KIDNAPPING MR. HEINEKEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - True-Life Hostage Drama Opens Today in Limited Theatrical in Toronto and VOD in the rest of Canada Via VVS FIlms

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (2015)
Dir. Daniel Alfredson
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten, Mark van Eeuwen, Tom Cocquerel, Jemima West

Review By Greg Klymkiw

By 1986, many young North American lads of distinction had abandoned the domestic brands of beer their fathers drank and opted for the prissy Dutch elixir of hops and brewers' yeast in the imported long-necked green glass bottles which adorned the majority of tables in many a university pub throughout the 80s. After all, its dashing founder Freddy Heineken had himself become a household name a mere three years earlier when he'd been kidnapped and held for ransom in a daring caper pulled off by five good friends with no criminal experience whatsoever and elicited the highest payout of the time.

All this would change, though, when David Lynch released Blue Velvet, which featured the notorious exchange of dialogue between upright young whippersnapper Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLachlan) and the sexually deviant thug Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). It went thus:

Frank Booth: What kind of beer do you like?
Jeffrey Beaumont: Heineken.
Frank Booth: Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

This oft-quoted exchange, rather than sending the European brew of choice for North American academic effete elites even further into the stratosphere, managed to inspire a healthy return to the working class American beer of American Dads. No matter, though, as the aforementioned daring kidnapping and the dogged pursuit of the kidnappers and meticulous research of crime journalist Peter R. de Vries worked considerable magic upon the Heineken brand's worldwide sales for many years nonetheless.

It's taken over 30 years for a big-screen feature film to be made of this notorious abduction, but alas, the wait has yielded mixed results. A decent screenplay by William Brookfield condenses the intricacies of the massive de Vries text superbly and focuses mostly upon the close friendship of the five kidnappers as well as the claustrophobic and tense setting of the holding cell Heineken is held in.

The direction by camera jockey Daniel Alfredson, who helmed The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, the two remaining parts of the original Lisbeth Salander Millennium Trilogy based on Stieg Larson's bestselling novels, here, as in the two uneven followups to Niels Arden Oplev's superbly directed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, yields mixed results.

Alfredson pulls of the early going rather well as he introduces us to the five young pals attempting to establish their own business during the early 80s economic downturn. Upon being turned down for bank loans, the men come up with a plan to kidnap Heineken.

Realizing they'll be pegged as amateurs by the authorities, the friends pull off a huge bank robbery to finance the perfect crime of abduction in order to make law enforcement believe they're a well-funded criminal organization. So long as Alfredson sticks to the intricacies of character, the film is reasonably compelling - especially during the sequences in their hiding spot one they have Heineken in their grasp.

As he did with the two Dragon/Millennium pictures, Alfredson displays his utter ineptitude with action and hard-core suspense. His herky-jerky, sloppily shot and edited action throw the film completely off-kilter and render a finished product that's infuriating since the writing and performances are so genuinely fine. (Anthony Hopkins, not chewing the scenery as per usual, delivers an especially engaging and revelatory performance as Heineken - maybe one of the best he's delivered in years.)

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is pretty much a mixed bag of nuts. It's a story worth telling as a film, but as directed, the picture is spoiled by a few too many unripe or rotten ingredients.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2-Stars

Kidnapping Mr, Heineken opens today in a limited theatrical release day-and-date with access to VOD via VVS Films.

MCCANICK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - American crime pic w/great performance from David Morse on VVS Films Blu-Ray

Mean Philly Cop with a dark past and dim future.

McCanick (2013)
Dir. Josh C. Waller
Starring: David Morse, Cory Monteith, Ciarán Hinds, Mike Vogel

Review By Greg Klymkiw

David Morse is such a tremendous actor, one hopes against hope (it seems) that he's going to get a great role in a great feature film - one that, perhaps, lives up to his unbelievable work in the Sean Penn-directed duo The Indian Runner and The Crossing Guard. While he's dallied about on TV and delivered a great villainous turn in Disturbia, he always feels like the kind of actor who could have been a humungous star in any number of 70s existential male angst pictures. Luckily, his McCanick performance, in the starring title role, no less, is everything one could hope for from him. He's intense, brooding, dogged, tragic, tough-as-nails and super-manly as an alcoholic cop whose as good an unconventional lawman as he is a corrupt scumbag. It's to screenwriter Daniel Noah and director Josh C. Waller's credit that he's got a chance to do his thing. It's to their detriment, however, that they haven't given him a better picture to do his thing in, though in fairness, they do give it the old college try. Alas, they barely earn a passing grade for their efforts.

Eugene "Mack" McCanick (Morse) is a mean Philadelphia narcotics dick with a very dark past and an even dimmer future. His best friend Jerry Quinn (Ciarán Hinds) has worked his way up the ladder to police captain, his young partner Floyd (Mike Vogel) will be moving on to a promotion in homicide and to top it off, all hopes that his birthday can be relatively routine is scuttled by knowledge that Simon Weeks (the late Cory Monteith, star of Glee), a killer he put behind bars seven years ago. is now free due to good behaviour via the parole system. McCanick is seething with rage. Weeks was a nancy boy hustler who offed one of his regular johns, a powerful politician. Though Mack's pal Captain Quinn warns him to steer clear of Weeks, he dupes Floyd into accompanying him to track the killer down. A shootout ensues. Weeks escapes, but Mack buys some time since he manages to pop a major scumbag in the process. He needs to buy time. Mack has also shot Floyd by accident and his partner is rushed to the hospital on the verge of death. Pinning the shooting of Floyd on Weeks should all be in a day's work for the notoriously corrupt Mack, but convolutions rear their ugly head and things begin to spiral ever downwards.

This is all sounds reasonable, though there is a major plot hole that nags at you to the picture's detriment - the manner in which Mack dupes his partner in the first place is utterly improbable. Add to this a clumsy subplot involving Mack's strained relationship with both his ex-wife and adult son and a equally inept flashback structure that too-slowly divulges why Mack wants to nail Weeks who, for all intents and purposes has truly rehabilitated himself in prison and has made positive steps to turn his life around. The whole backstory and relationship between Mack and Weeks has compelling elements, but they too fall apart since a major surprise reveal is so poorly set-up that it too just feels highly improbable.

