MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Now's My Time to Weigh-in on This

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Dir. George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron,
Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's no need at this point to make much of the perfectly-wrought slender plot of George Miller's spectacular ode to the glories of cinema via its wham-bam ultra-violence, save for the fact that Tom Hardy's Max Rockatansky, the immortal road warrior of the three movies starring Mel Gibson, hooks up with the hot, head-shaved, one-armed Imperator Furiosa (the hot, head-shaved, not-really-one-armed Charlize Theron) to make her way back to the paradise of her childhood homeland whilst rescuing a clutch of gorgeous babes held as breeders by the post-apocalyptic mutants who've carved out a massive kingdom of slavery and brutal repression.

The most interesting aspect of the tale is that our hero is initially captured by the mutants, forced to become a perpetual blood donor and then secured to the front of warrior Nux's (Nicholas Hoult) car as a "blood bag" (to explode in a shower of crimson if and when the roadster slams into something). For at least 30 of the film's 120 minutes, its hero is forced to wear a mask and trussed into complete immobility. He does, however, have a perfect view of the mad chase and carnage that ensues, happily giving us, the loyal audience, more than a few delectable points of view.

Then for another 30 of the film's 120 minutes, Max plays second fiddle to Furiosa until the final 60 of 120 minutes whereupon he's finally able to fully engage in the heroics Mel Gibson was allowed to indulge in during Mad Max and The Road Warrior.

The first hour of the film contains some of the most stunning, nail-biting chase sequences ever committed to the edification of action fans since the very dawn of cinema as well as imagery in the mutant kingdom which is so eye-poppingly grotesque that it rivals that of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which director George Miller is clearly indebted to. At 72-years-old, director George Miller manages to easily take several huge dumps of superiority upon every other younger director in recent years who've purported to direct action blockbusters. This includes, but is not limited to the execrable Sam Mendes, J.J. Abrams, Bryan Singer, Joss Whedon and Christopher "One Idea" Nolan.

Miller's mise-en-scene is thankfully sans herky-jerky camera moves, ludicrously endless closeups, picture cutting that's almost solely dependent upon sound cues rather than visual dramatic action, an over-reliance upon digital effects and tin-eyed spatiality. His eye for action and his sense of rhythm is impeccable, his eye for the grotesque (the mutant villains, the earth-mother breast-milk slaves, the mohawk hairdos, body piercings, tattoos and the grandly retro mechanisms in the fortress) has seldom been paralleled, his commitment to driving everything dramatically because he's wisely utilized a simple narrative coat hanger to add all the necessary layers; all this and more points to his innate genius as a REAL filmmaker as opposed to most of the poseurs making blockbusters in contemporary Hollywood.

Though a part of me would have preferred if Miller had continued using the great Mel Gibson in the role of Max and added the layer of age to the character's bitterness, guilt and weariness, I'm happy enough with his selection of the strange stalwart intensity of Tom Hardy and the fine actor's chemistry (thankfully non-romantic or even vaguely sexual) with Charlize Theron's tough-as-nails-exterior masking her long-ago lost innocence of childhood.

And yes, though another part of me wished Miller had tried to bring his film's running time down to the 90-95-minutes of Mad Max and The Road Warrior, I was never bored during the 120 minutes of Fury Road, only occasionally fatigued by its relentlessness.

I love the first two Mad Max films so much that I'm grateful to Miller for not abandoning the spirit of them and using his previous work as a natural springboard into both the familiar and the fresh.

That the villain Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) is equally foul to such previous villains as The Toe Cutter and Humungous makes me very happy. Even happier to me is that Hugh Keays-Byrne played Toe Cutter AND Immortan Joe.

That the movie, by including a kick-ass female lead who is not just a woman pretending to be a macho Rambolina figure, but a woman driven to fight for the rights of fellow women and lay claim to a part of her that she lost, is what allows Miller to take his place as a genuine artist who heartily grasps the comfort of the familiar whilst building upon that and allowing it to blossom into a wholly new hybrid of insanely magnificent splendour.

That Miller has attempted a different approach to colour with Fury Road is also pleasing. I'll admit to always loving the occasional dapples of almost fluorescent colours amidst the sandy, dusty Australian outback, but I also love the high contrasts Miller employs here with varying shades to lighten or darken the proceedings when necessary.

