THE COUNSELOR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - If you must see this movie, do not pay to see it. Its makers do not deserve a single penny. Anyone who exhibits it does not deserve a single penny. In fact, anyone who pays for this movie is a chump of the highest order and deserves a good face-sitting from someone who has not wiped or washed for weeks.

A lawyer (Michael Fassbender) needs money to buy his gal (Penélope Cruz) an expensive engagement ring from Bruno Ganz (who will henceforth always look like Adolph Hitler thanks to his performance in Downfall). The cash-strapped lawyer decides to score some quick wads of dough in a drug deal set up by a client (Javier Bardem) whose girlfriend (Cameron Diaz) humps windshields. A Heineken-loving middleman (Brad Pitt) moves the deal forward. Things go awry. Many die.

*NOTE* My lowest rating for a motion picture is 1 PUBIC HAIR. A movie must truly earn the right to such a hallowed position. Normally, a film like THE COUNSELOR would deserve the lowest rating I can bestow, but if I did that, I fear I would be causing injury to a motion picture like SHARKNADO. I am therefore compelled to create a NEW rating lower than a PUBIC HAIR. So, for Sir Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy's aborted fetus pretending to be a movie, I hereby announce a rating even lower. I hereby call it: TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND "HARRY'S CHAR BROIL & DINING LOUNGE". The new rating will be accompanied by the photo of the real thing:

The Counselor (2013)

RATING: TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND
"HARRY'S CHAR BROIL & DINING LOUNGE"
Dir. Sir Ridley Scott
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Pérez, Rubén Blades, John Leguizamo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

So I'm sitting there watching this thing and listening to the worst pillow talk dialogue imaginable between Michael Fassbender and Penélope Cruz while they loll about under a blanket and just before Fassbender starts to muff dive Cruz, she suggests she needs to clean her pussy and Fassbender tells her he'd prefer to lap up the smegma, dried-Fassbender-spunk and all other manner of the viscous fluids and Krusty Kremes churning around "down there" and while he starts Hoovering it all up, Cruz has the temerity to tell him how to do it and I'm, like, not only on the verge of puking, but a tad annoyed that she'd dare be making any suggestions as to his tongue-action at all as he's graciously offered to spic n' span her sullied vaginal septic tank sans a thorough douching.

I suspected at this point in the proceedings I might be in for a rough ride with this one.

But THEN I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that The Counselor had only one direction to go when I was force-fed one idiotic, pointless scene after another wherein the film's characters yapped endlessly in some preposterous Cormac McCarthy pidgin code blending the worst hardboiled dialogue imaginable with obtusely stupid and simplistic speechifying and philosophizing.

All of this moronic babble-speak is occasionally punctuated with dollops of extreme violence (none of it directed with any panache whatsoever), including shootings, stabbings and beheadings.

And then, there is a sequence wherein Cameron Diaz humps the windshield of Javier Bardem's Ferrari.

Now, on paper, all this must sound potentially delectable, like some crazed melodramatic 70s male existential angst crime drama directed by John Waters after a lobotomy administered by Dr. Cukrowicz in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, but I can assure you it's not that promising. Sir Ridley Scott's direction which, seems to grow increasingly bereft of anything resembling competence is not even worthy of being termed as the work of a hack. It's well below that: unmotivated camera moves, inertly ugly compositions, lifeless herky-jerky action sequences, no attention to detail of any consequence and worst of all, a slavish adherence to the worst writing of Cormac McCarthy's entire career.

This is the novelist's original screenplay debut - way to go, Cormac!

The movie makes absolutely no sense and yet, its pathetic attempts at mystery are anything but mysterious. Anyone who can't see from the beginning that Cameron Diaz is the shady puppet master of all the betrayals and supposed twists must surely be a bear of very little brain. Even if her complicity in the double-triple-quadruple-crosses is supposed to be obvious, it makes no real sense and if not making sense is the intention, then it's just not achieved with anything resembling skill, artistry or purpose (though its writer and any of his apologists might think otherwise).

Of course, the film's fake, surface nihilism is ultimately supposed to be the point - one supposes - and I sure have no problem with that, but not one single second of this abominable film has any entertainment value whatsoever. Worst of all, the movie is just plain dull and humourless, though it appears as if there are a few lame, lunkheaded attempts to insert some darkly-tinged jocularity into the proceedings.

