BANG BANG BABY, THE AMINA PROFILE, VENDETTA - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Canucks make cool movies y'all can see this week and I be tellin' you why y'all should see them

3 Canucks Make Cool Movies 2 C now!

BANG BANG BABY

Bang Bang Baby
Dir. Jeffrey St. Jules
Starring: Jane Levy, Justin Chatwin, Peter Stormare, David Reale

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Bang Bang Baby is easily one of the strangest movie musical romantic comedies ever made. Of course, it's Canadian. No surprise here, given that le pays de castor, l'orignal et le sirop d'érable, has already generated filmmakers like John Paizs, Guy Maddin and David Cronenberg.

Set in some perversely accurate 50s-60s studio musical version of rural Canada (basically, anywhere above the 49th that isn't Toronto), this is one lively, imaginatively-directed bonbon of a picture, if you, that is, think of yummy candies as multi-coloured Haribo gummies meeting Monty Python's "Whizzo Quality Assortment" featuring delectable sweet-meat comestibles described by company owner and everyone's favourite sweetie purveyor Mr. Milton (looking not surprisingly like Terry Jones) as "Spring Surprise", in which steel bolts spring out from the chocky to "plunge straight through both cheeks" or "Crunchy Frog, the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope" and, lest we forget the chocky featuring "fresh Cornish Ram's bladder" that's been "emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds whipped into a fondue and garnished with lark's vomit.

Yes, the bonbon is that tasty.

Indeed Bang Bang Baby, in the parlance of "high concept" (Canuck-style, 'natch), is a kind of cross twixt Mario Lanza-Elvis Preseley-Gidget-Tammy-with-dashes-of-David Byrne's True Stories with a few generous dollops of Orgy of the Blood Parasites (an early title of Cronenberg's Shivers).

Lonely Arms, a magical, mythical town in a Canada we no longer know (but desperately want to) is the sleepy-time Canuck home of high-school senior and car mechanic Steffy (the drop-dead gorgeous Canuckian Kitten-with-a-whip, Jane Levy), who lives with her bitter, alcoholic former musician Dad (Peter Stormare, the man who shoved Steve Buscemi into a wood chipper in Fargo).

Steffy has the voice of an angel (as does actress Levy) and her dream is to enter an American "Ingenue of the Year" Contest. When she's selected as a finalist, Dad fears her virtue will be at stake and he unfairly (but well-meaningly) scuttles her shot at stardom. Our gal resigns herself to a life of provincial Canadian mediocrity, pumping gas for her tender-loving-lying-in-puddles-of-his-own-vomit Dad, grudgingly heading off to a school dance and drunkenly going against her otherwise good judgement and eventually accompanying a creepy rich boy (David Reale, proving again why he's one of Canada's best and funniest character actors) for a late-night drive to his family's forbidding factory on the outskirts of town. A mysterious purple-fogged chemical leak leaves poor Steffy alone on a dark country road.

Out of the mist, appears, the Elvis-like American superstar Bobby Shore (Justin Chatwin) whose car has broken down after missing a turn to Omaha and ending up in Canada. (Our American neighbours are not always too bright.) Not only is she the lad's biggest fan, but she can fix his car.

Once she starts belting out her show-stopping tunes, it doesn't take Bobby too long to realize that she's quite the catch. Crooning and dancing against a plethora of gorgeously fake old-movie-studio-style backdrops, our made-for-each-other couple look like they're going to find happiness and live happily ever after.

However, I hope you haven't forgotten the aforementioned chemical leak from the factory. If you think this movie is weird, I can assure you, in the words of Al Jolson, "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Without spoiling the rest of the picture for you, I will only say this: icky parasites begin to grown within the bodies of the citizenry of Lonely Arms.

And they are mutating.

Oops, mutants on the way.

Bang Bang Baby won last year's Best Canadian First Feature Film Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014). Clearly the Awards Jury were swept away by director St. Jules's cornucopia of imagination. And yes, said mad vision runs gloriously rampant through the picture.