That the movie uses real souped-up cars, trucks and motorcycles which are really driven by real stunt drivers and really smashed-up-real-good is the biggest bonus of all. (Porcupine-like killer cars, a big-wheeled monstrosity outfitted with banks of speakers and a heavy metal guitarist whose guitar shoots out flames and the terrifying gas tanker commandeered by Furiosa and Max are but a few of the vehicular delights on display.)

Finally, though, I do wish the film had had far more dystopian 70s-style melancholy infused into its a-bit-too-hopeful ending, especially since there's a sense of Max's final look to Furiosa, and to us, resembling the final looks of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in John Ford's The Searchers.

But, really now, who am I trying to kid?

I fucking loved this movie.

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

Mad Max: Fury Road is in wide-mega-release all over the world via Warner Bros. It is presented in 3-D. I refuse to see it in that format as it annoys me. I've only watched it in normal 2-D and was quite satisfied with that, though I'll admit the 3-D might be less egregious to me than it normally is, given Miller's superb direction.

NIGHT NURSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". Curated by the inimitable Senior Programmer James Quandt.

Night Nurse Stanwyck holds her own against thug Gable

These images from NIGHT NURSE
clearly provide many good reasons
as to why the pre-Code period in old
Hollywood had a whole lot going for it.

Night Nurse (1931)
Dir. William A. Wellman
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Ben Lyon, Joan Blondell, Clark Gable, Charles Winninger, Ralf Harolde

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Things are tough for a young lady in the big city. They're especially difficult for a night nurse. If you're Barbara Stanwyck, things tend to be a little easier, but still mighty challenging. William A. Wellman's 1931 pre-Code (when Hollywood was at its most provocative) melodrama Night Nurse, crackles with wit, sex, sentiment and thrills, serving up a genuine minor classic reflecting the age of gangsters, bootleggers and single, young women trying to make a way for themselves in the world, whilst making the world a better place for others. The picture blisters with a zippy pace, entertaining us and delivering a sophisticated window into a bygone era, feeling as fresh and resonant today as it must have felt in the 30s.

After a rip-snorting ambulance P.O.V. ride through the city during the opening titles, Oliver H.P. Garrett's screenplay (along with Charles Kenyon's razor-sharp additional dialogue) doesn't waste any time plunging us into the world of the hospital via Lora Hart's (Barbara Stanwyck) perspective. She applies unsuccessfully for a position as a student nurse to a nasty old harridan who chides the lass over her lack of education. Luckily, on her way out, Lora collides with kindly, old Dr. Bell (Charles Winninger) who dives to the floor to retrieve all of our heroine's personal goods which spilled out of her purse. This allows the codger a good view of Stanwyck's gams which, is not lost on our gal at all. One friendly, provocative smile in the doc's direction is all it takes to get Lora back in the hospital and hired.

Lora is hooked up with wisecracking Nurse Maloney (Joan "Hubba Hubba" Blondell) who'll be her roommate in the weird hospital boarding rooms for nursing students (a hint of orphanage and/or women's prison here). Maloney gives Lora the lay of the land, including a tip or two about how to make the job work to her best advantage. First and foremost, Maloney warns against taking-up with the drooling, always-on-the-prowl interns. "Take my tip, sister and stay away from them," she cracks. "They're like cancer. The disease is known but not the cure." However, Maloney's most cogent advice to Lora is thus:

"There's only one guy in the world that can do a nurse any good and that's a patient with dough! Just catch one of them with a high fever and a low pulse and make him think you saved his life. Trust me, sister, you'll be gettin' somewhere."

Lora, however, connects with Mortie (Ben Lyon) a friendly bootlegger with a gun wound that she patches up without reporting it to the police. This endears him to her immediately and he becomes a helpful ally when she finds herself in a jam with some seedy criminal types.

Lora lands what should be a coveted spot as a private night nurse offsite. Unfortunately, she finds herself helplessly watching over two children being intentionally starved to death (for a whopping trust fund) by their alcoholic mother in cahoots with her seedy chauffeur lover (Clark Gable) and presided over by the sleazy quack Dr. Milton A. Ranger (a brilliant Ralf Harolde who not only oozes slime, but twitches ever-so madly with an obvious cocaine addiction). Lora tries to appeal to Ranger by threatening to go to the authorities, but he snidely reminds her she'll be washed up if she does.