All through the movie, characters of seeming import are given long dialogue scenes and speeches. One assumes there was some point to all of this, but whatever it was, I'll concede that those who can suggest what it might be are better men/women than I. To them, I bestow a certificate of merit. For what, I'm not sure, but I give it to them anyway (just as I give Messrs. Scott and McCarthy the aforementioned rancid turd).

By the end of the movie, we watch every major character get bumped off. We even get to see characters who seem to be important, but who are unfamiliar to us get bumped off. We even get to see characters of NO importance who are unfamiliar to us get bumped off. I, for one, feel like anyone who thought they were making a good movie here, deserve a right royal bumping off along with every character who bites the arsenic biscuit in this dreadful movie.

Thinking on it, though, death is probably too good for them. I think we need to line them all up to get face-fucked by Cameron Diaz, but only if her pussy is as purportedly filthy as Penélope Cruz's is when Fassbender snuffles into it at the beginning of the movie.

Maybe it can be lots dirtier even.

"The Counselor" is in wide release all over the world. Good movies can't even get screens. In fact, good movies have a hard time getting made. If you really think you need to see this movie, download the worst cam torrent you can find. No need to give these clowns a penny of your dough. In fact, a grotty torrent download might even improve the movie.

GLADIATOR: EXTENDED CUT - BluRay/DVD review by Greg Klymkiw - Now Longer! Now Just as boring than ever!

Gladiator – Extended Cut (2000) **
dir. Ridley Scott
Starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Honsou, David Hemmings

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Introducing the Sapphire Edition Blu-Ray of Gladiator, director Ridley Scott dourly admits that the true director’s cut is not this plodding studio cash-grab, but the shorter 155-minute theatrical version. Why Paramount Home Entertainment bothered to include the grim admission is rather beyond me since Sir Ridley’s lack of enthusiasm for the 171 minutes to follow is hardly a ringing endorsement. For me, though, it wasn’t much of a bummer since I’ve never particularly enjoyed the picture anyway. While Gladiator is no better in this form, the extended version is a tad more cohesive – not much, mind you, but at least a pubic hair’s worth.

It is, however, just as boring as it ever was.

There has also been some controversy surrounding this Blu-Ray Sapphire Edition. If I actually liked the movie, I doubt I’d be THAT disappointed in the new version and packaging. It’s crammed with tons of extra features – many of which are kind of interesting to watch and if you ever craved to get more Ridley Scott than you ever imagined, you sure get healthy doses of him here on the commentary track and all the various introductions to the extra features. What many geeks have complained about is the high definition transfer itself. Not that I’m much of a Blu-Ray-o-phile, but the transfer looked quite fine on my 32-inch flat screen and was crisp enough to reveal that the film’s leading lady appears to have a woeful skin condition. Either that, or it IS a dreadful transfer.

As for the picture itself, everyone is, I’m sure, rather familiar with the plot – a fictional rendering of the beginnings of the fall of the Roman Empire. General Maximus (Russell Crowe as the imaginary title character loosely based on a number of personages – most notably, Spartacus) is loved as a son by Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). Marcus’s jealous psychotic progeny Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) murders his father and orders the execution of our hero.

A badly injured Maximus narrowly escapes death and is sold into slavery to eventually fight as a gladiator under trader/trainer Antonio (Oliver Reed). Here he befriends the gorgeous black warrior Juba (Djimon Honsou) on the blood-soaked coliseum grounds and plots his revenge against Commodus, the new Emperor of the Roman Empire.

In Rome, the ex-lover of Maximus, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) plots with Senator Gracchus (Derek Jacobi) to overthrow her insane Emperor brother who not only runs amuck like a headless psycho chicken, but also has incestuous designs upon her. When Maximus enters Rome, he becomes a star of the Coliseum games, presided over by the foppish Cassius (David Hemmings). Maximus threatens to become more popular than Commodus amongst the rabble. Revenge follows, but only after lots and lots of bloodshed.

At the end of the day, Gladiator, for all its Oscar glory, surprisingly positive critical response and huge boxoffice, is little more than a sword and sandal epic in the tradition of innumerable Steve Reeves epics of the early 60s – albeit with a budget far exceeding the sum total of every Steve Reeves movie ever made (and there were many). Sadly, for all its multi-millions-of-dollars, the pectoral and firm buttock action in Gladiator is a pale shade of the glory that was the Italian sword and sandal epics of the 60s. (For those so inclined, the entertaining 300 served up some mighty juicy homoerotic goods for the edification of libidinous lassies, Nancy Boys and closet cases the world over.)