The movie has compelling location work, a suitably brooding 70s-style atmosphere and Morse working overtime to deliver a compelling performance, however, when the picture's not being stopped in its tracks by the clunky family subplot and the ineptly integrated flashbacks, its admirable attempts at imbuing a brave deliberate pace is also bollixed up because it gives us too much time to think about far too many of the narrative's improbabilities. This is all too bad since this is a picture that had the potential to cross over into classic cop drama territory, but keeps missing the mark because its key creatives have not worked hard enough to iron out the kinks in the narrative. The other crying shame is how good the late Cory Monteith is and what could/should have worked as an admirable swan song is relegated to the less-than-stellar classification of close, but no cigar.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two-Stars

McCanick is available on Blu-Ray and DVD via VVS Films. Its added value bonus features include a trailer, a lame behind-the-scenes featurette and a few minutes of deleted and extended scenes, but none of these boost the home entertainment package beyond the mediocrity of the film. There's a fair bit of general lip service paid in the behind-the-scenes doc to how good the script is, which it isn't, but possibly a commentary track with the director and/or writer might have provided insight into what their intentions were and how the exigencies of production might have contributed to the movie falling flat. That all said, the Blu-Ray picture looks great and the transfer at least does considerable service to capturing Martin Ahlgren's generally gritty and moody cinematography. Buy it from the links below:

In Canada - BUY Mccanick HERE, eh!

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CHEF - Review By Greg Klymkiw - New Jon Favreau comedy-drama on Blu-Ray via VVS Films

Plenty o' FOOD PORN & all-star cast!
Mega-Masturbation Material 4 Foodies!

Chef (2014)
Dir. Jon Favreau
Starring: Jon Favreau, Sofía Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Downey, Jr.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's plenty of food porn on display here. Why shouldn't there be? The movie is called Chef, after all, and it's a foodie's wet-dream come true. In fact, anyone who loves Jon Favreau and food, should pretty much be in Hog Heaven because believe me, the film's trough is overflowing with the amiable writer-director-star as cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau focuses his nimble camera and exquisite lighting upon the preparation of one taste-tempting dish after another. Oh, and there's even a plot - not much of one, but plot enough to include mega-food-porn set pieces and provide a Buffet Table full of stars in supporting roles and even a few laughs. Favreau plays Carl Casper, head chef of a tony Cali resto owned by Riva (Dustin Hoffman) who insists Carl stick to the same menu that's been drawing in the patrons for years. Carl, however, is getting restless with the same old thing so he begins to experiment with an array of new dishes (mega-food-porn here, foodies).

Word gets out that Carl's prepping a major gastronomic revolution which catches the attention of the powerful food critic Ramsey Michel (a perfectly slimy, funny Oliver Platt). On the night Ramsey is planning a visit, the prissy Riva demands, with job-loss threats to the whole kitchen team, that Carl revert to the tried and true menu. Our hero has no choice. Ramsey shows up and is immediately appalled with the menu that's stayed the same. He files a scathing review and from here on in, this means war.

Eventually, Carl faces a crisis of conscience and realizes he needs to strike out on his own if he's ever to be able to exercise his true art, his true passions. The resulting transformation is hard-won, but results in a predictably happy ending.

Favreau is just fine. So's the food porn. Hoffman, Platt and Robert Downey Jr. all offer up supremely entertaining extended cameos. Alas, the movie does fall back on some tiresome cliches involving Carl's ex-wife and neglected son and worst of all, a complete snore of a subplot involving the restaurant's hostess played by the supremely, annoyingly ubiquitous Scarlett Johansson. Is this woman ever going to go away?

Still and all, Chef is not without some merit for those so inclined and offers up a competent enough entertainment for less discriminating audiences.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½ Two-and-a-half Stars (Movie), *** Three Stars (Blu-Ray Package)

Chef is available on a Blu-Ray/DVD multi-format package via VVS Films and this is where it really shines - for foodies (especially) and non-foodies alike. There are the usual added bits like deleted scenes, but what soars is the commentary track which, even if you don't care for the movie, offers up mega-added-value as it's a terrific conversation twixt Favreau and producer, pro chef Roy Choi. Favreau delivers the goods on the filmmaking process and he and Choi wax eloquent and in detail on the food preparation.

Feel free to order the film directly from the links below and assist in maintaining The Film Corner:

In Canada - BUY Chef HERE, eh!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Chef - HERE!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Chef - HERE!

THE REACH - TIFF 2014 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Reach (2014)
Dir. Jean-Baptiste Léonetti
Starring: Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irvine, Ronny Cox

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Reach offers up happy corroboration that filmmaker Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s astonishing dystopian science fiction masterpiece Carré Blanc was no first feature fluke. Léonetti is the real thing and he can direct rings round most contemporary genre helmers. Instead of all the tin-eyed boneheads who keep directing any number of visually challenged studio abominations, Léonetti has ‘go-to guy’ written all over him.

Based on Deathwatch, a hugely popular boys’ adventure novel written by the prolific author Robb White (who also toiled as William Castle’s screenwriter on such exploitation delights as The House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, The Tingler, Macabre and Homicidal), it was competently adapted by Stephen Susco. Updating the late 60s setting of the book, the script invests it with the right amount of macho existentialism, ultra-violence, hilariously nasty black humour and up-to-the-minute social commentary involving the haves and have-nots of the world.

I have to admit, however, that I originally went into the picture knowing only that it was Léonetti’s sophomore feature starring Michael Douglas, and it was only while watching the movie that I realized its literary pedigree. That it was based on one of many White books I read as a kid (and still proudly own some 40-plus years later) turned out to be extra layers of icing on this very rich cake. (Pathetically, I even remembered seeing the fine ABC Movie of the Week entitled Savages, which starred Andy Griffith and Sam Bottoms in the lead roles.)

This stirring mano a mano variant on The Most Dangerous Game faithfully sticks to the original main characters of White’s book, and for good reason – you can’t beat a winning formula. Madec (Douglas) is a disgustingly rich cell-phone-tied dealmaker who hires the impoverished Ben (hunky Jeremy Irvine of War Horse fame) to be his guide in the deadly Mojave Desert so he can bag a new hunting trophy (he boasts having many), the rare bighorn sheep. The two men are clearly oil and water, but their time together eventually yields a father-son-like bond. Alas, Madec accidentally shoots something he shouldn’t. When it’s clear Ben won’t go for a whopping bribe, the sportsman in Madec sends Ben into the desert so he can hunt him down, but also gives the lad a fighting chance. Ben proves to be a formidable adversary. This fuels Madec even further.