"The successful nurse is one who keeps her mouth shut," he intones menacingly.

Even kindly old Dr. Bell can't help, citing "ethics" as being in the way of his interfering with another doctor's case. She fires back, as ONLY Barbara Stanwyck can with that unique blend of vulnerability and tough, no-nonsense moxie: "Oh, ethics... ethics... ethics! That's all I've heard. Isn't there any ethics about letting poor little babies be murdered?"

Poor Lora's in a major bind: a drunken gangster has tried to rape her, the children's mother lollygags about in a drunken stupor, the nasty chauffeur belts her out cold and, adding to her frustration, she's forced to stand by idly as murder is being committed before her very eyes.

"I'll kill the next person that says 'ethics' to me," she says to Maloney (again, as only Stanwyck can).

Her wiseacre pal retorts, as only Joan Blondell can, "Hah! Says you!"

But then, tweaking on to the notion that she's the only one who can take charge and make things right, Lora fires back (with Stanwyck's distinctive Brooklyn twang), "Yeah, SAYS ME, in a BIG WAY, sister."

Lora grabs the reins with a vengeance.

A big storm's a brewing and she's the one brewing it. Along the way, though, she does get some help from her friendly bootlegger pal. Burgeoning romance and rescuing children make for perfect bedfellows.

The film ends with another rip-snorting ambulance ride through the city, depositing a stiff for the morgue. It turns out, the stiff's been hit by some thugs, but happily we learn it's a thoroughly justifiable homicide.

Stanwyck gloriously delivers a final hardy-har over that news and we're all the better for it. Both her performance and the film have us soaring in a movie that provocatively and joyously kicks the kind of butt only a 30s pre-code picture can. Night Nurse is a glorious blend of melodrama, social consciousness and heroism against the biggest odds of all. It extols the virtues of ordinary folk over high society and places more ethics in the hearts and minds of a dame who never finished high school and her good-hearted bootlegger boyfriend over all those who had the money and opportunities to move up the ladder of success and where reaching the top only really meant adhering to ethics supporting an old boy's club over those who do most of the real living and dying.

It's impossible to argue with.

Night Nurse plays Saturday, February 7 at 3:30 p.m. at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in James Quandt's amazing series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". The film is presented in GLORIOUS 35MM. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE. As well, there are many Barbara Stanwyck films from this TIFF series which can be ordered directly from the following links: Buy Barbara Stanwyck movies in Canada HERE and/or Buy Barbara Stanwyck movies in the USA or from anywhere in the world HERE. You can even click on any of these links and order ANY movie you want so long as you keep clicking through to whatever you want to order. By doing so, you'll be contributing to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Tough-guy Walsh delivers Rom-Com

The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
dir. Raoul Walsh
Starring: James Cagney, Olivia De Havilland, Rita Hayworth, Jack Carson, George Tobias and Alan Hale

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Casey would waltz with a strawberry blond,
And the Band played on,
He'd glide cross the floor with the girl he ador'd,
and the Band played on,
But his brain was so loaded it nearly exploded,
The poor girl would shake with alarm.
He'd ne'er leave the girl with the strawberry curls,
And the Band played on.
- Chorus, "The Band Played On" by Palmer and Ward, 1895

He was one of the original two-fisted, piss and vinegar Old Hollywood filmmakers - a man's man and then some - and yet, in spite of this reputation and a canon that included sprawling, dusty westerns, brutal gangster dramas and some of the most effective and affecting war propaganda, Raoul Walsh directed one of the most grandly entertaining, politically astute and decidedly progressive romantic comedies of the 1940s, one that placed women's roles and rights in a society controlled by men at the forefront of its narrative and thematic concerns while, at the same time focusing on a very different male figure, a regular guy from the wrong side of the tracks who is drawn to the surface attributes of both beauty and success, but discovers in himself something deeper.

The Strawberry Blonde is set against the backdrop of a simpler, gentler time in American history - the Gay 1890s - where every Manhattan street corner seemed equipped with a cheerful barbershop quartet crooning away to whomever would listen and when a man's biggest worry was what young lass he'd stroll through the park with on a Sunday afternoon. Life was sweet and an innocence and complacency gripped the towns and cities of America with the promise of new beginnings and sky's-the-limit opportunity.