Some of the scenes that appear in the extended edition of the Gladiator Blu-Ray are actually pretty decent. In spite of this, Scott natters on during the extended scene intros about how they weren’t all that necessary in moving the story forward. A few quasi-literate moments with Derek Jacobi spouting mock philosophical dialogue might bolster Scott’s snooty argument, but within the context of this longer version, one would, I’d argue, have been quite happy to listen to Derek Jacobi recite the contents of a Racing Form, so one wonders why Scott is so high and mighty about this. Odder still is Scott’s dismissive attitude to a great scene where the men responsible for lying to Commodus about the death of Maximus are executed. It’s one of the few moments where Commodus displays the kind of despotic evil that goes beyond mere insanity, yet Scott was quite happy to dispense with it in his theatrical “director’s cut”.

However, one does not wish to reserve all one’s bile for Scott since many sequences are genuinely well directed in the manner that all works by great hacks are directed. He manages to elicit some extremely fine performances – especially from such stalwarts as Oliver Reed, Richard Harris and David Hemmings – and under his command, the picture is blessed with some fine production and costume design.

What one really wants to question is why this movie was made at all in the manner in which it was made and with the somewhat dull script it was made from. As a machine-tooled semi-remake of Spartacus, one can acknowledge the business decision to green light the picture, but frankly, Gladiator is a case of where truth is definitely stranger than fiction and could have been far more entertaining if it had been adhered to.

I suppose it’s not fair to imagine a movie that could have been instead of what was eventually delivered, but the hell with it – life’s not fair, and Gladiator is definitely a movie that deserves a bit of trouncing for being so tediously by the numbers. The bottom line is this – Maximus, as presented, is a bit of a dullard. He’s certainly not the piss and vinegar of Kirk Douglas in Spartacus and he is most definitely not endowed with the magnificent pectorals of Steve Reeves. Maximus, as a hero, is a bit of a washout – a pudgier Charles Bronson in sword and sandals.

In any event, the really cool character from this period of history was the nut bar Commodus. In real life, this bloodthirsty bonehead was not only a poor substitute for his philosopher king of a father, but he was so clearly and utterly out of his mind that his antics would have been way more entertaining than watching Joaquin Phoenix mince about like some Roman Snidely Whiplash. Commodus, you see, fancied himself a bit of a gladiator and often went into the ring himself to fight with real gladiators – though he seldom killed anyone in the ring since all of them were instructed to let him win so he could grant them their lives in front of the rabble. Commodus instead murdered the gladiators he sparred with in preparation for the games.

He also had this truly bizarre habit of instituting wholesale public slaughter – by his own hand, no less – of various cripples who were defenceless and hundreds of exotic animals that Commodus butchered in front of the masses. Tigers, lions and even elephants kind of made sense, but he also delighted in chasing ostriches around the coliseum and eventually beheaded them. The weirdest thing Commodus did in public was to hack a giraffe to death. I kid you not! A giraffe!

Look, I love Joaquin Phoenix as much as the next fella, but Scott really has no idea how to use him to his fullest potential. Seriously, though, can you imagine Joaquin beheading ostriches and hacking a giraffe to death?

Damn! It sure sounds like a movie I’d like to see.

But until such time as someone (Terry Gilliam, perhaps) makes Commodus: Giraffe Slayer of Rome, we have Ridley Scott’s Gladiator – in an extended version no less and one which, its director hates.

Greg Klymkiw takes a good, healthy DUMP upon the very WORST that Cinema had to offer in 2012. The TEN WORST MOVIES OF 2012.

The Worst Movies of 2012
By Greg Klymkiw

2012 could well have been much worse than it was, but for the most part, the year yielded a lot of great stuff. That said, there's more than enough celluloid trash to kvetch about and believe me, you'll find plenty of my kvetching here. Contenders I mulled over for inclusion that you won't find here included Ben Affleck's overrated racist compost toilet Argo, the absolutely pointless, boring and abominable Hitchcock, Brandon Cronenberg's dull, humourless and idiotic Antiviral, Spielberg's plodding Lincoln, the bloated Les Miserables, and a whole raft of mediocre comedies, horror films and pretentious art films. Consider them all runners-up.

Here, though, for your edification are my absolute Top Ten Worst Films of 2012. Technically there are a few more than 10 on my list, but three of the films are so interchangeable that they ended up being listed as a tie. The worst trend this year was to hire directors who can't direct action and/or suspense to handle films replete with action and/or suspense. The bottom line is that the films listed below were awful enough to bring out the ornery, rascally rabbit in me.

