THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Creepy Ode to Artistic Genius

The Kindergarten Teacher (2014)
Dir. Nadav Lapid
Starring: Sarit Larry, Avi Shnaidman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The world is so full of mediocrity, conformity and ugliness that to discover pure beauty in artistic expression makes one want to hold on to it and never let go in order to preserve the delicacy and shelter it from all that could possibly shatter, tatter and tarnish the perfection. This is what faces the title character of Nadav Lapid's extraordinary film.

Nira (Sarit Larry) is a hard-working kindergarten teacher committed to making sure her students get everything they need to enrich their minds. When she discovers that one of her students, five-year-old Yoav (Avi Shnaidman) has the mysterious ability to plunge, almost trancelike into creating some of the most astonishing poetry she's ever heard, Nira begins to spend an inordinate amount of her time with the child for fear that she'll miss an opportunity to hear him recite works of exquisite maturity and observation. She begins writing down his verse in order to preserve it.

This is all well and good until she begins to shield Yoav from the other kids in class, fearing they'll taint his genius with their normalcy. In addition to reading his work aloud in an evening adult education creative writing class - claiming it as her own, Nira even takes to unhealthily prying into the child's home life, assuming his parents are ill-equipped to nurture his artistic genius.

Nira decides the best thing she can do, is kidnap Yoav and take him away from anything she believes will be a bad influence.

Writer-director Lapid creates a creepily compelling portrait of a teacher's love for her student's genius with a steadily mounting sense of unease. This is not a traditional thriller in any sense of the word, but at times, it sure feels like a wrenching psychodrama in the tradition of early Roman Polanski.

Sarit Larry and Avi Shnaidman have a terrific onscreen chemistry and their performances are so compelling that they create, with camera-loves-them intensity, the kind of images of beauty, inspiration and even modulated terror that stay with you long after the film ends.

The film is strikingly original storytelling, never taking expected turns and always, through the sheer force of its carefully layered characterization, writing and controlled (but never "showy") direction, knocking you for several loops along the way and like all great films, compelling you to see it again and again.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

The Kindergarten Teacher is in theatrical release via VSC (Video Services Corp.) It plays from August 14 at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto and the Cinema du Parc and Cinema Beaubien in Montreal.

A HARD DAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Tense, Darkly Hilarious Korean Cop Thriller

This fellow
is having a harder day
than most.

A Hard Day (aka Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da) (2014)
Dir. Kim Seong-hun
Starring: Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Jin-woong

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Have you ever have one of those days? You know the kind. We all have them. You're as boiled as a fucking owl on whatever rotgut you've chugged back before getting in your car to drive to the funeral parlour so you can deliver a fond farewell to your mother, laying stiff in her coffin, and then you hit some goddamn pedestrian, killing the bastard, and adding insult to injury, after tossing his sack of potatoes carcass in the trunk, you're stopped and hassled by a bunch of rookie traffic cops doing a spot check. It's a total piss-off, right?

Luckily, for Ko Gun-soo (Lee Sun-kyun) in Kim Seong-hun's A Hard Day, he gets a reprieve when the boneheaded tax-collectors-with-guns drop a few loads in their drawers upon discovering that he's a highly-placed detective within the Seoul police department.

Phew! He's on top of the world. For now.

Unfortunately, just as he's in the middle of a ceremony involving the nailing shut of Mom's coffin, he finds out about some mega-shit going down. A clutch of internal affairs dicks are onto his graft and high-tailing it to the funeral home to roust him. Now, he's gotta figure out some way to smuggle the corpse in his trunk into the funeral parlour and get it into his mother's coffin before the turncoats get there. Adding insult to injury, his partners want him to take the fall, the pedestrian he killed is a notorious made-man in the Korean mafia and he's eventually assigned to investigate the disappearance of said gangster.

This is going to be a hard day, indeed.

For us, Ko Gun-soo's troubles mount exponentially and we're treated to one of the most suspenseful, brutal and funny Asian crime thrillers in many a day. Director Kim Seong-hun displays a taut command of cinematic language to keep us sliding off the edge of our seats and both the action and laughs come fast and furious. Even more extraordinary is the perverse likability of this nasty piece of work for a hero. Granted he's Jesus Christ incarnate compared to the other filth around him, so that we're allowed to root for the least egregious wad of crap is some kind of miracle.

Reminiscent of Jon Finch's accused murderer Blaney in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy Ko Gin-soo just can't seem to get a break. His troubles pile up so insurmountably that we're hoping against all hope that he gets out of the various sticky wickets assailing him. The movie puts us directly in his shoes and as such, we can't help but marvel at director Kim Seong-hun's complex and downright dazzling approach to the material.

I'd like to say that Hollywood would do well to pay attention to these extraordinary Asian masters of art, craft and genre, but the reality is this: all that's going to happen is the crapping out of more lifeless American remakes of Asian movies directed by round-eyed losers with eyes made of tin.

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

A Hard Day plays at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto via VSC. Visit the TIFF website for tickets and further info HERE.

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Kiwi-Vamp MockDoc via VSC

VLADISLAV ENJOYS, uh, IMPALING, or rather, POKING.

1. A Fine Mess

2. Erotic Dance

3. Big Grumpy Pants

4. Impaling is always Fun

What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

Dir. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi

Starring: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh, Ben Fransham, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stuart Rutherford, Jackie van Beek, Rhys Darby

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I should have hated this movie, but I couldn't. It's too good-natured and funny not to like. We're talking mockumentary, here. The subjects are vampires in New Zealand in the modern world. Just imagine a slightly broader This is Spinal Tap with blood-sucking before you go in and you're going to be just fine. I went in expecting nothing, mind you, but was rewarded with consistent laughs and often found myself soaring with joyous ebullience.

