulay). The latter duo go on to stage their own music as Daft Punk, the brilliant pair of real-life music-makers who find the kind of world-wide fame which Paul gets brief tastes of, but never truly attains. The Daft Punk characters are also used to great effect in the film's one and only running gag (and a pretty funny one at that).

Eden often has a pleasing spirit of free-wheeling, not unlike some of director Hansen-Løve's French New Wave predecessors, but for every glorious dash through the streets of Paris and New York, every tumble in the sack with a bevy of babes, every snort of coke, as well as a myriad of party/club scenes, there are an equal number of them which feel like over-indulgent wheel-spinning. Clearly some of the elements of realism can be attributed to the screenplay co-written by the director's brother Sven Hansen-Løve, a former two-decades-long D.J. in real life.

Alas, so much of the film straggles about in a kind of self-importance within a musical, social and cultural scene that's notable only because it did (and continues to) inspire a generation of young people within a relatively slight blip on the overall radar of music history. The entire scene finally feels utterly inconsequential and the film makes virtually nothing of the political and historical backdrops which surely had some effect upon driving people into this world of thump-thumping partying.

Maybe ignoring the turbulence of the outside world is the point, but if so, it says a lot about the young people immersed in it and/or the missed opportunities for the film to have genuinely earned its 131-minute running time by scratching below the surface of its pseudo-neo-realist tendencies.

Personally, I've never been able to comprehend the "joys" of any club, bar, party, restaurant or celebratory event which played music so loud that one was forced to shout sweet nothings into people's ears. Some might argue it's all about the "physical" connection, but most of the denizens/fans of this crap are so hopped up on drugs, the only connections they're really making, are with dealers to buy more drugs.

Before you assume I'm some old grump, I can assure you my wayward youth was spent in many a punk, hard rock, heavy metal and jazz club, but between live sets, taped music was dialled down so one could actually converse with one's fellow party-hearty partners in crime. To me, house is like elevator music, only it splits your eardrums.

By the end of Eden and certainly in retrospect, all I kept/keep thinking about are the seemingly endless scenes in the movie of Paul's Mother forking over money into his empty, outstretched palms because he's unable to earn a proper living in his chosen art.

The real moral of the story is thus: Kids, listen to your Mothers, for Christ's Sake!

They're usually right.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***

Eden begins its theatrical release in Canada at the TIFF Bell LightBox via FilmsWeLike and will widen out across the rest of the country in specialty venues.

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE (En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The third in Roy Andersson's "Living" Trilogy is a fond, sad and funny farewell to a world of muted existence, of deadpan whimsy (Swedish-style, of course). @ TIFF BellLightbox & rest of Canada via FilmsWeLike

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2015)
Dir. Roy Andersson
Starring: Nils Westblom, Holger Andersson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

How much you'll enjoy Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence will most likely depend upon how much Roy Andersson you can take, if at all. He is, to be sure, either an acquired taste or one who is immediately embraced by those who experience his unique vision for the first time. Though he made his first feature in 1970 (the acclaimed A Swedish Love Story) and his sophomore effort in 1975 (the unjustly reviled Gillap), most of his contemporary followers discovered him with the first in his astonishing "life" trilogy, Songs from the Second Floor in 2000, then the second, You, the Living, in 2007 and just this past year with the final instalment which won the Grand Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.

If you've never seen his previous work, never fear. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence can easily be enjoyed without having experienced any of his films, including those first two instalments of the trilogy. What you might have to first get over - I know I did - are the touches of whimsy permeating the work. If there's anything I can't stand, it's whimsy. Happily, this is neither French nor Belgian whimsy, so it doesn't immediately land like so many globs of bilious chunks blown into a vomit bucket.

It's Swedish - THANK CHRIST! - which immediately takes it into the territory of deep, almost unrelenting sadness. Not that you won't laugh, though. Andersson is a veritable knee-slap-inducer of the highest order. Some have idiotically linked him to the grotesqueries of mid-to-late Fellini, but for me, he's always been a curious amalgam of Chaplin (albeit on heavy doses of lithium) with splashes of De Sica/Rossellini neo-realism and, best of all, the deep ennui of Ingmar Bergman and the pathologically insane reliance upon tableaux so rooted in most of Carl Dreyer's canon (post-The Passion of Joan of Arc and notably in Ordet and Wrath of God).

Andersson creates images and situations which are often deeply sublime and the laughs he wrenches from you must be paid for in dire, often endless moments where you're shedding tears - often due to the universal truths of humanity which he brilliantly exposes, but just as often because one is simply blown away by his virtuosity as a film artist.

Set in the major sea port city of Göteborg, one would immediately think the place is utterly bereft of the joyous cultural and historical touchstones that make it one of the most vibrant cities, not just in Sweden, but the world. I can't recall a single instance of sun peeking through the heavy clouds, nor any interior that wasn't splashed in fluorescent light and a kind of spartan decor which borders on a complete lack of anything resembling warmth, taste or style. In fact, there are only two instances in the entire film where we see anyone smile. One involves an ever-so brief moment involving children and the other, so heart-rending I refuse to spoil it for you (and, you might even miss it altogether).

Gotta love Roy Andersson! There's nobody out there like him in contemporary cinema, though I'd argue that Austrian Ulrich Seidl or bad boy Lars von Trier are not unlike a Roy Andersson who train their lenses upon the most vile aspects of human ugliness and moral decrepitude.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is as episodic as they come. Andersson presents several mini-playlets (he's happily all-too-in-love with a kind of skewed proscenium quality to his compositions) in which we observe slices of life involving numerous characters who are only connected by virtue of living in the same city. Andersson affixes his camera in one position, usually in a slightly off-kilter angle from some discrete corner viewpoint as he almost sneakily seems to be spying upon the action of the scenes. All 100-minutes of the picture is comprised of - I kid you not! - about 35 single shots and they are beautiful, as much as for the dramatic content as they are for their compositional qualities. Somehow, Andersson manages to make the harshly bland quality of the settings as pulchritudinous as all get out.