As per usual, I present the titles in alphabetical order.

Read 'em and weep!

Klymkiw's 10 WORST movies of 2012

Didn't Sam Raimi already make this movie?

The Amazing Spider-Man dir. Marc Webb

Pitching the Turd: So, uh, let's do the origin of Spidey again, but with a new cast and let's make sure it's not as good because people will come anyway. Oh, let's get the director of Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus music videos. He'll know what to do.

Catching the Turd: The bland, tasteful hack-manship of this movie slides down one's gullet not unlike the ease with which sewage spills into water treatment tanks. With by-the-numbers direction that delivers the all-too-familiar Spidey origin story (which Sam Raimi already did with so much force and panache - not that long ago), we basically get a slight reworking; a barely competent lame-duck that's little more than a cash-grab. The movie is dull and depressing, but even more so are the boneheads who paid money to see it. Are contemporary audiences so stupid that they require these endless reboots? Are they so bereft of attention spans that they need a pallid re-telling of Spidey's origin so soon? Have they become such lambs-to-the-slaughter suckers they'll contribute readily to putting money in the pockets of the unimaginative business school graduates pretending to be studio moguls? The answer it would seem is a resounding "Yes!"

TIED WITH . . .

Gee, this movie seems awfully familiar.

The Avengers dir. Joss Whedon

Pitching the Turd: Asgard's exiled Loki, hooks up with evil aliens to steal a cube of power. He hypnotizes Hawkeye and Professor Selvig to assist him. Nick Fury pulls in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor and The Black Widow to fight the power from the outer reaches of the universe. The super heroes squabble. They kiss and make up. They fight the bad guys. They win. The Earth is free.

Catching the Turd: Television writer-director Joss Whedon accomplishes the sort of thing TV directors and other filmmakers bereft of any real cinematic voice employ. Endless closeups, more shots and cuts than Sergei Eisenstein would have ever imagined being used (and he used plenty), no sense of spatial geography, genuinely good fight choreography butchered by excessive cutting, a grating, pounding soundscape, a thunderous score and a whole lot of thunder signifying not much of anything. The whole affair is executed with a cudgel. It's depressing to realize that audiences have become so numbed by bad filmmaking they'll have no difficulty embracing these loathsome efforts. Joss Whedon is not a filmmaker. Like the woeful J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan and others of this overrated, untalented ilk, Whedon is a hack. There's nary a single shot in the film that suggests he has a filmmaker's eye and though he apparently has a good reputation as a writer in television (I don't bother to watch television), he clearly hasn't got what it takes to generate a script with the sweep and true spectacle needed for a feature. Oh, and the movie bored the shit out of me.

TIED WITH . . . 

Pardon me, I'm looking for Bridget Fonda.

The Dark Knight Rises dir. Christopher "One Idea" Nolan

Pitching the Turd: Gotham City is crime free. Harvey Dent has become Jesus Christ and Commissioner Gordon is feeling guilty about suppressing the real truth for the "good" of the city. Batman is off the radar whilst Bruce Wayne mopes about in seclusion with his loyal butler Alfred. A plucky cat burglar who looks like Anne Hathaway with body paint for clothes, takes a shine to Bruce as does a wealthy socialite who looks an awful lot like the French woman who played Edith Piaf (only without the "ugly" makeup). Out of nowhere comes an incredibly bland villain with a bunch of tubes and steel pipes in his face. It's impossible to understand half his dialogue, but no matter, he's there to do evil, not to be understood. He's a terrorist bent on giving the city back to criminals. This will never do, of course, so Batman comes to the rescue, but not before an endlessly drawn out sequence in some weird-ass pit in the middle of nowhere as Bruce needs to climb out of the hole to triumphantly beat the bad guy. Oh yeah, there's a nice young cop who believes in Batman and lends a hand. His name is - WAIT FOR IT - Robin. Alas, no homoerotic subtext here. Nolan leaves that bit o' business twixt Bruce Wayne and Alfred.

Catching the Turd: Christopher Nolan has a very distinctive style. It doesn't mean he can direct. He's dull, dour, pretentious, humourless and has absolutely no talent for directing action sequences. He does, however, usually have one idea.

I'm an auteur, don'cha know?

I can act, write & direct. Just like Orson Welles.

When acting I have one expression.

Here it is again. Enjoy!