Still, its period and post-modern details only partially work. Many of the film's oddball touches are stunning, but an equal number of them feel forced and even occasionally anachronistic in many of the wrong ways. The usually reliable Stormare feels like he's sleepwalking through his role (looking aimlessly for the punch-clock and pay cheque) and though Chatwin makes for a decent romantic lead, I was a bit thrown off by his look, especially the Elsa Lanchester Bride of Frankenstein-like hairdo.

The film's inherent silliness is always a treat, though, and wisely, St. Jules never plunges into the kind of over-the-top that might have been swathed in globs of horrendous whimsy. Besides, leading lady Levy delivers a knock 'em dead performance and the genuinely great song-score has the kind of hum-ability to annoy you in all the right ways - as in, you can't get the bloody tunes out of your noggin, especially the title number.

Oh, and there are mutants. As a Canadian, I accept this.

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

Bang Bang Baby is a Search Engine Films release that plays from August 21 at Toronto's Varsity, Vancouver's Fifth Avenue and Montreal's Forum, with expanded release in other Canadian cities to follow.

*NOTE* In an earlier version of this article, I reported how shocked I was that Bang Bang Baby won the Best Canadian Feature Film prize over Albert Shin's In Her Place. This was a huge error as BBB was the recipient of the Best First Feature Film Prize, which makes total sense. (Shin's film is not a first feature.) I had successfully managed to repress all knowledge of the ever-so-slight Felix and Meira which did win the overall best feature prize. Pardon the brain fart, but I do tend to shuttle some films deep into a dark closet - not because they're bad, but because they're so egregiously unmemorable.

THE AMINA PROFILE

The Amina Profile (2015)
Dir. Sophie Deraspe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Set against the turbulent backdrop of war-and-revolution in contemporary Syria we meet Sandra Bagaria, one hot French-Canadian babe in Montreal and Amina Arraf, one hot Syrian-American babe in Damascus. They meet online. They're young. They're in love. They're lesbians. Okay. That's it. Go see the movie.

READ THE FULL REVIEW of The Amina Profile from Hot Docs 2015 HERE

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

The Amina Profile is a Les Films du 3 mars presentation opening theatrically August 21, 2015 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. For dates, times and fix, visit the cinema's website HERE

VENDETTA

Vendetta (2015)
Dir. Jen and Sylvia Soska
Scr. Justin Shady
Starring: Dean Cain, Paul "The Big Show" Wight, Michael Eklund, Kyra Zagorsky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Let's get to the meat of the matter in this kick-ass prison picture by everyone's favourite Beautiful and Talented Hungarian-Canadian twins in Beautiful British Columbia - the action and violence. The Soska Sisters (American Mary) do not disappoint in this regard. Their direction goes far beyond just covering the thwacks, whacks, kicks, testicle-twisting and gore in a perfunctory manner, nor do they resort to the usual wham-bam with no sense of spatiality. I was delighted that they placed a fair degree of faith in actors who could clearly fight, some superb stunt choreography/coordination and a few occasional frissons like the makeshift "brass" knuckles Danvers creates and uses with sweet abandon.

As a side note, it is incumbent of me to point out that the one prison movie cliche sadly missing from Vendetta are a few instances of forcible sodomy and blow jobs. Most disappointing. What gives? Even a dull, inexplicably beloved piece of crap like The Shawshank Redemption had a decent anal rape scene.

But, I digress.

READ THE FULL REVIEW of Vendetta HERE

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

Vendetta is now available on BLU-RAY via Lions Gate.

GUIDANCE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Funny Pat Mills Comedy plays TIFF Bell Lightbox from August 14, 2015, launches NYC August 21 (Village East) and LA on August 28 (Sundance Sunset Cinema)

Guidance (2014)
Dir. Pat Mills
Starring: Pat Mills, Zahra Bentham,
Laytrel McMullen, Alex Ozerov, Kevin Hanchard, Tracey Hoyt