The set-up is pretty basic. A documentary crew (who always stay behind camera and don't ever appear as characters a la Rob Reiner in Spinal Tap) is granted permission to capture the daily lives of vampires (with a solemn oath that they'll never be attacked).

We're introduced to a "family" of four bloodsuckers and unlike our traditional notion of the undead living solitary lives in out-of-the-way castles, these fellas live in a sprawling dwelling in Wellington, New Zealand as - get this - flatmates.

Viago (Taika Waititi) is a bit frilly and foppish and takes on the role of fuss-budget den mother - always reminding his co-habitants of their household duties (sweeping, dusting, doing dishes and not leaving bloody spinal columns on the floor).

Vladislav (Jemaine Clement) is a long-haired, moustachioed satyr who hails from an Eastern European tradition of impaling, though he prefers to call it "poking".

Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) is the youngest and hence, most immature of the bunch, complaining about having to lift even the slightest finger to fulfil his responsibilities as a flatmate.

Deep in the bowels of the basement lives the eldest of the group, Petyr (Ben Fransham), a grumpy, 8000-year-old Max Schrek (or depending on your cup of Nosferatu, Klaus Kinski) lookalike.

The camera crew conducts one-on-one interviews with the oddball assortment of vampires in addition to capturing their day-to-day activities. The lads especially enjoy nights on the town (save for Petyr, who seldom leaves the basement, preferring victims to be dragged downstairs for him) and we get to enjoy our sidewalk-sashaying nocturnal undead buds roaming about, making like Dion and the Belmonts' The Wanderers.

Vampire Jam Session

Alas, these oddly-attired "nerds" are refused entry to all the hottest clubs and usually end up in the same joint, a decidedly uncool watering hole full of others of their uncool ilk. Here they usually meet up with their human "slave" Jackie (Jackie van Beek) who not only cleans up their messes, but most importantly, procures victims for them to dine upon. Poor Jackie is infected with the vampire bug, but only enough to do the fellas' bidding.

Nick - Master Clubber

She longs for eternal life and wants it sooner rather than later. She feels she's in her prime and wants to stay that way forever. How long can a girl be expected to procure? One of the victims she does indeed appropriate for the lads is the youthful Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer). Rather than decimating him entirely, he's drained completely of blood and turned into a vampire himself, thus becoming a new flatmate. Good thing too.

Nick's quite the man about town and gets his pals into all the hottest nightclubs.

IT-whiz Stu introduces
our vampires to the INTERNET!

The only thing that troubles Nick, though, is not having the company of his best friend, the computer geek Stu (Stuart Rutherford). He cuts a deal with the other vampires to bring Stu into his confidence and into their private world - unmolested. This turns out to be the best deal ever for the fellas since Stu's an IT-whiz during his day job and soon has the vampires hooked on YouTube, Skype, FaceBook and all manner of cyber-shenanigans.

There's a tiny bit of conflict that creeps into the movie involving their natural rivals, the werewolves of Wellington and Nick's less-than-discrete bad habit of telling everyone he knows (or barely knows) that he and his buds are vampires. This brings far too much unwanted attention upon them including a genuine vampire hunter and visits from the local constabulary.

The film eventually builds to an absolutely insane climax when the lads attend an annual ball of vampires, witches and zombies which furthermore spills over into a potentially deadly conflict with the werewolves. None of this, however, is ever scary, though there's a decent amount of tension and plenty of surprises to be had.

All in all, this group of bloodsuckers prove to be genuinely charming and likeable fellows and the movie injects all the tropes and lore of vampirism into the proceedings to keep genre fans constantly delighted. The running time is mercifully short and the picture never overstays its welcome. Happily, the camera crew do capture more than a few chases and kills, but they're never offensively complicit in their actions like, for example, the filmmakers in the vaguely reprehensible Man Bites Dog. The mock-doc is true to the genre and we're never presented with the sort of gaffes that can, in lesser examples of the ilk, takes us completely out of the forward thrust of the piece.

WHOOPSIE-DAISY: A BLEEDING MESS!

Though I might have preferred some of the performances to be slightly less over-played, nobody is ever egregiously tongue-in-cheek. Surprisingly, the movie is full of moments that are genuinely sweet and, I kid you not, rather touching. God knows, mock-docs and vampire pictures have been done to death, but What We Do In The Shadows always feels fresh, funny and yes, occasionally original. The movie is also blessed with a terrific song score (including weird recurring themes of klezmer-like Romanian foot-tappers) wonderful makeup, digital and wire effects, plus some dazzling stunt work.

My only major quibble is that there are simply not enough babes in the movie. Yes, there are a few, but they take a major back seat to the fellas and what red-blooded genre-geek doesn't want a good amount of babe action?

Well, this writer, for one, but even I had to concede that my grumblings about the dearth of babes eventually fell upon my own deaf ears. These guys are a riot!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

What We Do In The Shadows is currently in theatrical platform release throughout Canada via VSC (Video Services Corp). Upcoming playdates include:

February 13 opening:
TORONTO - Scotiabank Theatre
MONTREAL - Cinema Cineplex Forum
VANCOUVER - Cineplex International Village

February 20 opening:
OTTAWA - SilverCity Gloucester
CALGARY - Select CINEPLEX Locations

February 27 opening:
WINNIPEG - SilverCity Polo Park

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RED ARMY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - American Doc on Soviet Hockey Ignores Canada

RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

Red Army (2014)
Dir. Gabe Polsky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Gabe Polsky’s feature length documentary Red Army is as much about the propaganda machine (of Cold War Russia/Soviet Union) as it is pure propaganda unto itself, by placing undue emphasis upon the rivalry between America and the Soviet Union on the blood-spattered battleground of ice hockey competition. Polsky has fashioned a downright spellbinding history of the Red Army hockey team, which eventually became a near-juggernaut of Soviet skill and superiority in the world.