Friends With Kids dir. Jennifer Westfeldt

Pitching the Turd: Two fuck buddies see how marriage and kids have ruined the carefree lives of all their friends until they realize that it's okay to be more than fuck buddies and ruin their own lives too.

Catching the Turd: Easily the most nauseating film of the year that forces an interminable wait to discover if the most sickening romantic movie couple in recent film history will eventually find happiness with each other. Before the inevitable no-brainer is revealed we have to put up with TV-sitcom-styled dialogue trying pathetically to be sophisticated, fired out in Howard Hawks-like rat-a-tat-tat fashion, purportedly in homage to classic romantic screwball comedy, but in reality, simply masking how shallow all the characters are, including everything that spews out of their mouths. We are therefore forced to wallow, like pigs in a trough full of horrendous upper-middle-class values in these repugnant empty vessels - either to remind us how wonderful the lifestyles of bourgeois sheep are or as a carrot of "success" to dangle before those who aspire to emulating these frightful people and their negligible existence. Especially grotesque is the bourgeois breeder mentality that infuses all the characters - particularly our two main characters. There's a selfishness and immaturity that we're all supposed to, uh, "relate" to. I'd personally find it easier to relate to Manson Family values than these petty, machine-tooled "sophisticates". And lest we forget, this painful, pus-filled boil of a movie stars the hideously unwatchable Jennifer Westfeldt, one of the most woefully inexpressive actresses I've ever had the displeasure to witness on a big screen. Not only does she have a clumping, clod-hopping gait, but her face is weirdly frozen. Westfeldt is clearly too young to have been mainlining Botox, but I'd hate to think how immobile her expressions would be if and when she does partake in this hideous, dehumanizing butchery. Of course it's Westfeldt who is responsible for this abomination as she also wrote (in a manner of speaking) and directed (as it were) what is easily one of the worst romantic comedies of the new millennium.

I'm going to find you and I'm going to… Oh, Shite! Wrong movie.

The Grey dir. Joe Carnahan

Pitching the Turd: Liam Neeson, a sharpshooting wolf killer and co-workers from an Arctic Oil Rig are on a plane that crashes in the middle of a wolf pack's happy hunting grounds. The coterie of macho wolf-bait is the usual assortment of miscreants - leading to all manner of personality conflicts amidst the very real threat of being devoured and/or freezing to death.

Catching the Turd: A new film from the director of The A-Team, Smokin' Aces and Narc is NOT, I assure you, a ringing endorsement. Joe Carnahan shoehorns fake existential male angst into a straight-up action thriller, bone-headedly assuming he'll lift the material out of its genre roots. He's a snob and an incompetent one at that. The wolf attacks are directed with all the style of an apprentice butcher raising his sledgehammer tentatively over the skull of a cow before letting it sloppily crash down upon the bovine cranium. The action is almost always in closeup and utilizes lazy herky-jerky shooting in tandem with Attention Deficit Disorder quick cutting.

As you can see, I have extremely large lips.

The Hunger Games dir. Gary Ross

Pitching the Turd: Based on the first of three bestselling books by Suzanne Collins, children are forced to murder each other on live television.

Catching the Turd: This might have made for a decent picture if it came closer to Norman Jewison's Rollerball crossed with Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale - the cool dystopian future vision of the former and the utterly insane ultra violence of the latter. However, to make a dream picture like this, even with the dreadful script based on a dreadful book would have required something resembling a director which, helmer Gary Ross clearly isn't. In fact, Ross reaches his filmmaking nadir with this. He's yet another director who has absolutely no idea how to direct suspense and action. Full of annoying shaky-cam and endless, cheap-jack quick cuts, he's all bluster and not much else. He has no idea of spatial geography, his camera placements are all a big mess and there is nary a thrilling moment in the entire movie. Add to the film's ineptitude a plodding 142-minute running time and it's a recipe for guaranteed international worldwide boxoffice success amongst audiences who are collectively not unlike Winnie The Pooh - being, as he was, a bear of very little brain..

There are no leading roles for women, but I will do quite nicely.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey dir. Peter Jackson

Pitching the Turd: Let's take a slender novel and blow the first part of it up to a 170-minute movie. It's Tolkein's precursor to The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo leaves the Shire with Gandalf and a bunch of Middle Earthlings to get something (or to do something, or to meet someone or to. . . whatever) and have them walk for a long time and punctuate the walking (and talking) with occasional fights with monsters and bad guys. Eventually, they'll get what they're looking for (sort of) and the movie will prepare us for a sequel.