Léonetti keeps the suspense taut, the action blistering and his exquisite eye for placing man against imposing backdrops has not at all wavered since Carré Blanc. His delightfully grim sense of humour is also set to overdrive, especially since Michael Douglas is remarkably game to chew the scenery and spit out one nasty line after the other. The only place Léonetti is let down by Susco’s otherwise fine script is during the climactic moments, which feel like a perverse bargain basement Fatal Attraction.

Given Michael Douglas’s involvement in that film, this could have been a cool borderline post-modernist touch, but the action is rendered far too straight up and oddly, and one can feel Léonetti not quite at ease. You can’t blame him. He’s handed gold, then when it counts the most, his producer (Douglas) and screenwriter toss him a smelly bighorn sheep turd. Luckily for us, we don’t have to smell it for too long and its aroma doesn’t overpower the rest of the film’s smells of victory.

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

The Reach is an official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival 2014 (TIFF 2014). For further information please visit the TIFF website HERE.

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REVENGE OF THE GREEN DRAGONS - Review By Greg Klymkiw TIFF'14SpecialPresentation

Revenge of the Green Dragons (2014)
Dir. Andrew Lau, Andrew Loo
Screenplay: Michael Di Jiacomo
Executive Producer: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Ray Liotta, Justin Chon, Kevin Wu, Harry Shum Jr, Shuya Chang, Geoff Pierson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some pictures bring a solid pedigree to the table so that you're pretty much guaranteed a mega-quality product. Revenge of the Green Dragons is registered to an extremely prestigious stud book (the gold standard of registries in animal husbandry). One half of the picture's directing team is the prolific dynamo who launched the 2002 Hong Kong crime hit Infernal Affairs and its prequel and sequel, which, in turn, eventually yielded the American remake The Departed, Martin Scorsese's longtime-coming Oscar-winner as Best Director. Here, adding to the pedigree, Scorsese also serves as Executive Producer of this sprawling saga of Asian gangland warfare in NYC during the 1980s.

Alas, "pedigree" in the case of this new film is best linked to animal husbandry rather than anything else since Revenge of the Green Dragons is a mangy, drooling dog that's more of the mongrel rather than purebred variety.

There isn't a single original element in this ploddingly familiar tale of childhood immigrants who grow up as members of a powerful mob dynasty. Michael Di Jiacomo (whose own dubious pedigree is linked to a few obscure indie pictures) is the purported writer of the dull screenplay which trots out the usual blend of mixed loyalties, betrayals and excuses for competently-helmed sequences involving a surfeit of gunplay - none of which has much impact since the characters aren't even interesting enough to be called cardboard cutouts. The movie is full of expository narration, all meant to infuse the picture with a sense of history and epic sweep, but serving little more than to provide opportunities for posturing and over-scored, lame-duck montages of the most bargain-basement-Scorsese kind.

Ultimately, Revenge of the Green Dragons proves that no matter what the pedigree, aberrations are always a distinct possibility. This one is especially hobbled and deformed. It doesn't even have a particularly engaging spirit so it can be pitied.

This doggie is fair game for euthanasia.

And speaking of assisted suicide, the film features an especially egregious misuse of a pasty, disinterested Ray Liotta (Henry Hill from Scorsese's Goodfellas) who somnambulistically shuffles through the proceedings as an FBI agent who, on paper, is intent on breaking the mob, but in practice just looks like he needs another drink or snort.

It'd be great to see a good, kick-ass hybrid of Asian and American criminal shenanigans. This, however, is most assuredly not it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Revenge of the Green Dragons is a Special Presentation at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and distributed in Canada via VVS Films. For tix, times and venues, visit the TIFF website HERE.

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99 HOMES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2014 Special Presentation

99 Homes (2014)
Dir. Ramin Bahrani
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern, Tim Guinee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Michael Shannon (Bug, Take Shelter, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done) is such a great actor, I'd be happy to watch him sitting on the throne George-Kuchar-like and reading aloud from the backs of shampoo bottles a la Woody Harrelson in the Farrelly Brothers' Kingpin as he takes a comfy, cozy and lengthy dump. For some reason, I had a hard time getting this out of my mind at about the half-way point of Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes.

It's not that there's anything especially wrong with the movie to inspire this nagging image upon my cerebellum, but at a certain point, the screenplay by Bahrani and co-writers Amir Naderi, Bahareh Azimi seemed to be treading such predictable, familiar waters that I realized I'd ultimately need to concentrate on simply enjoying Shannon in the role of a despicable realtor who specializes in foreclosing upon the homes of Americans who've been unlucky enough to get caught up in the housing crisis of the new century.

Shannon is always impossible to not watch, but when he's delivered a role, as he has here, which is essentially a humungous cut of prime, delicious steak, he's enthralling beyond all belief.

As Rick Carver, the hatchet man for banks who've placed ordinary Americans in the dire straights of multiple mortgages, Shannon is Mephistophelean as all get out. His wide, expressive eyes, his thin lips, the face which is Buster-Keaton blank until he opens and/or purses his thin lips to reveal sinister cheek-creases are all the stuff adding up to a relentlessly methodical businessman who'll stop at nothing to evict families, buy their homes for next-to-zero from the banks, renovate them as economically as possible and then flip the suckers for huge profits.

Such then is the central relationship within 99 Homes. Carver is repossessing the family home of the youthful, unemployed handyman Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield, far more acceptable in the role of a proletarian rather than the horrendous turns he's delivered in the Spider-Man reboots). The home has been mortgaged up the wahzoo by his Mom Lynn (Laura Dern) and he's forced to relocate her (as well as himself and his kids) and what few possessions they can get onto a truck into a sleazoid motel crammed with other families in the same boat. You'd think these normal Americans were living in some John Steinbeck novel and/or Third World country, but no, they're pretty much living like a vast majority of Americans these days.

Carver, however, recognizes both a spark and hunger in Nash's eyes and offers him a job on his renovation team with the offer of potentially returning the family home to him. Nash takes to the work like a bat out of frigging Hell and soon he's moved up into the role of a foreclosure agent.

It's fun and compelling to watch a relatively realistic portrayal of a scumbag and even more fun to see the youthful proletarian slide into the same shoes. Alas, where can a story like this really go, though? Hence my occasional mind-wandering at the halfway point as SOMEONE lets his CONSCIENCE get the better of him. Yes, things settle in rather predictably, but the performances are never less than first-rate and director Bahrani keeps it all moving at a decent enough clip.