The movie begins with a series of short snappers which are presented with the inter-title "Three Meetings With Death" and they are exactly that. From a man suffering a fatal heart attack in his dining room after unsuccessfully attempting to uncork a bottle of wine while his wife continues to putter about the kitchen, through to an absolutely hilarious sequence involving a dead man on the floor of a cafeteria aboard a ferry as the cashier wonders what to do with the meal and beer the man ordered and paid for, before keeling over, of course. The middle vignette is as heartbreaking as it is funny - a self-contained mini-masterpiece within the larger whole as a woman on her deathbed refuses to part with her handbag full of jewels and money, hoping to take it with her to the afterlife.

Throughout the movie are several other vignettes - one involving a chunky flamenco teacher and her obsession with a lithe, beautiful young man in her class, a befuddled military officer searching for a lecture, an inexperienced barber filling in for his infirm friend (and scaring away customers as he describes that he hasn't cut hair since his military days), several sequences involving different characters engaged in telephone calls in which they all utter similar pleasantries of the “I’m happy to hear you’re doing fine” variety.

There are moments of out and out surrealism. My least favourite involves a bar which keeps receiving visits from King Charles XII and his army and my "favourite", though that's not quite the right word to describe it, is a horrific dream sequence involving stiff-upper-lip British Colonial soldiers forcing a huge lineup of African slaves into a humungous copper drum, locking them in, setting fires underneath and rigidly observing as it revolves like a spit and roasts the people alive.

There is one narrative thread which ties the movie together and involves two sad-sack door-to-door salesmen specializing in wholesale novelty items to mostly uninterested or payment-welching shopkeepers. Both men seem fraught with the mental illness of depression, though it's poor Sam (Nils Westblom) who appears to suffer the most, especially since his partner Jonathan (Holger Andersson) is an inveterate bully who keeps referring to his old pal as a "crybaby" (which, he actually resembles since he's prone to breaking out into painful sobs at the drop of a hat).

Their scenes are the funniest and saddest in Andersson's film (and perhaps up there with some of the funniest and saddest moments in all of film history). When Sam, with dour deadpan, oft-repeats his sales pitch, "We want to help people have fun," it's clearly obvious these men are ill-prepared to sell vampire teeth with extra-long fangs, a laugh-bag (described by Jonathan as guaranteed to "bring out a smile at parties, either at home or in the office") and their "new item" which they place a lot of faith in, a grotesque rubber mask called "Uncle One Tooth" which crybaby Sam is forced to repeatedly demonstrate, an item so horrific it even terrifies a store clerk upon first viewing it.

Of all the characters in this kaleidoscope of humanity, Sam and Jonathan are a perfect pair for us to follow as Andersson takes us on this genuinely exquisite journey. It's a world most of us would never want to live in, but we're grateful for the experience of living it in the film. Indeed, like Bruegel's 1565 oil on wood painting "The Hunters in the Snow", Andersson's chief influence here, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence works on a similar plane as those birds in the 14th Century masterpiece looking down upon the weary, downtrodden men trudging through snow under grey skies. Andersson's a sly one, though. We'd like to think we're the pigeons, but ultimately, we're all the dupes.

Andersson uses his film to hold up a mirror to all of us.

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

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is in theatrical release via FilmWeLike. It plays in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and throughout the rest of Canada soon after.

GREG KLYMKIW INTERVIEWS THE ZELLNER BROTHERS on KUMIKO THE TREASURE HUNTER

FARGO gives Kumiko hope that one day, she will be happy.

KUMIKO THE TREASURE HUNTER
starring Rinko Kikuchi
opens theatrically across Canada

An Interview with the Zellner Bros.

by Greg Klymkiw

Kumiko travels from Tokyo to Fargo in search of treasure.

Kumiko, an office girl in Tokyo, is obsessed with the movie Fargo by the Coen Bros. She has been studying it so intently that her VHS copy eventually wears out. Convinced it's a true story, she creates a meticulous series of maps to find the treasure of riches Steve Buscemi hides in the snow - IN the movie. Eventually, she embarks upon a very strange, funny and harrowingly emotional odyssey.

American cinema, more than anything, has always exemplified the American Dream. Brilliantly responding to this notion, director David Zellner and his co-writer/producer brother Nathan, have created Kumiko The Treasure Hunter. It's one of the most haunting, tragic and profoundly moving explorations of mental illness ever made - especially within the context of the dashed hopes and dreams, at first offered, then reneged upon by the magic of movies and the wide-open expanse of a country teeming with opportunity and riches.

There isn't a false note to be found in this gorgeously acted, directed and photographed movie. It is not without humour, but none of it is at Kumiko's expense and when the film slowly slides into full blown tragedy, the Zellners surround Kumiko in the ever-accumulating high winds and snow under the big skies of Minnesota. We get, as she does, a bittersweet taste of happiness - a dream of triumph, a dream of reunion, a dream of peace, at last.

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

THE ZELLNER BROTHERS

GREG KLYMKIW: When I first saw Kumiko I had this fantasy that you guys were born and raised in either Minnesota or North Dakota, but you were born in Greeley, Colorado. I know you guys are in Austin, Texas these days, but how long did you actually live in Greeley?

DAVID ZELLNER: 
We lived in Greeley until Nathan was 9 and I was 10. We loved Greeley and Colorado in general. We were very much into the outdoors there, camping, etc. It was our formative years, and it left a big impression on us. I was sort of obsessed with the state, probably idealized it a bit, but all throughout my youth I had a Colorado state flag on my wall, the prettiest of the US state flags in my opinion.


GREG KLYMKIW: Yeah, it IS a gorgeous flag.

NATHAN ZELLNER: 
Greeley is just north of Denver, in the plains. Sort of rural. Our parents were professors before they retired, so they taught there and then later moved to Texas when we were teenagers.