Catching the Turd: The Hobbit is a lame ride. The movie is interminably boring, the action scenes are surprisingly and rather lamely directed, the special effects are predictably - uh, digital - many of the set-pieces are structured like video game roller coaster rides and worst of all, the stalwart Viggo Mortensen hero-type is unbearably awful and has absolutely no screen presence. None whatsoever. Where they dredged that loser up was beyond me until I checked out his credits after seeing the movie and saw he was a longtime TV actor. Oh, and it's just under three hours long. I assure you that one never gets that precious time back.

You'll be happy when I give myself a Cesarian. Not much else to enjoy here.

Prometheus dir. Ridley Scott

Pitching the Turd: Scientists go to another planet and discover that it was once populated by alien beings who were responsible for creating life on Earth until they were wiped out by the nasty monster aliens from Alien. Yes, Alien - which makes this a prequel, no less, and with that great film's original director. Anyone who thinks Prometheus should be viewed as a stand-alone piece and NOT a prequel to Alien (as some have suggested, including the director) is an idiot. It's a prequel all right.

Catching the Turd: Prometheus is all sizzle and no steak. There's way too much boring New-Agey stuff, no real scares (save for one that is ripped off from the original Alien) and a much larger cast to give the aliens more to eat (though it means little because we never get to know any of them as characters). The movie is rife with BIG IDEAS, but most of them are introduced, then dropped in favour of forward thrust and pyrotechnics. Even more offensive is the predictable conclusion that offers up a sequel or two. I saw it coming from very early on and prayed the story WOULDN'T go where it did. It did. So much for shocker endings; though in fairness, a gibbon might have some trouble predicting the outcome.

What's my motivation, Oliver? Schwance, baby, schwance.

Savages dir. Oliver Stone

Pitching the Turd: The idiotically named "O" is the coffee table centrepiece in a groovy menage with her dope dealing boyfriends Ben and Chon. These guys make wicked dope, live the high life in their California dream house and boink the beautiful, but vapid O. When a Mexican drug cartel run by a Latina she-bitch seeks to muscle-in on their action, their dream comes crashing to a halt when O is kidnapped by the baddies and held hostage until they do the deal.

Catching the Turd: Easily Oliver Stone's worst movie ever. With a trio of bland lead characters and a clutch of over-the-top villains, there's little to keep our interest. I have no problem with the heroes being dope dealers who are simply trying to protect their turf - my problem is that they're such dull, hippy-dippy and ultimately, empty dope dealers. And while the villains all chew the scenery, none of them feel like they're especially having any fun doing it. The movie is a misfire from beginning to end. All it has going for it is the violence which, I'll admit is staged with Stone's trademark style and efficiency, but because there's virtually nothing in the movie that's remotely engaging, even the well-staged carnage feels like a waste. The whole picture feels phoned-in.

BOND: She's all mine, Raoul. Hands off. RAOUL: Oh, Bond. She's more than enough woman for both us. M: Oh, for Jesus H. Christ's sake! Drop your goddamn drawers. I can take both of youse Nancy-Boys on, plus Mr. Kincade and his bleeding stupid hunting dog. KINCADE: Och! Welcome to Scotland.

Skyfall dir. Sam Mendes

Pitching the Turd: James Bond views M as his Mommy because he was orphaned as a child. A terrorist who used to work for M is now trying to discredit her. The terrorist once looked upon M as his Mommy too because, like Bond, he was orphanedBond goes after him. Any guesses as to the outcome? I, for one, was looking forward to s scene where Bond and The Terrorist threw their arms open to each other and invite M for a bit of Mommy-Love Daisy Chain action. It didn't happen, but as I'm a professional (don'cha know?) I did not let it affect my assessment of the film.