In spite of this, many Canadians will call the film a total crock-and-bull story.

I wholeheartedly admit, however, the bias of growing up intimately within the universe of world competition hockey. My own father, Julian Klymkiw, played goal for Canada’s national team in the 1960s, a team that was managed by Chas Maddin (filmmaker Guy Maddin’s father). Guy and I eventually became the respective director-producer team behind Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful. Maddin went on to immortalise a ‘non-professional’ team from the wintry Canadian prairies in the Jody Shapiro-produced My Winnipeg. Maddin even featured a beefy lookalike of yours-truly wearing a uniform emblazoned with the name ‘Julian Klymberger’ (the surname being one of my own nicknames in years past and to represent my Dad).

To say Maddin and I were both well aware of the true rivalry in international hockey would be an understatement.

But one didn’t need to actually grow up in hockey families intimately involved with various Team Canada hockey leagues to realise that the United States was a blip on the Soviet rivalry-radar. The only famous match-up between the Soviets and America happened during the 1980 Olympics, when a team of veritable untested ‘kids’ hammered the Soviets (immortalised as the 2004 Walt Disney Studios feature film Miracle starring Kurt Russell).

Polsky’s film uses this match as the film’s primary structural tent pole, and completely ignores the historic 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series, which has gone down in most histories (save, perhaps, for America’s) as the greatest display of hockey war of all time. His film also ignores, though pays passing lip service, to the fact that the real rivalry throughout the 1970s and 1980s had virtually nothing to do with America and everything to do with Canada and Russia.

I know this all too well.

My own father eventually became the Carling O’Keefe Breweries marketing guru who brokered huge swaths of promotional sponsorship to Team Canada over 15-or-so years and, in fact, worked closely with hockey agent/manager/promoter and Team Canada’s mastermind Alan Eagleson. Dad not only spoke a variety of Slavic languages fluently, but his decades as an amateur and pro hockey player all contributed to making him an invaluable ally to both administrators and players of Team Canada. To the latter, famed Canadian sports reporter Hal Sigurdson reported, ‘Big Julie [Klymkiw] often rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty behind the Canadian bench.’

I’m not, by the way, arguing the absence of my Dad in this film – he did his thing, promoting beer to promote hockey and hockey to promote beer, which allowed him to travel the world and be with all the hockey players he loved – but what I’m shocked about is how Red Army can ignore my Dad’s old pal and colleague. The film includes ONE – count ’em – ONE off-camera sound bite from Alan Eagleson.

Polsky appears to have made no effort to even interview the man himself or include the reams of historic interview footage of Eagleson that fills a multitude of archives to over-flowing. Eagleson, for all the scandals that eventually brought him down, including imprisonment for fraud and embezzlement convictions, was the game’s most important individual on the North American side to make Soviet match-ups in the Western world a reality, and to allow professional North American players to go head-to-head with the Soviets. (Though Eagleson went down in flames, my Dad always remarked straight-facedly, ‘The “Eagle” never screwed me.’)

How, then, can a documentary about Soviet hockey so wilfully mute this supremely important Canadian angle to the tale? Where are the interviews (new or archival) with such hockey superstars as Gordie Howe (including sons Mark and Marty), Bobby Hull, Bobby Orr, Marc Tardif and all the others who battled the Soviets on-ice? Why are there only mere blips of Wayne (‘The Great One’) Gretzky, most notably a clip in which he sadly refers to the Soviets’ unstoppable qualities? Why are there not more pointed interview bites with the former Soviet players discussing the strength of Canadian players? It’s not like archival footage of this doesn’t exist.

There’s only one reason for any of these errors of omission: all the aforementioned personages and angles are Canadian. Ignoring the World Hockey Association’s (WHA) bouts with the USSR is ludicrous enough, but by focusing on the 1980 Olympic tourney and placing emphasis on the National Hockey League (NHL), the latter of which is optically seen as a solely AMERICAN interest, Red Army is clearly not the definitive documentary about the Soviet players that its director and, most probably American fans and pundits, assume it is.

America? HAH! Canada! YEAH!

As a sidenote, there's an excellent series of DVDs produced by the visionary Canadian producer-distributor Jonathan Gross and available through his company Video Services Corp. (VSC). The titles include Canada Cup ‘76, Team Canada 1974: The Lost Series, The WHA Chronicles, Canada Cup '84 and Canada Cup ‘87 and they ALL address this important aspect of Soviet-Canadian Hockey. I wonder if Polsky bothered to watch any of them? Only his hairdresser, or rather, conscience would know for sure. Full ordering info on the titles below review.

Even if one were to argue that the story Polsky was interested in telling didn’t allow for angling Canadian involvement more vigorously, ‘one’ would be wrong. The story of Soviet hockey supremacy has everything to do with Canada – a country that provided their only consistent and serious adversary, a country that embraced hockey as intensely as the USSR and a country, by virtue of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s official policy of Canadian multiculturalism, that reflected the vast number of Canuck players who had Eastern European blood and culture coursing through them.

It’s also strange how Polsky, the son of Soviet Ukrainian immigrants, ignores the fact that a huge majority of great Soviet players were ethnically Ukrainian. I vividly remember meeting so many of those legends as a kid and listening to them talk with my Dad about a day when maybe, just maybe, Ukraine would have its independence and display Ukrainian hockey superiority over the Russians, never mind the rest of the world. (Given the current struggles between Russia and Ukraine, this might have made for a very interesting political cherry-on-the-sundae.)