COLORADO STATE FLAG

GREG KLYMKIW: When did you move to Austin?


DAVID ZELLNER: I moved to Austin to go to film school at UT. Nathan got a computer science degree at Texas A&M and then joined me in Austin afterwards.


GREG KLYMKIW: 
I'm curious, living on the plains of Colorado can't be much different that living in Winnipeg or North Dakota or Minnesota. What did all that open sky do to you guys as little nippers? Was it something you drank in like really tasty soda pop or didn't it make much of a difference until later?




DAVID ZELLNER: 
We had fond memories of winter growing up, from the first fall of the fresh pristine snow, to the end of the season when the sides of the roads were caked with stacks of oily frozen sludge. We'd never been to Minnesota prior to making Kumiko, though we had been to Japan, but the idea of a winter-set film full of snowy vast landscapes was appealing to us at least in part on a nostalgic level.

THE ZELLNER BROTHERS

GREG KLYMKIW: Where in Texas did you guys move to after Greeley? Was the terrain/topography similar? I only know Dallas/Fort Worth areas, so I'm not sure what other regions of the state look like except from westerns.

NATHAN ZELLNER: 
We moved to a university town called College Station.
 Texas is pretty big and diverse, the major difference was the weather and lack of snow. Like David said, we missed the four seasons.

GREG KLYMKIW: Aside from being, uh, American, what was your family's ethnic background?


DAVID ZELLNER: A mix, our mom's side is mostly Irish, our dad's side had a lot of folks from Transylvania.


GREG KLYMKIW: When did you guys fall in love with movies?


NATHAN ZELLNER: We grew up as VHS kids, but always going out to see movies in the theatre - a lot of the early 80's blockbusters and further expanding our film-knowledge by reading the covers of VHS boxes in video stores. We've always gone to see movies in theatres, though.


GREG KLYMKIW: Did you guys always work together creatively?

DAVID ZELLNER: We've been making films since we were little kids with VHS and Super 8 cameras. Initially it stemmed from wanting to act/perform particular characters. Not knowing what a director or producer or cinematographer was liberating. It's fun at that age because you're just blindly creating things.


GREG KLYMKIW: So I assume film school is where you might have gotten a taste of the fact that maybe filmmaking WASN'T blindly creating things? I'm also interested in Nathan's academic background in computer science - is that something that brought anything to bear upon your film collaboration with David?


DAVID ZELLNER: Film school was great, but it was one of many elements of my education. The best part was access to 16mm equipment and meeting likeminded folks, many of whom I'm still close to.



NATHAN ZELLNER: We each have different strengths, David is the primary Director/Writer and I'm the primary Producer/Editor, but because of how we have worked since kids, everything overlaps. My background is more technical, and that has helped as filmmaking has evolved with the digital age. We ended up editing this film on the same computers it was written on.

GREG KLYMKIW: Kumiko floats around like a stranger in her own land. Or am I being too much of an egghead here?


DAVID ZELLNER: It's not something we really intellectualize or even discuss with one another, we just are drawn to outsider stories on some visceral level I guess.


GREG KLYMKIW: Why do you think you are attracted to stories about outsiders?


DAVID ZELLNER: I guess because we are outsiders.

NATHAN ZELLNER: Something about viewing the world from a different perspective seems to speak to us.


GREG KLYMKIW: How did you guys come up with this story? It's based on an urban legend, right?

NATHAN ZELLNER: We first came across a blurb about it on the internet, this story everyone assumed was true about this Japanese woman who went from Tokyo to Minnesota looking for the lost fortune from the Coen Bros. Fargo. It was before social media is like today, just a small bit of information on a message board that was being passed along like the telephone game. Maybe the lack of information made us more obsessed with it, but to satiate our curiosity, we started writing a script and developing a backstory and character to solve our own curiosity about the kind of person who would go on such a quest. Years later, after a couple drafts of the script, we checked back and more info was available, debunking the original story as an urban legend. At first we were taken aback, but because we had been living with our version of the "truth" for so long it was just as valid. We liked it even more, our addition to the myth, that is.



Reported in the April 7, 2002 issue:
Takako Konishi died looking for FARGO treasure.

GREG KLYMKIW: When did Rinko Kikuchi come into the picture?



DAVID ZELLNER: We met her in 2008, we'd seen her in Babel and a few Japanese films, including a great one called Funky Forest. 

We hit it off with her right away and she immediately dialed into the tone of what we were going for, the balance of humor and pathos
.

GREG KLYMKIW: Was her involvement tied to financing the film?

DAVID ZELLNER: Her involvement helped there, for sure, but it wasn't necessarily the crux. We seriously didn't have a close runner up for the role really. Once we met her, we knew she was perfect for it.


GREG KLYMKIW: You said you had visited Japan. When? Why? (Other than making the movie obviously). Do either of you speak Japanese? 


NATHAN ZELLNER: We love Tokyo, it's an amazing city. We had visited Japan as tourists a year before we initially heard the story which, in hindsight, was probably one of the reasons we were drawn to it. We don't speak Japanese. We tried to learn it but failed.

GREG KLYMKIW: What was it like for a couple of boys from Greeley, Colorado to work in Japan?

NATHAN ZELLNER: We had a great relationship with the crew over there and they got the tone we were going for. They were on the same page and so excited to help make the same film. They helped us with some cultural questions and the language barrier. We did a ton of homework before too, especially since we didn't want to film a tourist version of Tokyo.


GREG KLYMKIW: What were some of the aspects of Fargo that inspired you guys in the writing/making of your movie?

DAVID ZELLNER: We like Fargo and the Coens' work in general, but the whole Fargo thing was inherently part of the original urban legend that we wanted to turn into a movie.


GREG KLYMKIW: Did you guys have to make contact with the Coens to get the movie made? I assume they've seen it. Have they said anything to you guys about it?