Catching the Turd: Problem: Sam Mendes can't direct action. Problem: Sam Mendes can't direct (even though he continues to fool critics and Oscar voters otherwise). Problem: Sam Mendes has no sense of fun, nor anything resembling a sense of humour. These are big problems. Mendes is not only an overrated director, he's a magician, though not the kind that creates screen magic, but the sort who truly bamboozles audiences, studio heads, producers, financiers (and, sadly, reviewers) into thinking he's good. It must be the accent. He's a poseur of the highest order and has never made a decent picture. That said, I put these prejudices aside because I love Daniel Craig as Bond (in Casino Royale only, though) and I love James Bond (in many of his incarnations over the decades). I enjoyed the first two minutes of Skyfall, but as soon as the big action set-piece began, my heart sank. The entire opening has little sense of spatial geography, far too many closeups, a ridiculous number of cuts and only a handful of wide shots to take in the action. Car chase, motorcycle chase, foot chase and finally, spectacular leaps on top of a moving train do little more than exhaust the audience. Mendes cudgels us into submission. This isn't suspense, nor is it especially exciting. It's cacophony, pure and simple. Once again, we have an action sequence in a contemporary film that fakes its way through - driving the action NOT with dramatic beats, but with sledgehammer cuts inspired by explosive and/or grating, screeching sound. During the car chase sequence we never get a clean exterior shot of the car that Bond and Moneypenny are in. Mendes peppers the chase with closeups of things the car smashes into from interior POVs, but we never get a sense of the real danger, destruction and urgency. It's all bluster. So is the rest of the movie - boringly bombastic and no fun at all. Oh, and to all those who thought Javier Bardem was a great Bond villain - think again.

Where's the loo? I have the runs. So too will you.

The Woman in Black dir. James Watkins

Pitching the Turd: A widowed young 19th-century London`lawyer (Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe) journeys to an isolated village to save his ailing career and settle an estate which, not surprisingly, bears a heavy curse that befalls anyone who spies the creepy title apparition within its borders. Our hero spends an inordinate amount of time in the crumbling Victorian manse, getting several up-close-and-personal ocular treats of the pseudo-J-Horror ghost and when he does, a child in the village dies. Though we can see this coming from a mile away, the movie pretends it's going to be a surprise that the lawyer's winsomely cute tyke will be visiting the countryside with his Nanny. Oops.

Catching the Turd: This lame attempt to rekindle the atmospheric glory of Hammer Horror films flops. Good intentions are not enough. Sometimes movies need something resembling a real filmmaker at the helm. Alas, this movie is rendered by a director with no discernible style who likes the idea of making a Hammer picture, but not, it seems, actually doing one. The results are dire. Instead of Christopher Lee ogling heaving bosoms, the movie serves up little more than Daniel Radcliffe porn.

I'm soooooooo serious, yes?

We Need To Talk About Kevin dir. Lynne Ramsay

Pitching the Turd: Lots of bopping around in time and space with dollops of obtuse dreams, a mire of precious imagery, confusing narrative details and oh-so earnest performances delivers a film about a psychotically dysfunctional family.

Catching the Turd: It's a cerebral, trick-pony approach to horrific events in a family's life that's not only disingenuous, but vaguely offensive - artistically and morally. Reprehensible "art" cinema for pseuds.

Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Well, this dull, bloated, meandering hack job sure as hell isn't ALIEN. It is, however, co-written by the TV hack who gave us the woeful screenplay for COWBOYS and ALIENS.

Prometheus (2012) *1/2
dir. Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace,
Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ridley Scott's film of Alien from the screenplay by Dan O'Bannon was (and still is) a great movie. When I first saw it in 1979, the experience was so perfect, so complete, that I never imagined there would be a need for a sequel (or prequel) of any kind. When the sequels started coming, I was less than impressed. I detested James Cameron's overlong, noisy Rambo-lina-styled Aliens, David Fincher's miasma of half-baked pretention Alien 3 and only Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien: Resurrection had decent entertainment value. The less said about the AVP instalments the better.

I loved Alien so much I probably saw it at least ten times in its first year of release and a few more times in subsequent years. Scott's direction was so dazzlingly proficient, H.R. Giger's legendary design elements so astounding and O'Bannon's script so tight that it held up on repeated viewings - allowing one to admire different elements of both craft and subtext once the pure visceral nightmare of the first screening was out of one's system.

And, it was one hell of a great monster movie - so much so that I kept my eyes peeled for any subsequent film Scott and O'Bannon were attached to.

Having penned the hilarious and creepy Dark Star, the John Carpenter-directed satire of 2001: A Space Odyssey, O'Bannon was already familiar to me. After Alien, though, he always delivered the goods - even when the directors were hacks (as was the case with John Badham's competent rendering of Blue Thunder) or if the directors completely buggered up the writing (in particular, Tobe Hooper's mish-mash of Lifeforce and his lamely directed remake of Invaders From Mars) or when the directors were talentless non-entities (like Gary Sherman, whose dull by-the-numbers helmsmanship of Dead and Buried strangely enhanced the writing and made you wish a real director had delivered up O'Bannon's scenario).