Ultimately, Red Army is American propaganda, or at the very least, is deeply imbued with American propagandistic elements. Given that it’s about Soviet hockey players, I find this strangely and almost hilariously ironic, which in and of itself, gives the movie big points.

All this kvetching aside, Red Army is still a solid film. Focusing on the historic and political backdrop of Joseph Stalin and those leaders who followed him, all of who built up one of the greatest, if not the greatest series of hockey teams in the world, this is still a supremely entertaining movie. Polsky’s pacing, sense of character and storytelling is slick and electric. The subjects he does focus upon, the greatest line of Soviet players in hockey history, all deliver solid bedrock for a perspective many hockey fans (and even non-hockey fans) know nothing or little about.

Polsky even interviews a former KGB agent who accompanied the Soviet players to North America in order to guard against defection to the West. Here again, though, I’ll kvetch about a funny Canadian perspective. Dad not only played hockey, not only was he a marketing guy, but he even squeezed in a decade of being a damn good cop in Winnipeg, and when Team Canada went to Russia, Dad would go from hotel room to hotel room, find bugs (not the plentiful cockroaches, either) and rip the KGB surveillance devices out of their hiding places for himself, his colleagues, players and administrators from the West.

I’ll also admit to enjoying the interviews with the likes of NHL coach Scotty Bowman and Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak; however, the most compelling subject in Polsky’s film is the Soviet defenceman Slava Fetisov, who movingly recounts the early days of his hockey career, his friendship and brotherhood with the other players and his leading role in encouraging Soviet players to defect for the big money of pro hockey in North America. It’s also alternately joyous and heartbreaking to see the juxtaposition between the balletic Soviet styles of play with that of the violent, brutal North American approach.

Contrast is, of course, an important element of any storytelling, but in a visual medium like film, it’s especially vital. It’s what provides the necessary conflict. With Red Army, however, the conflict is extremely selective. It is, after all, an American movie, and as it proves, if Americans do anything really well, it’s propaganda. Us Canucks here in the colonies can only stew in our green-with-envy pot of inferiority. We know we’re the best, but we have no idea how to tell this to the rest of the world, and least of all, to ourselves.

Kudos to Polsky and America are unreservedly owed.

They show us all how it’s done.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Red Army is currently in theatrical release via Mongrel Media in Toronto and Vancouver, followed by a February 27 release in Montreal and a rollout in the rest of Canada later in the year. It previously screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014).

To read a full version of my essay Canada vs. America: The Politics and Propaganda of Sports in Gabe Polsky's RED ARMY and Bennett Miller's FOXCATCHER, feel free to visit my column: Greg Klymkiw's COLONIAL REPORT (on cinema) from the DOMINION OF CANADA at the ultra-cool UK-based magazine electric sheep - a deviant view of cinema by clicking HERE.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING
FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW.
IN SO DOING WILL ALLOW YOU TO  SUPPORT
THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER 

In Canada - BUY VSC's The WHA Chronicles HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup The Lost Series 1974 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1976 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1984 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1987 HERE, eh!

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - How can a Spaghetti Noir Vampire Chick in Iran NOT be cool? Stunning directorial debut from Kino Lorber, opens TIFF Bell Lightbox, The Royal Cinema via VSC (Video Services Corp)

This is what you could meet in lovely Iran.

Iranian Bloodsucker in a Chador

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour
Starring: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi,
Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There aren't too many vampire movies these days like A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. In fact, there aren't any at all, but now that this one exists, we can all repress the stench of the abominable Twilight series. What we've got here pretty much blows all recent blood-sucker extravaganzas away.

It's not only a genuinely terrific picture, but it's all in Farsi, the language of Iran, where, incidentally the movie is set (though, amazingly, it was shot in southern California). The movie is staggeringly original, yet at the same time, owes a debt of gratitude to Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Sergio Leone, Guy Maddin and James Whale.

Decent bedfellows all, especially for the film's director, a young Iranian-American lassie who makes her feature length debut with this moving picture graphic novel that could well have sprung from the loins of Frank Miller if he was a woman from Iran and wasn't a misogynist.

Nothing sexier than the scent of a jugular vein

The movie itself is light on plot, which is really no matter. Besides, story is more than one plot-point after another. When narrative can be imbued with the poetic qualities of cinema, so often neglected, forgotten or simply not attainable, then story takes on a richness that all the Robert-McKee-influenced product, machine-tooled by hacks, can never, nor will ever, attain. This is a narrative driven by style, theme, mood, character and setting.

And what a setting!

Bad City is practically a ghost town smack in the middle of some desolate plain in Iran, surrounded by endless rows of unmanned oil pumps seesawing ceaselessly and deeply into the flat, dusty earth. In the distance, desolate factories belch clouds of smoke into the atmosphere, the sunny skies blotted out by the filth of pollution.

A lone whore wanders aimlessly on the streets at night, hoping ever-so desperately that someone, anyone will drive by or walk up to her for a cheap fuck or blow job, anything, no matter how degrading will do to avoid being beaten to a pulp by her pimp for not turning enough tricks.

Daylight is murky, nighttime is murkier still, pools of light from high pressure sodium street lamps cast their eerie glow upon the forlorn streets, flanked by dollops of pitch black shadow. If anything, the subtext of the film is found within the shades of grey. Black and white are the pillars holding it all up, but the depth resides twixt those visual support beams of light and darkness.

Somewhere in Bad City is a vampire.