NATHAN ZELLNER: The negotiations mainly went through the studio. We had to convince the powers-that-be there that this wasn't a sequel or wanker homage or spoof, but that the film was part of the legend and a conduit to her journey. I don't think the Coens have seen it. Hopefully they will see it some day.


GREG KLYMKIW: It kinda shocks me they haven't seen it yet. Oh well. Guess they're busy or something. By the way, 
Fargo is part of a strange little group of movies I call the most Canadian movies never made in Canada and not made by Canadians. Growing up in Winnipeg seemed identical to the world of Fargo. The movie felt like it was made in my own backyard. It's something I never feel with other American movies, except movies in this weird, little sub-genre I've conjured up for myself in order to temper my inherent Canadian inadequacy. The other movies in this sub genre are Slap Shot and, of course, your movie, Kumiko.


NATHAN ZELLNER: I love hearing that feedback about Canada. We enjoy how different people have different points-of-view on the film, usually based on where they are from. I'm happy Kumiko connected with you in that way. I've always wanted to visit Winnipeg.

GREG KLYMKIW: I haven't lived in Winnipeg for 20 years, but I go back every chance I can. There's nowhere like it in all of Canada. It was, in its heyday, considered "Little Chicago". Now, it's not much of anything, but I kind of like its current state of utter decrepitude.
 It was also, of course, a cool place to be when I produced Guy Maddin's early movies.

DAVID ZELLNER: I have to say that Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful were a massive influence on us. Seeing those films for the first time in the early 90's was a really formative experience. They really blew my young impressionable mind. I remember seeing Gimli Hospital, not knowing what or where it came from, other than that it had to be some ancient artifact from long ago and far, far away, and then a few minutes into the movie I see a Super Big Gulp cup in a shot. I was hooked from that point on.

GREG KLYMKIW: I'm sure Guy and his screenwriter George Toles will love Kumiko. It's opening in Winnipeg, so I'm going to insist they see it. By the way, not only are Big Gulps popular in our neck of the woods, but Winnipeg is the Slurpee capital of Canada. Anyway, one last question. Do you guys, like, live in the same house in Austin or do you indeed have separate lives?


NATHAN ZELLNER: We used to live together, but that was along time ago. We have separate lives, now. It helps to keep perspective with our work. Of course, we talk and see each other often though.


GREG KLYMKIW: 
Sorry that was, I guess, a semi-joke-question. I do, however, have this image of you two living in some kind of Austin version of PeeWee's Playhouse.


NATHAN ZELLNER: I wish we worked in a replica of PeeWee's Playhouse
.

Kumiko The Treasure Hunter is being released theatrically in Canada via FilmsWeLike. You can read the full version of my original review from its premiere at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival HERE.

Here are the venues and playdates across the country:

TIFF Bell Lightbox (Toronto, ON)
Starts Friday, April 3, 2015

Vancity Theatre (Vancouver, BC)
Starts Friday, April 3, 2015

Regina Public Film Library (Regina, SK)
Starts Thursday, April 3, 2015

Broadway Theatre (Saskatoon, SK )
Starts Saturday, April 4, 2015

Globe Cinema (Calgary, AB)
Starts Saturday, April 4, 2015

Bytowne Cinema (Ottawa, ON)
Starts Monday, April 6, 2015

City Cinema, (Charlottetown, PEI)
Starts Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Cinema du Parc (Montreal, QC)
Starts Friday, April 10, 2015

Hyland Cinema (London, ON)
Starts Friday, April 10, 2015

Revue Cinema (Toronto, ON)
Starts Sunday, April 19, 2015

The Royal (Toronto, ON)
Starts Thursday, April 23, 2015

Metro Cinema (Edmonton, AB)
Starts Friday, April 24, 2015

The Vic (Victoria, BC)
Friday, April 24, 2015

Winnipeg Film Group Cinemathque (Winnipeg, MB)
Starts Thursday, May 14, 2015

FORCE MAJEURE - DVD Review By Greg Klymkiw - Domestic Drama fromFilmsWeLike

Just in time for Valentine's Day long weekend is the DVD release via FilmsWeLike of Sweden's FORCE MAJEURE. It's a perfect film for young lovers (especially those considering marriage) and certainly, it makes for fine family viewing since it presents a superb mirror image for Moms, Dads and the little nippers of their own lives.

At press time, I was unable to assess the Blu-Ray, but the DVD (especially if you play it on a Blu-Ray player with a high-def monitor) will look absolutely gorgeous - the snowy whites of the Alps, blasting your eyeballs and the well composed and apportioned dollops of glorious colour will massage your oculi to put you and those you love in a state of blissful complacency before the film's inner, roiling power explodes into the true savagery inherent in love.

Added bonii include a superb interview with  writer-director Ruben Östlund and star Johannes Bah Kuhnke in addition to an AXS TV featurette: A Look At Force Majeure. Below is the full review of the film and ordering information - you can conveniently purchase the picture directly from this website via Amazon.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.
Disaster, however, is always looming.

Force Majeure (2014)
Dir. Ruben Östlund
Starring: Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Kristofer Hivju, Fanni Metelius

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A perfect nuclear family from Sweden - gorgeous, physically fit and full of smiles - pose for holiday snaps on the slopes during a ski vacation in the French Alps. They appear, for all intents and purposes, to have a perfect existence.

Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) and Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) are such peas in a pod they perform nightly ablutions together with vigour and their two children actually get along with each other, happily playing like little piggies in a mud pen.

All four of them even wear stylish matching pyjamas as they nap together after a few hours of exercising their ludicrously lithe bodies in out-of-doors family-fun-frolics. How could anything go wrong?

From the very opening frames and onwards, filmmaker Ruben Östlund has us believing that nothing could be this perfect. His miss-en-scene is rife with gorgeously composed, almost perfectly symmetrical shots with long takes and very judicious cutting. The pace is so meticulous, so strangely mannered, that something, anything, could happen. Sure enough, whilst they all happily dine on an outdoor terrace, a huge avalanche crashes down and everyone in view of the fixed position of the camera disappears in a spray of snow.