When O'Bannon was paired with a great director, though, like Paul Verhoeven - watch out! Total Recall is so perfect and hasn't dated one bit and makes one automatically assume that the upcoming new version will have to be an utter waste of time.

The only opportunity O'Bannon had to direct his own original screenplay was the phenomenal Return of the Living Dead - a horror film so blisteringly insane, scary and funny that I still can't figure out why O'Bannon's output eventually petered out (though he did a decent directorial job on a Lovecraft adaptation written by another screenwriter called The Resurrected).

O'Bannon is one thing - the real thing!

Ridley Scott, however, is another matter. He's directed 20 pictures. He will always be in my good graces for Alien - his work there is unimpeachable. If truth be told, however, I haven't much liked most of his other pictures.

Blade Runner is clearly not without merit, but whatever version one sees, it's pretty much a gorgeous looking mess (and I still think the studio cut is the best). Thelma and Louise is entertaining, but full of fake female empowerment and has little value beyond one helping. Hannibal has the distinction of being a first-rate piece of A-movie trash and Black Hawk Down is still one kick-ass war picture. The rest of Scott's output is completely negligible - and yes, this includes his testosterone-infused Oscar-winning snore-fest Gladiator.

In spite of this, I was genuinely thrilled when I heard about Prometheus. I went so out of my way to NOT know anything about it that all I could tell you about the movie before seeing it was that Scott was directing, it had something to do with Alien and had a cool poster I couldn't avoid. About an hour before seeing the movie, I sadly made the inadvertent discovery that Michael Fassbender was in the movie and playing an android. Knowing this kind of annoyed me after all my hard work of not watching any trailers or reading anything in advance about it, but what finally annoyed me even more was the movie itself.

Anyone who thinks Prometheus should be viewed as a stand-alone piece and NOT a prequel to Alien (as some have suggested) is an idiot. It's a prequel all right. A scientific expedition is launched based upon similarities in ancient art works from different eras. A crew of scientists go to another planet and discover that it was once populated by alien beings who were responsible for creating life on Earth until they were wiped out by the nasty monster aliens from the first movie. Everyone gets wiped out save for Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender.

And there you pretty much have it.

The movie might have been worth watching, but the screenplay is so dull that there's little going for Prometheus other than leading lady Noomi Rapace (from the original German Dragon Girl trilogy), Fassbender's amusing android who models himself after Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, Scott's first-rate visuals and terrific special effects. That said, the effects here are typical of the digital age and nothing has the majesty or power of those rendered in Alien. I even hated the Prometheus spaceship. I'm more of water-dripping Nostromo rust-bucket-spaceship-kind-of-guy from instalment number one.

What drove me crazy in Prometheus is how most of it was all sizzle and no steak. There is only one - count 'em - ONE brilliantly horrific, suspenseful set piece that's ALMOST as good as anything in the first Alien.

And it IS a great scene, on a par with John Hurt's chest explosion. The Prometheus near-equivalent involves Rapace giving herself a Caesarean to pluck out the alien growing in her womb before it bursts out and kills her. It was the only time in the whole movie I genuinely perked up. Scott handled this harrowing sequence with tremendous aplomb. Though the chest explosion in Alien was a tough act to follow, the movie did so in spades and was so ridiculously scary you spent much of the movie squeezing your bum cheeks to keep the fecal matter from spewing out. The rest of Prometheus, however, feels plodding, predictable and is possibly even worse than Gladiator. Though I will concede it beats the AVP pictures.

The movie is rife with BIG IDEAS, but most of them are introduced, then dropped in favour of forward thrust and pyrotechnics. Even more offensive is the predictable conclusion that offers up a sequel or two. I saw it coming from very early on and prayed the story WOULDN'T go where it did.

It does.

So much for shocker endings.

However, I do suspect a gibbon might have trouble predicting the outcome.

That the screenplay is woefully inadequate is no surprise. It's written by Joe Spaights whose only claim to fame is a silly direct to video thriller a la Deliverance and Damon Lindelof, a TV hack whose only feature credit as a screenwriter is (need I say more?) Cowboys & Aliens.

The tagline for the original Alien was the brilliant: "In space, no one can hear you scream." With Prometheus, everyone in the theatre will hear discriminating audience-members scream for the movie to finally end so they can get home, slap on their Alien Blu-Ray and cleanse their palates of this decidedly unpalatable, over-hyped and shockingly well-reviewed hack job.

"Prometheus" is currently in world wide release via 20th Century Fox.