Not that anyone would notice or even care. Life is cheap. Bodies appear, then disappear. Corpses are tossed casually just outside of town into a ditch. The men are (mostly) pigs, the women are invisible and/or abused. The brutish sex in Bad City are pimps, pushers, addicts, drunks, unemployed, slave-class labourers and/or all of the above. Homes appear squalid, their interiors are even more squalid. There's little to do and pretty much nowhere to go. The one nightclub is full of ecstasy-popping babes and scumbags.

At times, we feel like we're in a dreamscape that could only exist in the movies. Of course, I never have a problem with that, but as the film progresses, we're creepily affected by a world that feels as real as it is fantastical. This is a country of waste, repression, rape of the land, rape of the soul and the clear suppression, or rape, if you will, of women's rights. Oil, the ever-present oil being pumped, seems to be the only life or at least, vigorous movement, in this somnambulistic, backward, backyard of despair.

Escape seems to be the only way to avoid death, or at least, a living death, but everyone seems too beaten down to even bother thinking about it. Flight at the end of a needle or the lip of a bottle or whatever can be popped down the gullet, all seem to be the easiest way to dull the pain and, perhaps, allow Bad City's denizens to imagine a better world.

ARASH VARANDI is HOT!!!

Arash (Arash Varandi) is a hardworking young (and almost ludicrously handsome) jack-of-all-trades who lives with his drug addict father Hossein (Marshall Manesh). The lad's prize possession is a pristine T-Bird which is snatched from him by Saeed (Dominic Rains), a foul pimp/dealer/loan-shark who takes it as a payment he's owed for a debt incurred by Dad.

Pops once had something resembling class, but now he's an addled bum, obsessed with the whore Atti (Mozhan Marnò) who reminds him of his late wife, but who, in turn, refuses to acknowledge his pathetic existence unless he's got money to buy her grudging attention and/or respect.

There is, however, a mysterious, exotic and gorgeous young woman (Sheila Vand) who slowly creeps about the streets at night in a full traditional chador.

She's no whore. She's a vampire on the prowl for blood. Her tastes, however, appear limited to exploitative misogynistic men.

Luckily for Arash, he's a sensitive lad, not deserving of having his throat torn out by her fangs, but one of the vampire's victims conveniently opens an opportunity for our hero to secure wads of dough, scads of drugs and the return of his beloved Ford T-Bird coupe.

SHEILA VAND is pretty HOT too!!!

Even more pleasingly, the vampire takes a liking to Arash (in one of the most perverse meet-cutes, like, EVER) and he, of course, to her.

Why not? They're young, smoulderingly intense and, uh, HOT! So what if she's the walking dead? Living in Bad City with a drug addicted father makes him just as undead. Mais non?

Will love conquer all?

Will escape be a viable option?

Will Bad City become a distant memory?

The answers to these questions will all be found in this compulsively engrossing, gorgeously photographed (in beautiful monochrome) and yes, often creepy and scary immersion into the delectable depths of feminist revenge fantasy with a to-die-for soundtrack and a pace so hypnotic that filmmaker Amirpour might well be more than a mere artist.

She's a Class-A mesmerist and as such, watching the movie is to fall under her spell of magic and to emerge pumped, enriched and convinced you've seen one of the most original movies in years.

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

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night from Kino Lorber is in theatrical release across Canada via VSC (Video Services Corp) with Toronto playdates at TIFF Bell Lightbox and The Royal Cinema. Keep your eyes peeled. You won't want to miss this for anything.

HONEYMOON - DVD/BLU-RAY Review By Greg Klymkiw - Sicko Shocker on VSC & Magnolia

Honorary Canadian Chiller

Canadian women are making the best horror films in the world right now. One just needs to look in the direction of the Soska Sisters, Audrey Cummings, Karen Lam and Jovanka Vuckovic and know this to be true.

Filmmaker Leigh Janiak is NOT Canadian, but she might as well be.

Her first feature HONEYMOON is set in the wilds of Canada and prior to learning that this twisted, uber-talented Cleveland lassie actually vacationed with her folks as a child in their Canuck cottage every summer, my first two helpings of the movie convinced me she HAD to be a Canuck.

There is nothing scarier and creepier than the Canadian wilderness. It's not DELIVERANCE-scary (though in its sickeningly benign Canuckian way it CAN be), but it's chilling as all get-out in very subtle ways. Everything about Canada is "subtle" which is what ultimately gives it a unique flavour whenever horrific things actually happen up here. Canadian wilderness, you see, feels so endless that you sense the natural world is swallowing you whole and worst of all, it's quiet - so goddamned quiet you sometimes want to kill someone or, better yet, yourself. God knows, the hair-raising stylistic frissons of master Canuckian filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Guy Maddin and Atom Egoyan (the latter's latest and severely misunderstood THE CAPTIVE, a perfect case in point about our rural ickiness) have all managed to induce the kind of shudders endemic to this supremely perverse country. Now we can add the Honorary Canadian Leigh Janiak and HONEYMOON to my list of the best Canadian films NEVER made by Canadians (FARGO and SLAP SHOT taking the top-slots in this Klymkiw-exclusive genre). HONEYMOON is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Video Services Corp. (VSC) and Magnolia. If you want the shit scared right out of you, I urge you to get out there and buy this one immediately.

And now, my review:

EXTRICATION, please!

Honeymoon (2014)
Dir. Leigh Janiak
Starring: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's an urban legend that goes thusly: A man coughs so violently that a thick rope of dark, gooey, sputum jettisons from his mouth.