False alarm.

As the fog of snow dissipates, it's clear the avalanche fell with considerable force, but at a great distance away. Ebba and the children, still at the table, gather their wits about them. Tomas enters the frame and the four sit down to eat. Little does Tomas know, but he's in big trouble - or rather, his actions during the false disaster have placed a seed in Ebba's mind that's only going to grow - a seed of doubt. It's going to produce a sharp thorn in Ebba's craw that she's going to rip out and then, repeatedly plunge into Tomas with until she creates open wounds that will fester into gooey, viscous clumps, like some rapid flesh eating disease.

Does Tomas really love his family? Does he love Ebba? Does he care about anyone other than himself? If he did, why would he leave his family behind and run like a coward when disaster seemingly struck?

These are questions that come up again and again and yet again. Hell hath no fury like a woman who believes she's been scorned - it's usually worse than if she had been genuinely decimated. Ebba not only casts aspersions upon her husband's manhood, but begins to construct a belief that their marriage is in serious jeopardy.

If she'd only keep it between them, it would be one thing, but she hurls her accusatory doubts in front of the children, strangers and even close friends who join them on the trip. Her construct becomes an inescapable reality and over the next five days in the Alps, Östlund serves us domestic fireworks - Swedish style, of course - as things get intensely, harrowingly and even hilariously chilly.

Force Majeure is, for most of its running time, a tour de force of domestic drama dappled with mordant wit amidst a snowy backdrop. With sharp writing, gorgeous, controlled direction and performances that are quite perfect, it's too bad Östlund's screenplay hands us a major copout during the final third when he manufactures a false, forced symmetry to the aforementioned situation - one that's so predictable we can't actually believe it's happening.

When it does, indeed, unfurl, the almost inept balancing of the conjugal power dynamic feels painfully didactic. In a movie where we're normally on the edge of our seats, wondering what could be lurking round every corner, we do suspect Östlund could well take us in this particular direction, but we assume he never would.

We assumed ever-so mistakenly.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

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Greg Klymkiw picks The Film Corner's Top 21 Documentaries of 2014 - Stellar Year 4 DOCS - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, Planet Out 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

Documentary cinema in 2014 was so powerful that it seems almost ludicrous to even attempt a list honouring only 10 movies, so I've decided to include a few categories here that are comprised of a variety of films within them which I've chosen to bundle together and furthermore present my picks as the Top 21 Documentaries of 2014. The list will be in alphabetical order by category and title.

Documentaries on the Artistic Process:


Altman
Dir. Ron Mann
Focusing on the genius maverick director, the picture exceeds all expectations by being the most perfect film biography of Robert Altman that one could ever want.

Art and Craft
Dir. Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman
Co-Dir/Editor: Mark Becker
This is the stuff movies (and by extension, dreams) are made of. Filmmakers Cullman, Grausman and Becker have fashioned a thoroughly engaging portrait of an artist as an old man, but not just any garden variety artist. Landis is a sweet, committed, meticulous and gentle craftsman of the highest order. In fact, he's no mere copy cat, he is an artist - reproducing with astonishing detail work that touches and moves, not only himself, but millions. Furthermore, he might well be the ultimate performance artist insofar as his entire life seems like a veritable work of art and certainly, his "cons" in costume are also art of the highest order.

Giuseppe Makes a Movie
Dir. Adam Rifkin
This superbly directed films is a wild, wooly and supremely entertaining portrait of underground filmmaker Giuseppe Andrews, a fringe-player of the highest order. Out of his fevered imagination, he crafts work that captures a very desperate, real and sad truth about America's fringes that are, frankly, not so outside the Status Quo as the country descends even deeper into a kind of Third World divide twixt rich and poor. Through Adam Rifkin's lens we see America according to Andrews, a country rife with abject poverty, alcoholism, exploitation, cruelty and violence. Trailer parks and cheap motels provide the visual backdrop by which Andrews etches his original portraits of depravity, but they are ALWAYS tinged with humanity.

Life Itself
Dir. Steve James
This documentary portrait of writer Roger Ebert is a beautiful, touching and heart wrenching portrait of a man that most anyone who loves movies worshipped and/or admired. Shot primarily during the last few months of his life, it focuses on Ebert's indomitable will to live and allows allows him to take on an aura of saintliness that seems perfectly apt.

Natan
Dir. David Cairns, Paul Duane
This profoundly moving and imaginative film expertly places Bernard Natan, the Father of French Cinema, back where he truly belongs. Though the visionary Romanian-Jew in Paris was eventually the victim of Nazi genocide in Auschwitz, his very memory was erased and tarnished by antisemitism perpetrated by the Vichy and a contemporary academic's boneheaded scholarship. Cairns and Duane have created a brilliant artistic vessel to tell Natan's story.

To Be Takei
Dir. Jennifer M. Kroot
This is as close as we're likely to get to actually being able to mainline actor/activist George Takei as if he were the purest form of heroin imaginable. By focusing so resolutely on his achievements with all the aplomb of a master storyteller, director Kroot has made a movie that not only dazzles, informs and entertains, but is - without question - as important a film as any of us really want all of our film experiences to be.

Documentaries on Eastern Europe:

The Condemned
Dir. Nick Read
We are in Russia, or if you will, Hell. For many who are enclosed within the perimeter of fencing and locked gates, this will be their Purgatory until death takes them to the fiery eternal abode of Mephistopheles. Those who are not here for life, came in as young men and will leave as old men. This is the Federal Penal Colony No. 56 in Central Russia, surrounded by hundreds of square miles of deep forest in the Russian taiga. There's only one road in and one road out. The nearest populated community is a seven-hour drive away. The temperatures here frequently dip to 40 below zero. There's no escape.

Maidan
Dir. Sergey Loznitsa
Using long takes, beautifully composed with no camera movement, Loznitsa captures key moments, both specific historical incidents and deeply, profoundly moving human elements during the Ukrainian Revoultion. As such, it evokes stirring and fundamental narrative, thematic and emotional sensations which place us directly in the eye of the storm.