Biff Grimes (James Cagney) is a working stiff with a dream. He wants to be a dentist. His pal from the old neighbourhood, the amiably smarmy Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson) wants wealth and power. What they both have their sights on is the flirty, charming, strawberry blonde of the picture's title, Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth). In all things that SEEM to matter to Biff, Hugo wins and Biff loses, but in the process, Biff learns a few lessons in life when he ends up genuinely falling in love with Virginia's free-thinking, generous suffragette girlfriend Amy Lind (Olivia De Havilland) who has devoted much of her life to the profession of nursing.

On the surface, the movie is a grass-is-NOT-always-greener-on-the-other-side tale of love, friendship and what the true meaning of happiness is, but within the context of a shiny bauble, we get a story that, for its time was AHEAD of its time and in contemporary terms, is a drama for OUR time and frankly, universal enough to be for ALL time.

Walsh was a director imbued with such a strong sense of place and time. Film after film, characters moved through interior and exterior sets, backlots and locations endowed with meticulous attention to detail. Walsh played his characters thoughtfully and carefully, like chess pieces crafted from the ivory of Wooly Mammoth tusks and he moved them on sets as painstakingly rendered as the famed Staunton-crafted wooden boards. There are seldom false moments in a Walsh film and the reason for this is how he blocked his action with only the best actors - making sure that interior and exterior landscapes surrounding them were rooted in WHO they were as characters. To do this required scrupulous attention to every detail and he had the eye of a true Master. (In fact, one of Walsh's eyes was savagely extricated during a car accident when a jackrabbit jumped through an open window as he drove to the In Old Arizona set in the late 1920s. For most of his directing career he only had one eye, but WHAT an EYE!!!)

The Strawberry Blonde is a movie that pulsates with the life of a world that is both magical and real - so much so, that the visuals come close to conjuring actual smells. The spittoon-laden beer halls where Biff and his ne'er-do-well boozing Dad (Alan Hale) wind up in brawl after brawl practically reek with the stench of cheap tobacco smoke and draught-soaked floors. The barber shop where Biff hangs out with his master hair-stylist buddy Nick Pappalas (George Tobias) is so perfectly accoutered with the fixtures and implements of the trade that one's olfactories are gently pummelled with the aroma of pomades, lotions and talcum powder.

The gaslight illuminating the streets at night, the fresh leafy parks, the grocery-market-lined streets, the stuffy, oak-paneled boardrooms and offices of Hugo's construction empire, the gaudy, ornate nouveau-riche mansion Hugo lives in, the warmth of Biff's eventual hearth and home - all are teeming with sounds and sights that embrace all the characters in a world that's as bygone as it is familiar.

And the sounds!

Even in the 40s, this is a movie that delivers a richly layered soundtrack that rivals (if not downright trumps) the over-mixed, over-crowded digital aural blankets so prevalent in contemporary movies - but in glorious, delicious optical mono. And the music! Bands playing, tenors trilling; the movie is blessed with all this in addition to the almost continuous use of vocal and instrumental renderings of Palmer & Ward's insanely popular ditty of the period "The Band Played On" (which was re-popularized after the release of The Strawberry Blonde).

Walsh lays an incredibly rich tapestry before us. It's all that money could buy and then some - not surprising as The Strawberry Blonde was born out of the glory that was Warner Brothers studios. Walsh, began his career as an actor during the silent era and eventually moved into production. He worked as an assistant director to the legendary, groundbreaking D.W. Griffith - the height of Walsh's mentorship under cinema's first true master of cinematic narrative was assisting in the direction and co-editing the immortal Birth of a Nation. In addition to learning the ins and outs of narrative, editing and the use of the frame, Walsh even credited Griffith with his learning everything about techniques of production and production management - all contributors to Walsh's command of the film medium. In spite of this, Walsh was a contract director at the staid Paramount Pictures during the early sound period and his work here was perfunctory at best. However, when he moved to Warner Brothers, he positively exploded.