This is not a case of said sputum yet depositing itself on the floor, wall or any such surface, but rather, continues to hang from the man's mouth in a manner more physiologically commensurate to that of a drooling mastiff in severely hot, humid weather. With every cough, one rapidly following the other, the man continues to release several more inches of the gelatinous goo which, refuses to separate from within. The man grabs onto the foul rope of viscous saliva with both hands, clenching and squeezing for dear life, his eyes popping in terror like Mantan Moreland in a haunted house. The man begins to resemble a church bell-ringer on bennies, tugging vigorously as he extricates more, and more, and yet, more of the bilious, glutinous cordage from his dank, sopping maw. There is no end to the glistening, pus-ridden copulae of meaty, bloody phlegm. He keeps yanking upon it with deranged abandon and it still continues to gush forth, forming finally, a sausage-link-like coil on the floor. It becomes plainly obvious to the gent that this bilious cascade is no simple, garden variety discharge.

Creepy Kitchen Action

To his sheer and utter horror, the man realizes that he's somehow managed to dislodge a hideously diseased lung that surges from his chest cavity, up through his esophagus as it indelicately streams over his tonsils and tongue, grazing his lips and plummeting to the ground.

And so it goes.

There is a scene, a major two-by-four-to-the-face horror setpiece in Honeymoon, Leigh Janiak's auspicious feature length directorial debut that brings the aforementioned urban legend immediately to mind. It is, however, no mere diseased lung being extricated, it's something far more disturbingly insidious and downright disgusting. Most of all, Janiak (who co-wrote the clever script with Phil Graziadei) doesn't utilize an orifice as quaint as a mere mouth, but instead violates an opening of far more indelicacy, one which inspires, not only horror, but deep shame.

The picture opens innocuously enough. We meet Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway), a young, mid-twentysomething newlywed couple who drive straight up north to the former's legacy cottage for what will be a private getaway for our lovebirds to more officially consummate their union that's just been held before friends, family and God, the Holy Father.

For a good, long time we share the couple's giddy, loving abandon - getting to know them as people, but also gaining insight into their relationship. At the same time, we experience the subtle shifts in mood and honest human emotion that any newlywed couple will encounter, even at this early juncture in their relationship. As life will oft have it, there are, then, a few cracks in the fortification of their lifelong commitment to each other, but nothing out of the ordinary and certainly nothing to raise alarm.

For the most part, they're almost insufferably in love and we explore the most intimate details of their new and happy life together. (Yes folks, plenty o' sex twixt our attractive, talented actors.)

This is until, one night. As the couple sleep deeply after one of many vigorous sessions of coitus with no interruptus, a mysterious light begins to shine through their bedroom window. This is no ordinary incandescence and it passes over the bodies of Bea and Paul in a slow, deliberate manner. Rather than bathing them in a warm glow of peace and comfort, we feel like an entity is taking something dear and precious from them and that it will take all their fortitude to keep their love alive.

That, however, isn't the only thing they'll need to keep alive and it's from this point onwards that a slow, creepy crawly horror takes over and indeed intensifies. There's something in them thar' woods that's going to change their lives forever.

And it ain't pretty.

Honeymoon is one of the best horror films you're likely to have seen in quite some time. It is first and foremost a love story, but like many couplings in this genre, the threats on every front are going to mount exponentially. There will be times when they as characters and even we, as the audience, will begin to question our own sanity. Janiak displays a surprising command of the medium and her gifts to scare the living shit out of us are pitched to a very high, but sophisticated degree. Working in the grand tradition of the masterful Val Lewton, Janiak hits all the necessary marks of the RKO horror chief's checklist for great genre films: Focus upon the contemporary, focus upon humanity, focus upon the foibles of society, focus upon the insidious reality of the horror and if there's to be an otherworldly element to the picture, make sure it stays rooted in the relationships, dynamic and interplay between the characters.

And, of course, never, ever, ever forget that the best horror is rooted in atmosphere, so beware!

Beware the forest. Beware the night. Most of all, beware the light.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars.

Honeymoon is a VSC and Magnolia DVD/BLu-Ray release. It includes a myriad of added value features including interviews with Janiak, the actors as well as a selection of promo pieces and various trailers.

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CORNER GAS THE MOVIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canuck TV show on big screen, eh

Here be a real knee-slapper from CORNER GAS THE MOVIE
Nyuck. Nyuck. Nyuck. Are you be laughing yet?
It be real funny, eh? It be Canadian, eh.
Come on! Laugh, goddamn ye! LAUGH!
Ah, fuck you, gimme a beer, eh.

Corner Gas The Movie (2014)
Dir. David Storey
Scr. Brent Butt,
Andrew Carr, Andrew Wreggitt
Starring: Brent Butt, Gabrielle Miller, Fred Ewanuick, Eric Peterson, Janet Wright, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Lorne Cardinal, Nancy Robertson, Don Lake, Reagan Pasternak, Karen Holness, Cavan Cunningham, Graham Greene

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Canadian TV series Corner Gas was an undeniable smash. For six seasons, its ratings kicked everything off the charts, including big American programs. Its worldwide sales have also been through the roof. The show could probably have gone on for a few more seasons, but its creator Brent Butt bravely decided to pull the plug on a high note. The final episode drew a staggering three-million-plus Canadian viewers.


The ubiquitous billboards, ads, the content of said promotional materials and the general water cooler babble about the show amongst the Great Unwashed was enough to convey to even a gibbering gibbon that the show was a sitcom about inbreds living in some godforsaken small town in the middle of the Canadian Prairies. Happily, that's all I really knew about the show since I don't watch much television save for TV Ontario, a few select British and American items I'd catch up with on DVD, Judge Judy, Divorce Court and the Maury Povich Show. (I used to also watch the former CBC before it was ruined by an oinker with - ahem - "vision".)