Love Me
Dir. Jonathon Narducci
The world of mail-order brides is the focus of Jonathon Narducci's thorough and affecting film. Using the online dating service "A Foreign Affair" as the door into this world, Love Me focuses upon five men (3 schlubs, 2 not-so-much) who dump thousands upon thousands of dollars on the company's services. From membership fees to per-transaction fees for the online aspect of the service to the actual whirlwind guided tours to Ukraine, Narducci expertly wends his way through a massive amount of material and subjects, but does so with impeccable skill and movie-making savvy.

Ukraine is not a Brothel
Dir. Kitty Green
The unconventional feminist activists who are the subjects of this important documentary are, via the commitment and artistry of the movie's director, proof positive that Ukraine must be personified as matriarchal, rather than patriarchal, if it is to have any potential to survive as a nation at all. As such, the country must not be bought and sold, but will need, in order to stave off the horse trading at every level, the political will of its people to thrive beyond all shackles, beyond all influence, save for that which comes from within.

Documentaries on Latin America:

The Engineer
Dir. Dir. Juan Passarelli, Mathew Charles
This superbly wrought motion picture focuses on one horrific aspect of America's legacy in El Salvador. The suffering experienced is palpable. As the murder rate laughably goes down, the missing person rates climb astronomically. It is up to one man, the subject of the film's title to forensically investigate and exhume the bodies of those who go missing.

Marmato
Dir. Marc Grieco
When 500 years of your ancestors have lived on one of the largest, richest mountains of gold in the world, the last thing you want are foreign investors, corporate pigs and a corrupt government decimating your homes and livelihood. This, however, has been the reality suffered by the people who do most of the living, working and dying in Marmato, Colombia. To say this film is an important film reflecting the exploitation of the poor by the rich would be an understatement.

Documentaries on Native Peoples:

Pine Ridge
Dir. Anna Eborn
Life pulsates at the heart of this powerful evocation of the land's natural beauty that's mirrored in the light of her subjects' eyes. Many look forward to assuming and/or resuming an exploration of the world beyond, but always acknowledge the pull of the reservation to bring them back to a home, grudgingly given to them with the spilling of blood.

Trick or Treaty?
Dir. Alanis Obomsawin
Focusing upon a massive peaceful protest in Ottawa that's designed to force Canadian Chancellor Stephen Harper to meet face-to-face with First Nations Chiefs most affected by the over-100-year-old James Bay Treaty, designed and implemented to steal land and not allow any meaningful sharing in the decision-making process of said land. The result has been abject poverty, skyrocketing rates of suicide and environmental destruction, all of which affects not just our First Nations, but ALL Canadians.

Documentaries on a Variety of Subjects: Albinism, Victims, The Homeless, Porn Addiction, Orwellian Measures, Serial Killers, Terrorists, Criminals

The Boy From Geita
Dir. Vic Sarin
In Tanzania, if you're born with albinism, a rare genetic condition that severely lightens the pigmentation of your skin and renders you susceptible to dangerous, damaging effects from the sun's rays, you are less than zero.For as long as albinos have existed in this part of the African continent, they have been subject to prejudice at best and at worst, mutilation or murder. The legendary cinematographer and filmmaker Vic Sarin presents a story that is, at once appallingly grotesque, yet also, out of the dark side of the human spirit is a tale of profound and deep compassion.

The Look of Silence
Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer's follow-up to the extraordinary The Act of Killing  focuses, not on the mass murderers and torture squads of Indonesia, but the victims. If the film isn't quite as bravura stylistically as its one-of-a-kind  predecessor, it more than makes up for it in terms of overall emotional impact. This time, you're not only knocked squarely upon you butt, but constantly moved to tears. Astounding and devastating. Oppenheimer still towers above most filmmakers.

The Overnighters
Dir. Jesse Moss
The fine, God-fearing, deeply religious citizens of Williston, North Dakota, do not extend Christian charity to the homeless. They just want to run them out of town. This moving and at times, deeply disturbing documentary focuses on one man who cares, Pastor Jay Reinke, an intelligent and deeply committed man of God who opens the doors of his parish to the homeless.

RUN RUN IT'S HIM
Dir. Matthew (Matt) Pollack
Co-Producer/Cinematographer: Jamie Popowich
This is an obsessive, hilarious, shocking, touching, imaginative, inventive and altogether astonishing personal portrait of a young man’s addiction to pornography and masturbation. It’s a genuine underground film about WANKING that’s delectably imbued with plenty of WANK qualities. Any obsessive will respond to this, not in spite, but BECAUSE of the picture’s meandering, borderline structure and roughness - its HONESTY! Pollack’s film touches the soul (and a few other, uh, personal places) because it's so goddamn, heart-achingly real.




The Secret Trial 5
Dir. Amar Wala
Audiences all over the world need to see this film. It's proof that IF a so-called benign democratic stronghold like Canada is willing to engage in such fascist activities, imagine just how horrendous the whole wide world is becoming with respect to the thug-like imposition of Orwellian measures to keep everyone in their place.

Tales of The Grim Sleeper
Dir. Nick Broomfield
Broomfield's film sheds a huge light upon how a killer openly went about his tireless, prodigious, dirty business - pretty much in plain view. The LAPD, not surprisingly, refused Broomfield's requests to be interviewed. We only see the cops on camera through news footage wherein they're extolling their "genius" at cracking the case through good, old-fashioned police work. As Broomfield's film more than ably proves, the police pretty much did nothing while one woman, after another and another and another, ad nauseam, were brutally murdered. Well, the cops DID manage to brag about how much they did.

Terror at the Mall
Dir. Dan Reed
The horrific experience of knowing we are seeing actual footage of terrorism is balanced in profoundly moving ways since director Reed provides, ultimately, is a testament to the courage of ordinary people. There is fear, to be sure, but in many ways, true courage can only be borne out of fear and one ultimately must salute Reed and his team for giving these people a voice in light of actions that will be seared upon them forever.

Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger
Dir. Joe Berlinger
This film is one of the most harrowing crime pictures ever made. It's no drama, however, but is certainly imbued with a compulsive narrative expertly unfurled by ace documentary filmmaker Berlinger. The picture leaves you breathlessly agog at the utter brutality and sordid corruption of a system that allowed a monster like American gangster James Bulger to get away with his crimes for so long. The film will, no doubt remain a classic of great American cinema long after all of us have gone from this Earth. It's what cinema should be - it's for the ages.

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Greg Klymkiw, presents the The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) in this the year of Our Lord 2014 - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

THE FILM CORNER AWARDS (TFCA) 2014, 
AS SELECTED BY THE REV. GREG KLYMKIW

This will be the first in a series of year-end Film Corner round-ups of cinema in 2014. Below, you will find the citations of excellence from me, Greg Klymkiw, in the form of my annual The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) for 2014. The most interesting observation is that ALL of these films were first screened within the context of major international film festivals which is further proof of their importance in presenting audiences with the very best that cinema has to offer whilst most mainstream exhibition chains are more interested in presenting refuse on multi-screens of the most ephemeral kind. All the citations here came from films unleashed at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014), the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2014), Hot Docs 2014, Montreal's 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival and the 2014 Montreal Nouveau Cinema Festival (FNC 2014). In Canada, only two of the films cited have been released theatrically within the hardly-visionary, downright lazy mega-plex chain Cineplex Entertainment and even those films are being allowed to play on a limited number of screens in an even-more limited number of cities while ludicrous numbers of awful movies are draining screen time at the aforementioned chain's big boxes. It's not as if all the films the chain allows to hog screens are doing numbers to justify this combination of piggishness and laziness. Keep your eyes open, though. The films cited here are all astounding BIG-SCREEN experiences, which will hopefully find BIG-SCREEN exhibition before being relegated to less-than-ideal home entertainment venues. And now, here goes, The Film Corner Awards (TFCA 2014) as selected by your most Reverend Greg Klymkiw. Included are brief quotes from my original reviews  and links to the full-length reviews from the past year (just click on the title).

American cinema, more than anything, has always exemplified the American Dream. Almost in response to this, director David Zellner with his co-writer brother Nathan, have created Kumiko The Treasure Hunter, one of the most haunting, tragic and profoundly moving explorations of mental illness within the context of dashed hopes and dreams offered by the magic of movies and the wide-open expanse of a country teeming with opportunity and riches.

Best Feature Film
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter

This is such a great film. I could have watched all seven minutes of it if they'd somehow been elongated to a Dreyer-like pace and spread out over 90 minutes. That said, it's perfect as it is. The fact that you don't want it to end is a testament to director Matthew Rankin as one of the young torchbearers (along with Astron-6) of the prairie post-modernist movement which hatched out of Winnipeg via the brilliantly demented minds of John Paizs and Guy Maddin. Blending gorgeously arcane techniques from old Hollywood, ancient government propaganda films with dollops of staggeringly, heart-achingly beautiful animation - bursting with colour and blended with superbly art-directed and costumed live action - Mynarski Death Plummet takes its rightful place alongside such classic Canadian short films as John Martins-Manteiga's The Mario Lanza Story, John Paizs's Springtime in Greenland, Guy Maddin's The Dead Father and Deco Dawson's Ne Crâne pas sois modeste / Keep a Modest Head. 

Best Short Film
Mynarski Death Plummet
(Matthew Rankin)

This is exactly the sort of film that restores my faith in the poetic properties of cinema and how the simplest of tales, at their surface, allow their artists to dig deep and yield the treasures inherent in the picture's soul. When a film is imbued with an inner spirit as this one is, you know you're watching something that hasn't been machine-tooled strictly for ephemeral needs. In Her Place is a film about yearning, love and the extraordinary tears and magic that are borne out of the company and shared experience of women. And, it is exquisite.

Best Canadian Feature Film
In Her Place
(Albert Shin, TimeLapse Pictures)

Avec le temps/Before I Go is 12 minutes long. Director Mark Morgenstern evokes a lifetime in that 12 minutes. It's proof positive of cinema's gifts and how they must not be squandered, but used to their absolute fullest.

The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer by one of Canada's national filmmaking treasures Randall Okita, takes the very simple story of two brothers and charts how a tragic event in childhood placed them on very different, yet equally haunted (and haunting) paths.

Best Canadian Short Film
Avec le temps/Before I Go
(Mark Morgenstern)

-tied with-
The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer
(Randall Okita)

Witnessing these events as captured by Sergey Loznitsa is a moving document of human solidarity in the face of corruption. Witnessing them as a Ukrainian, however, is to experience every beat, word and action as a series of epiphanies. Maidan is a film that places the revolution in the broader context of what is happening in Ukraine now, but in its simple, beautiful and staggering way, it is a film of considerable importance as it expresses how we must all choose revolution when the criminal actions of very few affect the lives of the majority.

Best Documentary
Maidan
(Sergey Loznitsa)

-tied with-

This film is one of the most harrowing crime pictures ever made. It's no drama, however, but is certainly imbued with a compulsive narrative expertly unfurled by ace documentary filmmaker Berlinger. The picture leaves you breathlessly agog at the utter brutality and sordid corruption of a system that allowed a monster like American gangster James Bulger to get away with his crimes for so long. The film will, no doubt remain a classic of great American cinema long after all of us have gone from this Earth. It's what cinema should be - it's for the ages.

Best Documentary
Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger
(Joe Berlinger)

The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow is a thorough delight and comes across as a Korean answer to crossing Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) with Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles). It's certainly the sort of thing we don't get to see in our soul-bereft North American multiplexes. It's a gem of a movie and I urge all parents and kids to seek it out. They won't quite know what hit them, but when it does, they'll know they want it a lot more than Madagascar 3. That's a guarantee.