Review Excerpt By Greg Klymkiw

David Gold (Pat Mills) is a loser. He's a former child star reduced to taking non-union voice gigs, the latest of which he gets fired from because of his haughty, petulant, pretentious attitude. This is bad news because he's way behind on his share of the rent and on the verge of being turfed. He's got serious drug and alcohol problems and he's so deeply in the closet he won't even admit to himself that he's gay. Oh yeah, he's been diagnosed with late-stage skin cancer. None of this phases our hero. For us, the audience, it's one hell of a good deal because Guidance (the feature debut of writer, director and star Pat Mills) is all about David's hilarious decision to bamboozle his way into a job he's not qualified for, but thinks will be perfect for him. Cribbing from a child psychologist YouTube guru, David lands a cushy dream job that will not only pay well, but give him a chance to help teenagers which, for utterly insane reasons, he believes he'll be good at. He becomes the new Guidance Counsellor of Grusin High.

READ THE FULL REVIEW of Guidance from TIFF 2014 HERE

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Guidance is playing theatrically from August 14, 2015 at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX via Search Engine Films. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE. It also launches in the USA via Strand Releasing, August 21 (Village East) and LA on August 28 (Sundance Sunset Cinema), followed by a national release.

GREG KLYMKIW interviews JOHN BOORMAN on QUEEN AND COUNTRY at ELECTRIC SHEEP

Greg Klymkiw Interviews the legendary director
JOHN BOORMAN about QUEEN AND COUNTRY,
the sequel to his much-beloved Hope and Glory
at Electric Sheep Magazine. Read it by clicking HERE

THE PIN - Review By Greg Klymkiw

A young girl (Milda Gecaite) confronts an
ethnic-Russian collaborator in her secret
haven from Nazis searching for Jews.

Once again, I am thrilled to report that a terrific new Canadian film, THE PIN, opens theatrically on June 27, 2014. What I'm not thrilled to report is that this terrific new Canadian film is only playing in Toronto at the Canada Square Cinemas. Given its subject matter, this important film with a tremendous built-in audience needs Canada's largest exhibition chain Cineplex Entertainment to open screens for it in the myriad of ideal northern suburban venues in Vaughn, Thornhill, Richmond Hill, Markham, Newmarket and Aurora.

Obviously, one would want a wider audience than an ethnically-specific market, but for that, it would have benefitted from at least one play date in downtown Toronto (at least the Varsity 7). If The Pin does NOT play the Grant Park Cinema in Winnipeg - the perfect venue for it (if some decent grassroots marketing happens and a few dollars are spent on it) - then something's rotten in the state of Canuckville. Luckily, the Grant Park is NOT a Cineplex screen, but part of the Landmark chain. More on this below, and now……THE PIN

Milda Gecaite & Grisha Pasternak are lovers in a dangerous time.

Milda Gecaite and Grisha Pasternak, hiding from
the Nazis in Naomi Jaye's THE PIN.

The Pin (2013) ****
Dir. Naomi Jaye
Starring: Milda Gecaite, Grisha Pasternak, David Fox
Review By Greg Klymkiw

They're scars that last forever, borne of danger and carved into the right-hand palm belonging to a young Jewish girl (Milda Gecaite). In hiding from the Nazis, she obsessively, fearfully digs her fingernails into soft flesh. Her scars plunge deeper. Beyond layers of tissue, glancing over frayed nerve endings, cascading through marrow, these scars are emblazoned upon her eternal memory.

Ultimately, these pain-infused engravings are chiseled onto the subconscious mind, searing her very soul. She will be forever scarred by the haunting memories of looking down at the street from above, her mother looking up, training her maternal eyes at the rooftop where her daughter is safely hidden while family, friends and neighbours are led by Nazis to awaiting boxcars. Destined to face Hitler's Final Solution, the girl's entire family become part of the "cargo" that will be forcibly unloaded at the extermination camps of Nazi Germany.

It's World War II in Lithuania. German soldiers and ethnic-Russian collaborators are crawling all over the countryside surrounding the old barn the young girl hides in. She's eventually joined by a young Jewish boy (Grisha Pasternak). He too will bear a literal scar from the open flesh wound on his arm and like the girl, his own soul will be defaced by malignant memories. Having been buried alive in a shallow grave next to the bodies of his entire family (executed by a Nazi death squad), he wisely stayed still amongst the corpses. Having escaped a fatal bullet, he waited for a safe moment to crawl out of the dirt, dashed into the forest, soon discovering a momentary safe harbour with the girl in her solitary haven. What they both find is the tie that binds forever and for a time in the lives of these two young people, love blossoms and yields joy.