Whaddya gonna do? What ails 99 Homes is the same thing that befell even Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Still, the potential to celebrate scumbaggery is always worth exploring. Unfortunately, too many films only take you so far down that path until a comeuppance for the said scumbags seems all too inevitable. I know where a film like this in the 70s might have gone, but sadly, we don't live in the 70s anymore.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

99 Homes is a Special Presentation at TIFF 2014. For more info, visit the TIFF website HERE.

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OCULUS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - "ABSENTIA" Director delivers more creepy crawly and jolts of terror.

Oculus (2014) ****
Dir. Mike Flanagan
Starring: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, Garrett Ryan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Okay, so it's official. I have yet another terrific independent American director to add to my list of supremely talented artists who are making really cool shit in genres of the fantastical. I passionately loved Mike Flanagan's 2011 shocker Absentia (in spite of a few niggling drops of the ball on a narrative level). It fuelled my need for first-rate direction that exceeded mere craft and displayed an original voice and it mostly did what I love horror movies to do by mining the creepy crawly in normal everyday life and deliver jolts of terror in ways first developed by the Master and Father of Horror, RKO's legendary Val Lewton.

Oculus is a cinematic equivalent to the paralyzing effects of batrachotoxin in those pesky South American dart frogs. It doesn't take long for you to be infected with the movie's power to shut down all the neurons, rendering you immobile and susceptible to its power to induce cardiac arrest. Worst of all, or rather, BEST of all, is that the picture is so riveting you'll feel like Alex in A Clockwork Orange during his "treatment". Appropriately, given the picture's title, your oculi are pretty much Krazy-glued to the screen and once you're sitting there, means of escape simply don't exist.

On one hand, the movie is rooted in one of the oldest horror story tropes in the book - the mirror that forces its characters to indulge in the most insidious, malevolent behaviour. On the other hand, Flanagan orchestrates the proceedings with such aplomb that you'll feel like you're watching a horror movie of incredibly rich originality which, of course, it is. Flanagan takes all the tropes and turns them on their head, forcing the blood to rush to the top of your cranium whilst marvelling at how fresh and vital the picture feels.

Set mostly over the course of one supremely disquieting evening, Oculus tells the spooky story of Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and her younger brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites) as they square off against an antique mirror which, during their childhood, turned Daddy (Rory Cochrane) into a hot-headed abuser and their Hot Mama (Katee Sackhoff) into a victim who is beaten and tortured by hubbles. In retaliation. young Tim (Garrett Ryan) commits a brutal, merciless crime of passion which sends him to the nuthouse and forces his young Sis (Annalise Basso) into foster care. It's years later and upon Bro's release from the booby hatch, Lil Sis sets things up to destroy the evil once and for all, but also capture the events on multiple cameras to prove, first to Bro' that he was not responsible for the tragedy and to also convince the world he was innocent.

Once Hunky Brother and Babe-o-licious Sister are locked in that house with the mirror, the movie is so consistently hair-raising that you'll be wishing you'd thought to wear a pair of Depends during the screening. Reality is never what it seems and the picture veers from flashback to flash forward and back again whilst straddling real and imagined assaults on the senses of the characters (and us).

I especially love how Big Sis rigs the whole house up with audio visual aids and temperature sensors. It's a nice nod to the first Paranormal Activity (a genuinely terrific picture in spite of the sequels and the endless, mostly awful rip-offs it inspired), but it's also fun getting the added perspectives of screens in plain view during the proceedings. Sometimes, we get to see shit, the characters DON'T see when they're not looking when WE are.

Flanagan also edits the film himself which I'm always happy to see when genuine filmmakers, as opposed to the usual camera jockeys recruited to helm so many contemporary genre films. He clearly and efficiently has a great eye for what he needs to builds slow creepy scares as well as the de rigueur shock cuts. The latter are especially well handled in terms of knowing when to utilize sound, often a few frames before actual picture cuts for maximum impact. His compositions are also first rate. Flanagan and cinematographer Michael Fimognari obviously had a great rapport since the frame is always the way it needs to be for maximum narrative impact and I especially loved the appropriately evocative lighting.

The cast, right across the board, is first rate also. Not only are the performances right on the money, I'm going to be a pig here and say how wonderful it is that he casts a trio of actors who are not only first-rate thespians, but frankly, it's always a bonus when the female leads are major drool-inducers and even better, when the picture delivers the cherry on the sundae of a super cute young fella as the male lead.

Try to see Oculus on a big screen while you can. Though I often hate sitting with real people, this movie is a genuine crowd pleaser and it was fun sitting in a massive cinema with a whack of folks screaming, jumping and shuddering with utter delight. In fact, it's probably a great idea to see the movie during the first or second week before it's moved into smaller-screened venues. The picture really looks gorgeous and on a humungous screen, you'll get mega-bang for the buck.

Oculus is in wide release and in Canada it's being distributed by VVS Films.

OUT OF THE FURNACE - DVD/BLU-RAY review By Greg Klymkiw - Chilling Neo-Noir Crime Thriller set in the Rust Belt is now available in a beautifully transferred Blu-Ray/DVD combo from VVS Films. Rich for discovery by those who missed it theatrically and highlighting stunning shot-on-35mm cinematography.

Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson: Malevolent Bedfellows

Out of the Furnace is one of the best crime pictures in a long time - one of such unremitting violence and bleakness, yet imbued with a strange muted malevolence tempered by considerable humanity - that it's alternately surprising it received as wide a theatrical release as it did in early December of 2013 and did not, given the pedigree of its director, lay claim to far richer critical accolades and awards consideration that it so richly deserved.

Thankfully, it can be rediscovered by discriminating audiences in the gorgeously transferred new DVD/Blu-Ray combo from VVS Films. The film is gorgeously shot on actual 35mm FILM STOCK by ace cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, and while this was definitely pleasing theatrically on a big screen, audiences will be equally wowed by the look on Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray is definitely the way to go with this one right now and I urge people to see it this way rather than on far inferior modes of delivery like V.O.D. and/or digital download and streaming. The package is competitively priced and the film offers such riches that it's a movie worth owning to experience more than once. For me, the film is often enough in such cases, but for fans of added value material, you'll find a few items of interest such as as series of featurettes detailing subjects like "Inspiration: The Stars Of Out Of The Furnace Reveal What Inspired Them To Become Actors" (a bit too EPK-like for my taste), "A Conversation With Co-Writer-Director Scott Cooper" (decent enough, but I'd really have preferred a detailed commentary track since Cooper clearly has a gift for discussing filmmaking), "Crafting The Fight Scenes" (if this sort of thing interests you) and "The Music Of Out Of The Furnace" (of which I might have preferred a more in-depth analysis of). In a completely and utterly perfect world, a commentary with Cooper and Takayanagi which focused solely on the extraordinary look of the film would have tantalized me to no end, but it is sadly not to be since none of these companies ever hire ME to produce all their extra features. (Insert smiley face here.) The movie, is ultimately the thing, and you get that here in spades.