Best Animated Feature
The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow
(Hyeong-yoon Jang)

Astron-6 have done the impossible by creating a film that holds its own with the greatest gialli of all time. It's laugh-out-loud funny, grotesquely gory and viciously violent. Though it draws inspiration from Argento, Fulci, Bava, et al, the movie is so dazzlingly original that you'll be weeping buckets of joy because finally, someone has managed to mix-master all the giallo elements, but in so doing has served up a delicious platter of post-modern pasta du cinema that both harkens back to simpler, bloodier and nastier times whilst also creating a piece actually made in this day and age. All that said, the following dialogue from the film says it all:

BLONDE STUD: So where were you on the night of the murder?

BLONDE BABE: I was at home washing my hair and shaving my pussy.

Best Horror Film
The Editor
(Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Astron-6)

Buoyed by intense, intelligent writing from Tony Burgess (Pontypool, Septic Man) in a screenplay that induces fingernail-ripping-and-plucking, plus a great performance by Julian (Hard Core Logo, Cube, Man of Steel) Richings, Ejecta is a movie that plunges you into the terror of one utterly horrendous night in the lives of those who make contact with aliens. They experience a series of close encounters of the third kind, though be warned, you'll find no happy-faced hairless alien midgets gesticulating Zoltán Kodály Hand Signals whilst smiling at a beaming Francois Truffaut here. No-siree-Spielberg, these mo-fos inspire drawer-filling of the highest order.

Best Science Fiction Film
Ejecta
(Chad Archibald, Matt Wiele,
Tony Burgess, Foresight)

With plenty of loving homages to George Miller's Mad Max pictures, helmer Kiah Roache-Turner and his co-scribe Tristan Roache-Turner, serve up a white-knuckle roller coaster ride through the unyielding Australian bushland as a family man (who's had to slaughter his family when they "turn" into zombies) and a ragtag group of tough guys, equip themselves with heavy-duty armour, weaponry and steely resolve to survive. Director Roache-Turner mostly nice clean shots which allow the action and violence to play out stunningly (including a few harrowing chases). He manages, on what feels like a meagre budget, to put numerous blockbusting studio films of a similar ilk to shame. It delivers the goods and then some.

Best Action Film Wyrmwood
(Kiah Roache-Turner)

Movies are so often about dreams coming true, especially American movies and though the dreams don't come true for the characters in the Coen Brothers' Fargo, Zellner makes us believe that Kumiko believes that the film itself can, indeed, make her dreams come true.

Best Director
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(David Zellner)

What the Zellner duo have achieved here seems almost incalculable, especially as they eventually infuse you with joy and sadness all at once during the film's final act. One thing is certain, they have etched an indelible portrait of hope in the face of unyielding madness.

Best Original Script
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(Nathan Zellner, David Zellner)

Screenwriter Matt Rager delivers a grotesque blueprint to director James Franco that plunges William Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness prose into the same lollapalooza inbred territory as Anthony Mann's overlooked masterpiece of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre and Elia Kazan's madcap Baby Doll. And good goddamn, I accept this with open arms.

Best Screenplay Adaptation
The Sound and the Fury
(Matt Rager)

Steve Carell's performance as the eccentric billionaire is so extraordinary I managed to suppress Carell was even in the movie until the closing credits.

Best Actor:
Foxcatcher
(Steve Carell)

Fargo, the movie by the Coen Brothers, is not just the instrument which inspires Kumiko's desires, it's like a part of Kumiko's character and soul and represents an ethos of both America and madness. Kumiko is no mere stranger in a strange land, but a stranger in her own land who becomes a stranger in a strange land - a woman without a country save for that which exists in her mind.

Best Actress
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(Rinko Kikuchi)

"If you deliberately sabotage my band, I will fuck you like a pig," barks Terence Fletcher, a jazz instructor at a tony private music conservatory. As played by J. K. Simmons, Fletcher makes Gny. Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket look like your kindly old Granny Apple Doll.

Best Supporting Actor
Whiplash
(J.K. Simmons)

In Her Place quietly rips our hearts to shreds. We are included in the emotional journeys of a daughter whose child can never be hers, a mother whose daughter is everything to her but comes to this realization when it's too late and a woman who has come between them because her own desire to love and nurture is so strong and true.

Best Supporting Actress
In Her Place
(Ahn Ji-hye)

In the ever-accumulating high winds and snow under the big skies of Minnesota, Kumiko gets a bittersweet taste of happiness - a dream of triumph, a dream of reunion, a dream of peace, at last.

Best Cinematography
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(Sean Porter)

The editing of Tom Cross leaves you breathless.

Best Editing
Whiplash
(Tom Cross)

Wrenchingly and beautifully scored by Alexandre Klinke, In Her Place is infused with a deep sensitivity that's reminiscent of a Robert Bresson film.

Best Musical Score
In Her Place
(Alexandre Klinke)

The climactic sequence is a musical equivalent to a great action-movie set-piece.

Best Overall Sound
Whiplash

Blasting through hordes of flesh-eating slabs of viscous decay, they careen on a collision course with a group of Nazi-like government soldiers who are kidnapping both zombies and humans so a wing-nut scientist can perform brutal experiments upon them.

Best Makeup/Special Effects
Wyrmwood

In 1941, the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were besieged by Russians intent upon ethnic cleansing. Thousands upon thousands of innocent people were rounded up and shipped to Siberian concentration camps.

Best Costumes
In The Crosswind

The visual beauty of suffering allows us to experience the indomitability of the human spirit and is finally the thing that gives the film its heart, which is in sharp contrast to that spirit decidedly lacking in the Russian oppressors.

Best Art Direction/Production Design
In The Crosswind

COMING SOON: THE FILM CORNER PRESENTS A VARIETY OF 2014 10-BEST LISTS SELECTED BY THE MOST REVEREND GREG KLYMKIW

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.
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