The Pin, Naomi Jaye's haunting, exquisitely rendered and deeply moving love story is her promising feature debut and signals the arrival of a film artist who approaches her craft with great beauty and emotional force. From her own script, Jaye allows us to be party to the soft, delicate and heartfelt courtship that takes place within the confines of this ramshackle, abandoned barn. Punctuating shifts in narrative, tone and the passing of days, Jaye always reminds us of a dazzling natural world that looks over the turmoils created by man, always reminding us that looking to the Heavens is the constant reminder of how small we are and yet, how significant we are to be a part of it and under its ever-present gaze.

The pace of the film is gorgeously languid, creating a bed from which we can almost participate in the hours and days of solitude - a brief respite for the hero and heroine (expertly played by Gecaite and Pasternak) before the madness around them infringes upon their almost-Eden-like existence. However, when the worst comes, Jaye's approach has lulled us into a state of grace not unlike that of her characters and the sheer horror and tragedy that befall our young lovers, though not unexpected (this is, after all, WWII), still hits us like a ton of bricks.

There's something here, almost tonally, that reminded me of the classic Louis Malle drama Au Revoir Les Enfants. Both films are set against the backdrop of innocents hiding from Nazi tyranny during the war, both offer a pleasingly delicate pace to allow for our sheer pleasure in seeing deep emotional bonds being created and then - WHAMMO! - what we expect, when we least expect it, is a shocker and we're then faced with the horrible truth of how war can instil a kind of madness in children (not unlike Spielberg's astonishing adaptation of J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun).

I'm of course more than happy to include The Pin in the same breath as the two aforementioned Malle and Spielberg pictures. Though both of them were created by masters at the peak of the powers, Jaye's film, while not without the sort of occasional flaws one finds in early works (a too obvious framing device, ever-so tiny dashes of didacticism and a few period slippages), is still so mature and harrowing that one feels she'll someday, if allowed the chance, to grow and blossom and move well into the same territory. What's remarkable about the film for me is its resolve to always maintain a challenging mise-en-scène of long takes in gorgeously composed shots - always allowing the frame of the camera to act as a kind of proscenium into the private lives of these two people against an extraordinary backdrop.

This is a brave and uncompromising work - one that reminds us, as we must always be reminded - of how the world of the recent past went so utterly, horribly and insanely wrong (and, with recent events, continues to do so) and that love, faith and a resolve to accept the natural world that rules and presides over us is what we must accept so IT might never happen again.

The Pin begins its Canadian theatrical release in Toronto at the Canada Square Cinema on Friday, June 27, 2014 via Search Engine Films. AND BONUS: It's the first Canadian Film ever made in the Yiddish Language.

You know, I'm so sick and tired of the Cineplex attitude towards Canadian film. They can well afford a more concerted effort to boost their corporate responsibility to our culture - especially since they have a virtual monopoly of first-run screens. They'll argue the need for commercial films, but the recent WolfCop debacle, a COMMERCIAL Canadian film that was handled so poorly in the GTA, that I was flabbergasted! It was allowed one play date downtown (on the wrong screen, no less). This was completely and utterly useless. That film should have been multiplexed all over the burbs where its audience exists. In (grudging) fairness to Cineplex, nobody bothered to spend money on WolfCop and fight tooth and nail to have it released properly in the right venues.

Well, now we have another potentially commercial independent film that has a decent theatrical marketplace. I can't quarrel with the Canada Square as a good venue for The Pin, but it needs a distributor to spend some dough on solid grass-roots marketing and have something resembling a substantial ad-buy to target additional screens. Most distributors of Canadian films learn on a Monday that Cineplex Entertainment has deigned to free up one screen a few days later on a Friday, usually as filler. This is no way to support, market and exhibit films theatrically. Something's got to change.