Out of the Furnace (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Scott Cooper

Starring: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson,
Willem Dafoe, Sam Shepard, Zoe Saldana, Forest Whitaker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When a movie opens with Woody Harrelson at a drive-in theatre forcibly shoving a wiener down his date's throat and then, after smashing her face repeatedly against the dashboard he barrels out of the vehicle to savagely beat a man who tries to come to the woman's rescue, you know beyond a shadow of any doubt where you are.

Hell.

It has another name in America - it's the Rust Belt, the grey, dirty and dreary cities and towns of Pennsylvania that belch endless clouds of poison smoke into the sky from the steel factories providing the lion's share of employment to the dazed citizenry unlucky enough to live there. Save for working in the mills that slowly kill you and/or signing up for military duty in the Middle East, the only other real employment is in the dark underworld that permeates the tattered fabric of this septic tank of despair.

There are plenty of bars and off-track betting parlours to numb the pain of living.

And there's violence. Plenty of it.

Director Scott (Crazy Heart) Cooper's fine, muted crime drama from a screenplay he adapted from an original script by Brad Ingelsby takes us through familiar territory, but it does so in ways wherein the eruptions of extreme cruelty come when you least expect them. The tropes of the genre are employed, but you never quite know how they'll manifest themselves and this might be one of the picture's greatest strengths. An atmosphere of hopelessness pervades the world of the film and even when Russell, a mill worker (deftly underplayed by Christian Bale) tries to make a good life for himself, events conspire to keep dashing his simple, reasonable hopes for something resembling a future. His brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) is a desperately shell-shocked soldier with three horrific tours of duty in Iraq (and a fourth pending). His solace is in gambling and his future in underground bare-knuckle boxing.

Amidst the empty storefronts of Braddock, Pennsylvania and in the dank, empty home where the brothers' Dad dies a painful death from the effects of working the mill his whole life, Russell and Rodney's lives will soon cross paths to be inextricably linked with the psychopathic thug Harlan DeGroat (Harrelson) and the tough, but strangely amiable bar-owner (and bookie) John Petty (Willem Dafoe). To say things get grim is an understatement.

Out of the Furnace is a heartbreaking portrait of an America on the verge of total collapse. Ironically, it's set on the eve of Barack Obama's victorious ascension to the presidency in 2008, but any shred of hope is dashed by the reality of a country that's been battered by a genuinely villainous corporate New World Order that is intent upon driving an even bigger wedge between rich and poor. What's left is an ever-increasing class of the working poor and the insidious element of low-level thuggery and crime.

The movie is finally unrelenting in painting a portrait of a grimy world not unlike the real Old West, where senseless acts of violence can be met with vengeance, but nothing about the retribution is sweet.

Director Cooper delivers a picture that'll be hard for audiences to face, but the end result will haunt them long after the lights comes up and strangely, they'll feel richer for having seen this journey rather than the myriad of empty extravaganzas littering the movie screens. Though the movie is saddled with an unfortunate love-interest and subplot involving Zoe Saldana, it survives this ho-hum intrusion upon a world that otherwise feels intrinsically male - where the traditional roles applied to men continue to permeate a savage, desperate existence.

"Out of the Furnace" is available in Blu-Ray/DVD combo from VVS Films. Feel free to order the film (and other great VVS Films titles) directly from the links below, and in so doing, support the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

My American Brothers & Sisters can order directly from the links below, & in so doing, support The Film Corner HERE:

OUT OF THE FURNACE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Neo-Noir enshrouds Rust Belt's Braddock, Penn.

Out of the Furnace (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Scott Cooper

Starring: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson,
Willem Dafoe, Sam Shepard, Zoe Saldana, Forest Whitaker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When a movie opens with Woody Harrelson at a drive-in theatre forcibly shoving a wiener down his date's throat and then, after smashing her face repeatedly against the dashboard he barrels out of the vehicle to savagely beat a man who tries to come to the woman's rescue, you know beyond a shadow of any doubt where you are.

Hell.

It has another name in America - it's the Rust Belt, the grey, dirty and dreary cities and towns of Pennsylvania that belch endless clouds of poison smoke into the sky from the steel factories providing the lion's share of employment to the dazed citizenry unlucky enough to live there. Save for working in the mills that slowly kill you and/or signing up for military duty in the Middle East, the only other real employment is in the dark underworld that permeates the tattered fabric of this septic tank of despair.

There are plenty of bars and off-track betting parlours to numb the pain of living.

And there's violence. Plenty of it.

Director Scott (Crazy Heart) Cooper's fine, muted crime drama from a screenplay he adapted from an original script by Brad Ingelsby takes us through familiar territory, but it does so in ways wherein the eruptions of extreme cruelty come when you least expect them. The tropes of the genre are employed, but you never quite know how they'll manifest themselves and this might be one of the picture's greatest strengths. An atmosphere of hopelessness pervades the world of the film and even when Russell, a mill worker (deftly underplayed by Christian Bale) tries to make a good life for himself, events conspire to keep dashing his simple, reasonable hopes for something resembling a future. His brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) is a desperately shell-shocked soldier with three horrific tours of duty in Iraq (and a fourth pending). His solace is in gambling and his future in underground bare-knuckle boxing.

Amidst the empty storefronts of Braddock, Pennsylvania and in the dank, empty home where the brothers' Dad dies a painful death from the effects of working the mill his whole life, Russell and Rodney's lives will soon cross paths to be inextricably linked with the psychopathic thug Harlan DeGroat (Harrelson) and the tough, but strangely amiable bar-owner (and bookie) John Petty (Willem Dafoe). To say things get grim is an understatement. Out of the Furnace is a heartbreaking portrait of an America on the verge of total collapse. Ironically, it's set on the eve of Barack Obama's victorious ascension to the presidency in 2008, but any shred of hope is dashed by the reality of a country that's been battered by a genuinely villainous corporate New World Order that is intent upon driving an even bigger wedge between rich and poor. What's left is an ever-increasing class of the working poor and the insidious element of low-level thuggery and crime.