Walsh was one of those directors who thrived on collaborative relationships with people as brilliant as he was. Never surrounding himself with uninspiring yes-men, he worked in tandem with only the best artists and craftsmen. This aroused a spirit of artistry that was even greater than what he was naturally imbued with. At Warner Brothers, many of his best films were in collaboration with the visionary producer Hal B. Wallis (who would go on to produce Casablanca). Wallis was a showman par excellence and Walsh was a cinematic storyteller of the same order. They were formidable creative collaborators. Add to this that Walsh was always fixated on stories about "the little guy" or regular "Joes" against the backdrop of worlds bigger than they were, he and Wallis made ideal bedfellows - Wallis loved heroes, Walsh loved making all his characters bigger than life (yet in so doing, infusing them with a life force more real and sophisticated than most studio productions).

The Strawberry Blonde excels in this notion of making its little guy a hero. Biff is someone who wants more out of life than what's normally dealt to Joe-Blows, but he doesn't think, even for a second, that it will be handed to him. He works his butt off in matters of both his career and the heart. When he falls big-time for the coquette-ish Virginia, he's briefly afforded a taste of what he thinks would be Heaven-on-Earth, but as the film progresses, she has her sights set on bigger things and she not only breaks his heart, but eventually, her true colours are revealed. She's as exploitative and manipulative as Biff's "friend" Hugo. Virginia and Hugo become a match made in Heaven - or rather, Hell. Biff, on the other hand, is saddled with a fifth wheel in the romantic roundelay - though eventually, Amy offers the sort of love and support he needs - this is no mere infatuation as it was with Virginia, but deep and soulful. Even when Biff is offered a high-paying, high-ranking position with Hugo, he desperately wants to work hard and learn the business and experiences considerable frustration that his only job appears to be reading the morning papers and signing contracts he doesn't understand.

The character of Amy is beautifully rendered and way ahead of both the times of when the movie was made and certainly during the times in which the movie is set. She works as a nurse, and on the first double date twixt herself, Virginia, Biff and Hugo, she shows up adorned in her nurse uniform. Virginia - dolled up in all her finery - scolds Amy, but the fifth-wheel will have none of it. She's proud to be a working woman, a caregiver and intends to go straight to a nightshift at the hospital after a night on the town. She's also surprisingly and delightfully straightforward (modern, if you will) with respect to sexuality and in one of the best scenes in the movie, she shocks a horrified Biff with her modern frankness in matters of amore.

In contrast, Virginia is a gold-digging tease - all talk, no action - and unlike Amy, Virginia's talk is bubbly and empty-headed. Amy displays her own brand of froth, but her sex appeal comes from open-mindedness, intelligence, a keen wit, political savvy and overall, a deep, genuine sense of caring. Virginia chides Amy for being a suffragette, but she's unapologetic - Amy is a firm believer and fighter for the rights of women, but at the same time, she wants to make a place for herself in the world with a man - not as her ruler and/or protector, but in an equal partnership founded in love, mutual respect and making a better life for both of them and those around them.

One of the aspects of this tale that resonates in contemporary terms is the notion of how the rich exploit and deceive the poor. A turn in the tale has overtones of tragedy. Once Biff is duped into joining Hugo's company, he becomes the fall guy in an illegal development scam. Even here, though, Walsh focuses on the indomitability of the working guy and we see strife metamorphosize into strength and Biff's character is deepened in his resolve to get free of the shackles imposed upon him by the dishonesty and thievery of the "ruling" class.

All of this is played by an astounding all-star cast. As Cagney proved time and time again, he was more than just a movie tough guy. Certainly in Footlight Parade and Yankee Doodle Dandy, he was a spectacular song and dance man and here, he's a terrific, (though pugnacious) romantic leading man with a great sense of humour. Olivia De Havilland offers up a snappy, sexy leading lady, far removed from the whiny, helpless, long-suffering Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind. Rita Hayworth is her super-sexy self, while Jack Carson, George Tobias and Alan Hale lend the sort of magnificent support as character actors that the Warners stable always offered up.