Bottom line: I had not laid a single eyeball upon even one frame of the hit series when I finally watched the recent feature-length big-screen version entitled Corner Gas The Movie. I'm glad, though, because I really only care to assess feature films on their merits (or lack thereof) as feature films. Given the pedigree of the series, plus the fact that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool prairie lad who despises Toronto with a passion and has rued every day I've had to live in the godforsaken Town o' Hogs for 20 of my 50 or so years on this Earth, I was open-mindedly thrilled to see this movie.

Besides, seeing feature length versions of shows one loves, especially those made years or even decades after the original idiot box versions, carries way too much baggage for me and more often than not, I'm supremely disappointed. However, in recent years, I had the good fortune to see some family-oriented movies based on hit television shows aimed at pre-teen and tweener girls and enjoyed them so much, I ended up watching the programs on DVD quite happily with my daughter.

I was primed to love this movie, or at least, like it.

It didn't happen. I felt I was watching television of the worst order - a half-hour episode dragged out for over 90 minutes. Even worse, I did not laugh once. Not even a smile managed to crack my steely visage. At times, the movie was so painfully unfunny, I tried to imagine it within the context of being a Carl Dreyer masterpiece, but written and directed by Jethro Beaudine. THAT made me laugh, but alas, the fantasy did not transfer to the misery of having to watch Corner Gas The Movie.

75% of this movie's $8.5 million
budget came from public funds.
Money well spent! Good Job!

The tired narrative trudges along interminably and involves the denizens of Dog River, a town on the verge of utter bankruptcy. Water and power are in scarce supply and business is so bad that Brent (Brent Butt), the proprietor of the gas station, attempts to inject some life into the town by purchasing the local bar. Lacey (Gabrielle Miller) runs the town diner and has her own ideas on how to turn things around. She enters Dog River into a national contest to find the most quaint city in Canada. The prize is $75K, which, could go a long way to cover the town's debts and then some.

The problem, though, is that Dog River needs a whack of elbow grease to get it closer to "quaint". Lacey enlists Brent's Mom, the crusty Emma (Janet Wright) and a handful of others who appear to comprise the entire population of the town. Local layabout Hank Yarbo (Fred Ewanuick) is full of ideas. They're all stupid, but it doesn't stop him from trying. His stupidest idea is attempting to open a coffee-donut chain franchise which, if it worked, would put Lacey out of business.

The town's sole law enforcement is comprised of the pregnant Karen (Tara Spencer-Nairn) and the dopey, friendly big-galoot Davis (Lorne Cardinal). The town's shifty, boneheaded Mayor Fitzy (Cavan Cunnigham), has not only drained the town dry by investing the coffers in, uh, Detroit, but also dupes David into taking an early retirement to save the town some dough. No matter. Davis decides he's going to become a private investigator (not unlike Jethro Beaudine deciding to be a brain surgeon in The Beverly Hillbillies) whilst Karen goes on a mad spree to issue municipal citations to get her "quotas" up in case she needs to get a new law enforcement gig somewhere else.

Nutty Wanda (Nancy Robertson) appears to have the most moxie and entrepreneurial spirit of the lot when she opens up a booze can and casino in Davis's man-cave. It becomes so popular, it's driving Brent's bar into the poorhouse. The biggest threats of all come from the nearby town of prairie fundamentalists who wish to annex Dog River and a coffee and donut chain that wants to buy up all of Dog River's property cheap and turn the whole shooting match into a massive industrial warehouse. Adding insult to injury, a massive lawsuit rears its ugly head and Brent is about to lose everything.

While all this is going down, Brent's father Oscar (Eric Peterson), a dad-nabbit old curmudgeon is so obsessed with survivalism, he trades in his car for a horse and proves, as both a man and human being (and frankly, as a survivalist) to be about as useless as tits on a bull.

By the way, have I yet mentioned that the evil chain trying to swallow Dog River whole is called "Coff-Nuts"?

Are we laughing yet?

The pain involved in suffering through this convoluted maw of rancid folksiness and whimsy is enough to inspire suicide or, at least, a trip to Holland for a bit of the old euthanasia. The acting is either prime-time-competent or full of egregious mugging and there isn't one single funny, original line of dialogue, pratfall or story beat anywhere to be found in the whole dreary enterprise. About all I can say in favour of the movie, and I suppose this is something, is that I did not need prior exposure to the series to figure out who was who and what was what. This was all plainly obvious.

Frankly, though, if the TV series is anything like this movie, I'm not making any time to watch it on DVD and ultimately, I can only conclude how truly bereft of taste and/or brain our kinder, gentler, simpler Canadians are blessed with to have turned it into such a huge hit. It kind of makes sense, though. Corner Gas was probably a big hit amongst all those who elected our current Chancellor/Prime Minister. It's the only explanation.

As for Corner Gas The Movie, it's not a movie. It certainly doesn't have the scope of a movie and feels little more than going to the movies to watch television. Yup, the movie stinks, alright, but I will say it sure does have some pretty prairie sunsets.

Oh, and speaking of purty prairie sunsets, the thick-heads running the government of Saskatchewan (where much of this movie was shot) flushed a terrific tax credit down the toilet, effectively destroyed the local film industry, tossed out all the economic spin-off benefits of film production in the province and forced locals to move away (kind of like what was in the works for the Dog River denizens). I suppose one could consider the Saskatchewan Legislature to be little more than, uh, Coff-Nuts.

In spite of this lack of vision, the province of Saskatchewan opened their purse strings to the tune of $2 Million smackeroonies to help finance this muddy slough of a movie. As reported by CBC News in Saskatchewan, the inbreds running the province cobbled together a funding agreement that "includes a clause that the producers are expected to include 'positive visual aspects' that promote the province as a tourism destination in the story line of the movie. The agreement suggests 'sunrises/sunsets, unique vistas or locations'". Saskatchewan? A Tourism Destination? For what? To see the RCMP horse brigade parade in Regina?