The movie is finally unrelenting in painting a portrait of a grimy world not unlike the real Old West, where senseless acts of violence can be met with vengeance, but nothing about the retribution is sweet.

Director Cooper delivers a picture that'll be hard for audiences to face, but the end result will haunt them long after the lights comes up and strangely, they'll feel richer for having seen this journey rather than the myriad of empty extravaganzas littering the movie screens. Though the movie is saddled with an unfortunate love-interest and subplot involving Zoe Saldana, it survives this ho-hum intrusion upon a world that otherwise feels intrinsically male - where the traditional roles applied to men continue to permeate a savage, desperate existence.

"Out of the Furnace" is in a surprisingly wider release (via Relativity Media/VVS Films) than one would expect for a film of uncompromising darkness. Given how gorgeously shot on actual 35mm film stock it is by ace cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, it is definitely worth seeing on a big screen.

AFTERSHOCK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Blood-soaked Eli Roth-produced disaster thriller hits Blu-Ray via VVS

An American vacationing in Chile (Eli "The Bear Jew" Roth from Inglourious Basterds) and his two local pals hook up with some babes for a taste of the exotic sights and sounds of various tourist traps as well as the delights of inebriation, dancing and meeting a clutch of hot chicks. Danger rears its ugly head when our 30-something revellers become trapped in an underground nightclub during a massive earthquake. With several deadly aftershocks and constant tsunami warnings, they escape onto the surface, but with the potential for further natural disaster, they look for higher ground. Their goal, of course, involves making it through the perils of societal collapse, crazed looters and escaped convicts looking for babes to rape. With globs of proverbial shit hitting the fan, mankind proves to be the most deadly adversary of all.

A BABE IN PERIL!!!

Aftershock (2012) **1/2
Dir. Nicolás López
Starring: Eli Roth, Andrea Osvart, Ariel Levy, Nicolas Martinez, Lorenza Izzo, Natasha Yarovenko

Review By Greg Klymkiw

From their 70s heyday and up to the contemporary Roland Emmerich laugh-fests, disaster movies have been a staple of big screen entertainment at various points throughout film history. They are most definitely not without their pleasures. Lots of stars, big money and state of the art special effects pull out all the stops to allow us the visceral edification of safely, passively and vicariously participating in the mega-destruction of our fellow man. I have no real problem with this. Who, after all, doesn't enjoy watching people suffer and/or die?

THE SAME BABE IN PERIL!!!
I CAN LIVE WITH THAT.

Well, inexplicable as this might be to some, a good many don't. However, within the categorical context of the bonafide disaster genre (including the likes of Airport, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno), as opposed to genuinely harrowing dramas detailing the effects and/or after-effects of natural and/or man-made disasters such as A Night To Remember or Fearless - many, under the right circumstances do indeed drool over the prospect of watching (mostly) innocent people bite the bullet. God knows, even James Cameron's Titanic (wishing to be in the latter and loftier aforementioned category as opposed to the former) has us all rooting for the iceberg - impatiently waiting for mass death and, in particular, the death of Leo DiCaprio - his demise meaning we can listen to Celine Dion sing "My Heart Will Go On".

A BABE IN PERIL - Is she, perchance, the SAME
BABE IN PERIL? It sure seems that way!

The textbook approach to natural disaster in the former catefory forces us to get to know a whack of dull, stereotypical characters all played by stars and almost always unrelated to each other save for the fact that many of them will die. Aftershock, however, happily focuses on a small group of protagonists who we stick with like flies to shit. This is a blessing, but also a curse since all of the characters, save for one, are pretty dull, stupid and/or reprehensible. Like the cliches of the aforementioned, here we wait with baited breath to see how each one of these losers will die. Eli Roth, the director of such torture porn hits as Hostel, is not only the male lead, but the producer and co-screenwriter os the film. It's a pretty good idea for a disaster thriller. There's something creepily plausible about a stranger in a strange land facing a major natural disaster that then becomes even more terrifying when a nearby prison is shaken to its foundations by an earthquake and releases huge swaths of bloodthirsty hardened criminals amidst the societal breakdown already occurring.

Babe in Peril
Helps 2 Dumb Guys

Unfortunately, Roth does himself a disservice by penning a character with few reasons for us to care and his performance in infused with a smugness that keeps us even more distant from him. Though the movie clumsily attempts to infuse his character with humanity by continually bringing up his little girl, it just renders him even more a knob since we're wondering why he's needed to come so far to score some poon-tang after his wife's left him. His Chilean buddies are also no prizes and the female characters are little more than bubbleheads on the prowl for drinks, drugs and dick. Luckily, the script gives us a very tough and appealing character in the form of a single Mom who has all the instincts of a den mother and lots of smarts. That the actress who plays her is the supremely talented Andrea Osvart, a mega-babe the camera loves to death, is the film's primary cherry atop the ice cream sundae.

Of course, there's something vaguely offensive about this babe with maternal instincts and no real need to get dinked like the other damsels in distress that places her in the stereotypical position of all those 70s slasher movies where the "virgin" survives being carved up by the psychopath killers. Here, since she requires no schwance up her quim and no dope down her gullet is a sure sign she doesn't need to be raped and will be spared this indignity. In spite of this, she IS a damn fine heroine and Osvart more than once makes us wonder why she's not a bigger star than she is.

Director Nicolás López is to be commended, however, for keeping the latter half of the film moving in a classical tradition and his handling of the action and suspense here is first rate and Antonio Quercia's cinematography is lively, colourful and sans the horrendous herky-jerky so many action movies are afflicted with. It's too bad the screenplay by Guillermo Amoedo, López and Roth is so aimless and moronic during the film's first half and can't seem to get out of the these-sinners-will-get-there's mentality. It almost ruins everything else it does right which include taut action direction, a great female lead and some really spectacular visual and makeup effects that almost never make use of CGI.

"Aftershock" is available on Blu-Ray from VVS Films. It's a great transfer and it does have a few extras - though frankly the two making-of pieces feel like glorified EPKs and the commentary track with Roth and López is meandering and rather inconsequential.

MACHETE KILLS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Robert Bresson: WATCH OUT! Another Robert is in town and he's looking to take you DOWN, DOWN, DOWN! So strap on your six-shooter, Bresson, high noon is approaching!