Not only was Walsh endowed with an eye to championing the rights of the impoverished (or, in the cases of some, at least understanding when impoverishment led to socially deviant behaviour), but he was, thanks to producer Wallis, given magnificent material to work with. Based on a popular play, this was the second of three screen versions of this tale. Its screenplay was provided by the brilliant Epstein twins, Julius and Phillip (Daughters Courageous, Four Wives, The Man Who Came To Dinner, Casablanca) and with the outstanding Raoul Walsh at the helm, Strawberry Blonde is a truly delightful and intelligent romantic comedy - one for the ages and beyond.

THE FILM CORNER RATING **** 4 Stars

Strawberry Blonde is available on DVD through the on-demand Warner Archives.

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2014 (TIFF GALA)

Boob Job Fonda,
Cuckold Bateman.
Dysfunctional
Shiva Sitters.
Rose Byrne
Cutesy-pies it up.

This Is Where I Leave You (2014)
Dir. Shawn Levy
Starring: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Ben Schwartz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It would take a death in the family to get the Altmans under one roof again. Luckily the loving hubby of Hilary (Jane Fonda), a famous sex therapist with a new boob job, has just died. His last request, in spite of not being religious, is that his surgery-enhanced wife and his kids sit Shiva for him. Oy! The kids have their own problems. Judd (Jason Bateman) a recently-cuckolded radio producer, the unhappily married Wendy (Tina Fey), Phillip (Adam Driver) the womanizing baby of the family and Paul (Corey Stoll) the eldest son who's not only a dullard but drawing blanks with his wife to have their first child, all agree to seven days of mourning and reflection, and all living in their parents' house.

Needless to say, this dysfunctional family spars endlessly, but in so doing, they come to new understandings and discover how much they all really love each other.

Isn't that special?

Uh, not really. In spite of a few good lines sprinkled throughout and a uniformly fine cast, This Is Where I Leave You is pretty much a case of been-there-done-that. Playing like an extended TV sitcom episode, it even rushes to a climax where everyone and everything converges to tie up most of the loose ends into relatively neat bows. Director Shawn Levy, who surprisingly generated a solid science fiction action-adventure romp, 2011's Reel Steel and the fun fantasy of A Night At The Museum, falls back on his competent, but unexciting camera jockeying comfort zone from such unexceptional comedies as Cheaper By the Dozen, The Pink Panther and Date Night.

It would take an incredibly indiscriminate audience to swallow this with anything more exciting than the kind of blank passivity one reserves for time-killing, pure and simple. For me, the only thing that piqued my interest were some strangely coincidental items which inspired a bit of conspiracy theory conjecture on my part. I found it mildly annoying that this attractive cast living in an upscale environment were engaging in all manner of boozing and ingestion of both illicit and prescription drugs. At one point, Jane Fonda's character quips that she's popping Xanax like candies. My mind started to reel. Isn't Jane Fonda married to Ted Turner, I thought? He's the multi-zillion-billion-kajillion-aire who has been advocating all manner of culling poor people from the face of the planet in order to save it. I'm watching the movie and doing the math. Hmmm. Jane Fonda. Xanax as candy. Rich, attractive people engaging in addictive behaviour. TED TURNER. Population Reduction. Eugenics. Oh My God! Hollywood, the propaganda machine of the rich and famous.

All of this was floating through my head while watching this movie to alleviate the been-there-done-that boredom I was feeling, which certainly says A LOT about this picture's numbing mediocrity.

Then it occurred to me that Fonda and Turner divorced some time ago.

Still, I thought. Anything's possible.

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

This is Where I Leave You is a Gala Presentation at TIFF 2014 and a Warner Bros. release.

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EDGE OF TOMORROW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - "Groundhog Day" with Tom Cruise fighting deadly aliens.

TOM CRUISE in GROUNDHOG DAY w/aliens at, I kid you not, Verdun.

The Post-Preggers Emily Blunt,
having shed her porcine cellulite
is blessedly & newly lithe under
the cover of Heavy Metal.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) **
Dir. Doug Liman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's very little to say about Edge of Tomorrow. The picture is pretty much a remake of Groundhog Day and Starship Troopers without the belly laughs of the former and sans the glorious satirical jabs of the latter. With a few Jackson Pollock dribblings of Pacific Rim here and a healthy dollop (or three) of Saving Private Ryan-like D-Day carnage there, our movie wears a myriad of derivative elements ever-so proudly on its sleeve. Splashed indelicately with the propagandistic spirit of Leni Riefenstahl, one of its saving graces is the absence of faceless hordes of Allah-worshipping villains. They're substituted with gooey liquorice-coloured gummy aliens (no doubt as representative of Islam as big bugs might have represented commies in the Hollywood output of the Cold War) and in spite of an international military effort, it takes an American, 'natch, to win the war - and I'm not kidding here, on the historical site of the already blood-soaked WWI fields of the battle of Verdun.