What a bunch of yokels.

They've gotten exactly what they deserve.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: THE TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL & DINING LOUNGE For a full explanation of this rating click HERE.

If you're interested in reading about HOW to make a genuinely successful big-screen version of a small-screen success, you can read my review from yesterday by clicking HERE.

Corner Gas The Movie is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from VSC. The transfer highlights the gorgeous picture postcard cinematography of Saskatchewan very nicely and it includes a bevy of extra features like gag reels (about as funny as the movie), a clutch of EPK-like making-of items and a thoroughly useless commentary track which is filled wall-to-wall with folksy shout-outs. Nothing I say here will stop the multitude of inbreds in this country from parting with their dollars to buy it, so they might as well order it right from here so they can support the ongoing maintenance of the website which, like the Prime Minister they voted for, has little but disdain for them.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

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

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, naked!

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

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

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

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

You have hereby been warned:

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

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

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

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

FRANK - Blu-Ray Review By Greg Klymkiw - Poignant indie gets terrific Magnolia/VSC BRD

THE
MANY
FACES
OF
FRANK

Frank (2014)
Dir. Lenny Abrahamson
Scr. Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Scoot McNairy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Francois Civil, Tess Harper
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Give an actor something to obscure their best feature and then see what they can deliver. I had occasion recently to recall Jack Nicholson in Tony Richardson's 1982 The Border where he was forced to wear sunglasses in virtually every exterior shot. Given that Nicholson was playing a Texas border guard, this not only made sense in terms of his character, but it shielded us from one of Nicholson's most expressive facial features. This resulted in one of his all-time best performances.

Given that by 1982 Jack's eyes and what he could do with them had already began to border on the cliched, we the audience were afforded the opportunity to see him render work that felt as fresh and vital as it had always been. It's as if the shades rendered the character even more internal - we had to work hard reading him, which made the proceedings rooted in a kind of reality it might not have otherwise had. Nicholson's movements became stiffer, slower and as he was playing someone who was on a slow burn, especially as he began to respond to the horrendous corruption and unfairness with respect to Mexicans sneaking across the border for a slice of America's pie of opportunity, we were able to almost put ourselves inside the character.

Most importantly, we had to respond to what he saw without necessarily having a full picture of how to read him.

Michael Fassbender is easily as great an actor as Nicholson, yet he's not quite crossed over into rendering performances rooted in cliches, so it's all the more astonishing to witness his work in Frank.

Co-writer Jon Ronson had been in Chris Sievey's Oh Blimey Big Band once the eccentric musician-comedian frontman of The Freshies had established his "Frank Sidebottom" persona for stage and television. "Frank" was a kind of Pee Wee Herman-like persona who wore a humungous fake head that resembled characters in the early cartoons of the legendary Fleischer Brothers (Betty Boop, Popeye). Though the screenplay for Frank is ultimately fictional, it's based in part on Ronson's journal entries during this period.

The first hour of Frank is especially lovely. It focuses on Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) a young keyboardist/songwriter who is miraculously swept out of his suburban ennui by Don (Scoot McNairy), a taciturnly amusing road manager and plunged headlong into a band led by the title frontman played by Fassbender. At first, Jon's ignored and/or reviled by Frank's eccentric band members (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Francois Civil, Carla Azar), but when he invests his "nest-egg" inheritance into the recording of a new album, their disdain transforms into guarded acceptance. Gyllenhaal even grudgingly prongs herself upon Jon's root, claiming disgust, but partaking of it with relish nonetheless. Jon, unbeknownst to the others, has been tweeting his adventures and even uploading clips to YouTube. Eventually, the band develops a sizeable cult following and is invited to launch themselves at the famed SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas.

Both the screenplay and Abrahamson's solid direction keep us delighted and enthralled in the odd creative process, and once the band heads to America, we're equally tantalized by the juxtaposition twixt the bucolic Irish cottage they're initially holed up in and the Big Sky of Texas. Though success looms, the film successfully shifts gears and we're plunged into the reality of the title character which, up until this point, has been mysterious to say the least. What's been funny and borderline (thank Christ for "borders") whimsical, becomes deeply and painfully moving.

Fassbender is the engine which ultimate drives the film. Saddled with his fake head, which he never removes, is what forces the great actor to utilize his innate gifts. With both his oft-muffled voice and body (as well as eventual sign language and verbal descriptions to convey his facial expressions under the mask), Fassbender extraordinarily delivers a myriad of emotions.

For anyone who discovered the world of true musical iconoclasts like Captain Beefheart, David Thomas of Pere Ubu fame and the multitude of genuinely alternative musicians during the punk and new wave phases in the late 70s and early 80s will especially be filled with a nostalgic glow that occasionally borders on epiphanies of the most hallowed kind. Frank is a film that seems featherweight, but its depiction of both the creative process and mental illness creeps up slowly and grabs you. Most of all, it doesn't ever really let go, long after the movie is over.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Frank is a Magnolia/VSC Blu-Ray release that features a gorgeous sound and picture transfer. The disc comes equipped with a variety of bonus features including a variety of interviews with the director and pacifically on the look, sound and music of the film. A decent commentary track could have been far less all over the place with a moderator in tune to the film and its makers. The best special feature on the disc is a superb featurette focusing upon the sound designers and mixers. This is precisely the kind of detail that would have been ideal on the commentary track and even some of the interviews if they had been up to the level of this great bonus material. All in all, the film is so good that the film's ultimately the thing and makes for an ideal keeper Blu-Ray.

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

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