MACHETE KILLS (2013) ****
Dir. Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Danny Trejo, Mel Gibson, Demian Bichir, Amber Heard, Michelle Rodriguez, Sofía Vergara, Carlos Estevez, Lady Gaga, William Sadler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Not since Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar has there been a motion picture endowed with such singular grace and power in pursuit of divining the spiritual and emotional depths of existence - a film that begins with the purest state of grace and ends in the great peace of eternal rest. Machete Kills is pure art - a masterwork of the highest order. It grows with you and remains universal and like the entire canon of Robert Rodriguez, his new film unflinchingly presents an "external reality" so full of depth that you will, like I, declare this truly pure and committed filmmaker the true heir apparent to all things Bressonian.

Well, not really, but Machete Kills splatters blood, slices through bone and blows up real good.

Look, here's the deal. I love Robert Rodriguez - I always have and I always will. He's delivered one terrific action picture after another and what he lacks in applying his considerable talent for orchestrating superbly choreographed kick-ass set pieces to material that could in fact elevate him beyond comic books, he more than makes up for in the sheer joy he displays in the sheer act of making movies and being endowed with a terrific sense of humour.

If anything, Rodriguez is the Guy Maddin of Grindhouse movies in the sense that his own love and appreciation for arcane periods and styles of cinema is matched (or exceeded) by a mere handful of filmmakers that I can count on one and a half hands. The difference twixt Rodriguez and Canada's master surrealist is that Maddin infuses his work with deep, personal and even autobiographical demons and it's this very thing that elevates Maddin into a sphere beyond Rodriguez - it's what gives Maddin's work the weight missing from the Rodriguez canon - save for one important exception. The genuinely great Rodriguez collaboration with Frank Miller on the thoroughly heart-stopping Sin City delivered a film with heft, obsessive creepy-crawly darkness, stylistic homage to cinema of other ages (using said influences as a springboard into new territory) and stuffed to exploding with entertainment value to beat the band. I'll grant you that Quentin Tarantino - especially with his post-Jackie Brown work comes a lot closer to Maddin if only because his thematic concerns are weightier than those that Rodriguez could, ultimately, care less about, but all that said, Robert Rodriguez is a REAL filmmaker - he just happens to excel at generating pure unadulterated junk food.

This, for me, is not a bad thing at all. I certainly don't place it on the dreaded "guilty pleasure" rung. I don't really believe in the notion of "guilty pleasures" anyway - that's for chumps, pseuds and smugly fucklings.

Or, to look at it another way: Maddin is like a hot, hearty bowl of Cream of Wheat sprinkled with whole bran flakes and cane sugar, Tarantino is a nice helping of Kashi Blueberry Oat Clusters & Flakes with 2% milk and a few teaspoons of brown sugar and Rodriguez is an entire box of Fruit Loops served with whole cream and doused with heaping fistfuls of raw, unrefined white sugar. All three deliver different levels of nourishment, but goddamn it, all three are mighty tasty.

As for Machete Kills, If you're expecting more than a laconic hero, a bevy of babes to rival the stables of every top-flight whorehouse known to humankind and utterly ridiculous chew-the-scenery villains, then look elsewhere. The plot, such as it is, involves our grizzled machete wielding Mexican crime fighter (Danny Trejo) on a brand new mission of vengeance, but this time it's got the added bonus of capturing a schizophrenic revolutionary and drug cartel king (Demian Bichir) as ordered by the biggest cocksman President of the United States imaginable (Charlie Sheen, billed under his real name Carlos Estevez). A whack of other villains are after Machete's fine 69-year-old ass and include The Chameleon (played by several different surprise stars), a mad munitions maniac (Mel Gibson), a sexy madame equipped with machine guns clamped to her breasts (Sofia Vergara) and a redneck racist lawman (William Sadler).

Add to this mixture one ludicrous line of dialogue after another ("Machete no Tweet!"), the aforementioned parade o' babes and oodles of superbly directed hand fights, gunplay and, of course, every conceivable way of slicing villains to shreds with a magnificent variety of blades. I also don't think there is a single performance in this entire movie that doesn't deliver exactly what the doctor ordered in terms of over-the-top ham-boning - in fact, I might suggest that the scenery chewing is almost always a pubic hair or two just below the radar of annoying which hence renders it at just the right pitch.

I had a great time watching this picture. Some complain that the Machete films work just fine as mock trailers or that after their first half hour become tedious. Not for this fella! I loved the first Machete, but Machete Kills sent me to the moon. Christ only knows where I'll be jettisoned to for the upcoming third instalment Machete Kills Again...in Space.

Besides, if Rodriguez completely flipped his lid (not at all inconceivable) and delivered a five hour Bertolucci-styled Machete picture along the lines of 1900, I have a funny feeling I'd have no problem with that at all and might even walk out wishing it had been longer.

"Machete" is currently in wide theatrical release from VVS Films.

SPRING BREAKERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Babes in Bikinis, Babes with Guns, Babes with James Franco.

Babes in Bikinis. Babes with Guns. Babes with James Franco is lots of fun! Look at this shit! This is MY shit! These are my motherfucking GUNS! These are my NUNCHUCKS! All of MY shit! It's the AMERICAN Dream! MY dream!!!

Spring Breakers (2012) ****
Dir. Harmony Korine
Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -
Ted Hughes, from his poem "Hawk Roosting"

Violence permeates every frame of Harmony (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy) Korine's savagely beautiful Spring Breakers and the overall effect of his film places us in an almost hypnotic state where sex, celebration, friendship and love - the very foundations of humanity - give way to acts of barbarism. Savagery and civilization are, by strict definition, polar opposites and yet one gets an overwhelming sense from the world Korine creates, that civilization without savagery is not possible and that furthermore, they're essentially one and the same.

There is, finally, little to distinguish us from animals. We are animals. Rational thought is what supposedly separates us, but the tone of Spring Breakers is haunting and almost elegiac. Though there is a slender narrative to carry us along, the film is ultimately a poetic, visceral and visually stunning representation of creatures driven by instinct and any actions which move beyond that - hence demonstrating some shred of individuality - are either swallowed up, overwhelmed or left behind as the pack mentality of human existence is what finally drives every action.