The cherries jubilee over this huge bowl of a Baskin-Robbins hit parade all mushed together is experiencing the whole mess with Tom Cruise in his buff 50+ glory and the newly-lithe post-preggers-Miss-Piggy Emily Blunt joining forces agin the alien invaders in order to save mankind. (Sorry for the spoiler. I'm sure you'd have had absolutely no idea that the winning couple would save the Earth.)

Cruise plays the armed forces public face of propaganda, but as such, the handsome major with the winning Tom Cruise smile has never seen action beyond basic training. When the armies of the world unite, the new General is none other than a very grumpy Brendan Gleeson who orders Cruise to the front lines. The master of P.R. spin won't have any of it, though, and threatens the dour, pudgy Irish commander with a shit storm of bad publicity. The inscrutable Gleeson lets Cruise think he can coast through the rest of the war, then unexpectedly orders our boy under arrest. Stripped of his officer's rank. Cruise is tossed in with the regular grunts and placed under the strict command of the gung-ho buzz-cut pate of Bill Paxton.

Within no time, Cruise is dumped upon a raging battlefield wherein he's summarily attacked and killed by one of the alien gummy spiders, but not before blasting the crap out of his creepy killer. This ties Cruise telepathically and inextricably to the insect army as he's now infected with the blood of the marauders which allows them, and now him, to predict various outcomes. Cruise, you see, doesn't really die. Instead, being killed allows our hero to spin back in time to repeat the events of the day until he tediously, incrementally makes progress - including his becoming an über-soldier with the assistance of master bug killer Blunt.

As there's never any doubt as to the outcome, all that remains is for us to sit back and watch how Cruise gets it right through innumerable stabs at the proceedings. This is mildly engaging for about 30 minutes of screen time.

The soldiers battling the aliens are equipped with Robocop-style exo-skeletons of steel armour and a variety of weapons. The suits are as boringly designed as the aliens, but insult is added to the injury of the soldiers' armour as the design of the battle gear elicits occasional unintentional laughs. Doug Liman's direction is, thankfully, more solid than the usual boneheads assigned to craft these noisy cinematic roller coaster rides. Alas, the movie overstays its welcome and we're barraged with yet another empty-headed state-of-the-art brain-cel sucker.

There is one nice bit of recurring humour in the picture. When things get a bit too hairy and a new kickstart is needed, Emily Blunt, maintaining a Buster-Keaton-ish countenance, simply raises her handgun, points it at Cruise's head and blasts it off.

This is almost as satisfying as the film's final image of Cruise après victory as he flashes that multi-billion-dollar smile at Blunt. Now that the fighting is over, the boinking can begin.

Edge of Tomorrow is in mega-wide-release all over the world via Warner Bros. It's available in 3-D and 3-D IMAX choices, but I saw it in good, old-fashioned 2-D and doubt the added cost of those horrendously flawed options will make much of a difference.

GODZILLA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Dull, humourless remake lacks powerful political context of GOJIRA

GODZILLA QUIZ: WHAT'S SCARIER?
(I) Ken Watanabe (left) at the L.A. premiere of GODZILLA
(II) Ken Watanabe (bottom right) not changing his expression in GODZILLA
(III) Mickey Rooney (top right in duplicate) in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

Godzilla (2014) TURD FOUND BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL AND DINING LOUNGE
Dir. Gareth Edwards, Script: Max Borenstein and 4 (!!!) other writers, Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who in their right mind would entrust a multi-million-dollar remake of Godzilla to a director whose only claim to fame was a precious, twee and boring no-budget indie movie called Monsters that was self-consciously arty and only really appealed to pretentious boneheads who went on at length about the film's "smart" reliance upon character in stead of carnage? Well, who do you think? A major studio (Warner Brothers) and a production company financed solely on Wall Street by rich assholes wanting a piece of the glamour-pie motion pictures can deliver (Legendary Pictures). That's who.