The movie follows four young women - Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine). They live in a grey, bleak, suffocating and stupefyingly insular dormitory in a tiny, nondescript college town. When we first meet them, they're consumed with the need to join the thousands upon thousands of students celebrating during Spring Break, the annual hedonistic ritual of ingesting libations, hallucinogens, having sex and engaging in all manner of naughty fun as they party hearty under the blazing Florida sun. Alas, they're short of money which, leads them to finance their vacation in ways none of them imagined ever doing. Or did they? It seems that below the layers of their supple, nubile flesh, they have dreams of escape, experience and searching for lives worth living - even if the living involves criminal activity - or at the extremities of their meagre existence, the threat of death to others or, for that matter, themselves.

They seek to defile and be defiled.

Enter: Alien (James Franco). He pulls the girls out of a sticky wicket and they, in turn, stick to him like flypaper. He's a raunchy half-time rapper who's built his own crime dynasty after leaving the fold of his mentor and former best friend, Gangsta Archie (Gucci Mane). It's a bitter rivalry, but there's time enough for old scores to be settled - Alien has debauchery on his mind. Luckily, for him, some - though not all of our young protagonists - are more than up to the challenge of mutually agreeable debasement.

A long night gets longer.

There will be blood and it will spill.

This is the fuckin' American dream. This is my fuckin' dream, y'all! All this sheeyit! Look at my sheeyit! I got... I got SHORTS! Every fuckin' color. I got designer T-shirts! I got gold bullets. Motherfuckin' VAM-pires. I got Escape! Calvin Klein Escape! Mix it up with Calvin Klein Be. Smell nice? I SMELL NICE! That ain't a fuckin' bed; that's a fuckin' art piece. My fuckin' spaceship! U.S.S. Enterprise on this shit. I go to different planets on this motherfucker! Look at my shit. Look at my shit! I got my blue Kool-Aid. I got my fuckin' NUN-CHUCKS. I got shurikens; I got different flavors. Look at that shit, I got sais. I got blades! Look at my sheeyit! This ain't nuttin', I got ROOMS of this shit! I got my dark tannin' oil... lay out by the pool, put on my dark tanning oil...I got machine guns... Look at this motherfucker here! Look at this motherfucker! Huh? Huh? A fucking army up in this shit!

From beginning to end, Korine paints a dreamy portrait of angst, ennui and celebration. The celebratory aspects of the film are captured with seemingly unending slow-motion shots of gorgeous and decidedly anonymous young men and women splashed with sunlight on sandy beaches parading their youth, sexuality and good cheer in various stages of undress - lithe, hard bodies with tanned flesh and splotches of colour that appear almost fluorescent.

There's a strange disconnect, though. Who are these college kids exposing themselves to - each other or the camera (which often feels like an observational character unto itself) or both? Are we experiencing a dream? If so, whose? Are these flash-forwards and/or what our heroines hope/imagine what spring break will be like? After all, they are indeed on these same beaches after scratching up enough bus fare to get to Florida. It's also where they admiringly spy the rapping Alien and he, in turn, locks his greedy eyes upon the girls.

Beneath the smiles and good cheer, the same listlessness Korine focuses upon during the early college dorm sequences seems almost to be the root of the celebratory activities. Everyone appears to be having fun because they're supposed to be having fun. Certainly, this is the feeling when Korine's camera prowls about Gangsta Archie's strip club at night - the dapples of sun are replaced with coloured footlights, stage lights, even fluorescent lights and the colours, while vibrant, seem muted through haze and grain.

Whether he's behind the wheel of his car as he cruises the streets or leaping crazily and boastfully within his beach-side home filled with cash, drugs and a huge arsenal of weapons or on a pier during a peaceful and overwhelmingly radiant sunset, James Franco betrays, ever-so subtly and brilliantly, flashes of genuine regret, dollops of blankness and occasional sparkles in his eyes that seem forced. His work in this film is, almost not surprisingly, astonishing. Whether Alien reveals pieces of his sad back story to the girls or when he goes face to face with his old friend and now rival Archie - we see bravado, to be sure, but we also strongly sense that he's donning a mask. When the film inevitably rushes into the literal explosions of violence that the movie's undercurrents hint at, both Korine and Franco are a director and actor at the very peak of their formidable gifts and power as film artists.

Korine's portrait of youth in a hedonistic environment feels less like a narrative since its genuine dramatic beats feel few and far between. Instead they progressively and increasingly seem like buoys on the water of a fluid-like work of visual poetry, thanks especially due to the stunning work of cinematographer Benoît Debie (Irreversible, The Runaways, Get The Gringo). There's aural poetry also, since Korine slathers his film with the evocative Cliff Martinez-Skrillex score which not so much drives, but permeates the entire film almost non-stop.

SELENA GOMEZ as Faith: "I'm tired of seeing the same thing. Everybody's so miserable here because they see the same things everyday, they wake up in the same bed, same houses, same depressing streetlights, one gas station, grass, it's not even green, it's brown. Everything is the same and everyone is just sad. I really don't want to end up like them. I just want to get out of here. There's more than just spring break. This is our chance to see something different."

Korine is also blessed with a first-rate cast. In addition to the aforementioned and mesmerizing James (can-this-guy-ever-do-wrong?) Franco, Spring Breakers must live and die by the quartet of young women whose story the film ultimately tells and they acquit themselves admirably. The wonderful teen pop singers and former Disney TV moppets Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens (Wizards of Waverly Place and High School Musical respectively) both offer bravura work in roles on opposite ends of the film's centre of morality and their work here is genuinely revelatory. Ashley Benson and Korine's real-life wife Rachel contribute solid work also.

Korine's writing and his direction of the actors yields, for me, his strongest work to date. In particular the film features several expressive monologues rendered by Alien and the girls - usually in the form of exclamatory rants (on Alien's part) and extremely sorrowful speeches by the girls as they leave voicemail messages for their respective family members' via pay phones and/or verbally convey during dialogue scenes where one voice dominates - expressing the hope to return to the simpler lives they've eschewed for ephemeral thrills.

There's a lot of fun and cool shit on the film's attractive surface, but below the flesh of its forbidden fruits, are the layers that run deep, embodying lives with little promise save for the guarantee of misspent youthful activity which might well be metamorphosized into that of those like Alien - men and women who get older, not wiser, and keep clutching to the straws of a party they never want to see end.

But end, it does. When it comes, one can only wonder who was, in this sad, empty world ever really standing tall enough to be left standing at all.

"Spring Breakers" played the Toronto International Film Festival 2012 and a theatrical release that included TIFF's Bell Lightbox. It's now available on an expertly transferred Blu-Ray and DVD combo pack with a solid selection of extras via VVS Films. The movie is a keeper and definitely worth owning.