The results are predictable. Eschewing all manner of genuine political context and zapping out every ounce of what made the Toho Studio production of Ishirō Honda's stunning 1954 Gojira so powerful (the monster was a metaphoric representation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Godzilla (2014) manages to make even the woeful American re-cut of Honda's original, Godzilla - King of the Monsters (featuring a bunch of useless footage of Raymond Burr as an American journalist) look like a masterpiece. Edwards is a bookish talent at best and his rendering of the tale is mostly muted with plodding, humourless moments of deep concern, punctuated by very loud moments of battle and carnage shot in a manner Edwards assumed was oh-so arty (the camera is never where it could be illogically which is a nice idea in theory, but as Edwards incompetently handles it, dramatically impractical).

There's an accent on character here, but it's strictly by-the-numbers. That's not all the fault of the director since the screenplay was cobbled together by 5 writers (some credited, others not) and we're forced to follow a tale that lumbers across two time periods and all over God's Green Earth (well, mostly America) with a clutch of cliched and throughly uninteresting cardboard cutouts.

During the pre-credit sequence it's revealed that during an atomic bomb test during the 50s in the ocean near Japan that some sort of creature appeared, but disappeared just as quickly as it was spotted. About 40-or-so years pass and two scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) discover a super-duper humungous skeleton and a couple of egg-like pods in a Filipino strip mine. One of the eggs appears to have hatched. This inspires Ken Watanabe to display the only expression he can seem to muster for the entire picture, concern.

Meanwhile in Japan, married American nuke specialists played by Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche work in a Japanese nuclear power plant and discover some mega-weird seismic shit going on beneath the water's surface. The plant soon explodes and sadly, the only actor worth watching in the entire movie, Binoche 'natch, dies.

This brings us to present day. Cranston's son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is now an explosive expert for the Navy in San Francisco where he lives with his nurse wifey (Elizabeth Olsen) and their fucking obnoxious kid. Taylor-Johnson's been away on a long tour of duty, but he's forced to leave his family when he finds out his Dad's been arrested in Japan for trespassing on the site of the nuclear accident which has been under quarantine all these decades.

Once reunited in the Land of Nippon, father and son sneak into the quarantine zone because his Dad has a bunch of data he wants to retrieve. Upon doing so, some armed soldiers find them. This time, though, no arrests are made. They're taken to a secret facility deep below the ground where we find, yee-haa, Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins examining some kind of creatures in a chrysalis form. The bugger mutates, wreaks havoc and escapes, not before killing Daddy Cranston.

David Strathairn soon enters the picture as a high-ranking military official and we find out that the military knows of Godzilla existence and has been tracking it for years. The creature that recently hatched is on its way to a nuclear waste disposal site because, it seems, the creature feeds on radiation. And guess what? That pesky pod that hatched a few years ago is also on its way to the same destination. One's a male, the other's a female and if, after a radiation buffet they decide to fuck, there's going to be the possibility of more creatures like them.

For some reason, Watanabe has been studying these creatures for nearly two decades and is revered by the military for his expertise. However, all he seems to do is register concern and appears to really not know much of anything about the creatures save for one salient detail which, ultimately, is a guess.

"Godzilla seek to maintain balance," notes Watanabe with, you guessed it, concern.

What-the-fuck-ever. We're almost an hour into this lugubrious mess and have another hour to go. In spite of some monster action, there's also endlessly dull sections and we have to keep following Taylor-Johnson as he bops from Hawaii, to Nevada and then San Francisco. At least, in fairness to Watanabe, he is able to muster one expression. The woeful Taylor-Johnson is only able to convey complete blankness. He's a dreadful actor with all the screen presence of a cipher. Elizabeth Olsen is not much better. Not only is she a complete blank slate, but her character is so stupid that she stays in the hospital to tend to all the casualties from an attack by the monsters and puts her annoying kid on a school bus that just happens to get trapped on the Golden Gate bridge in a traffic jam - just as Godzilla is heading towards it. The military has set off nukes to kill the monsters, but somehow, Watanabe convinces Strathairn to let Godzilla fight it out with the two flying creatures ready to get down and dirty to procreate. This means Taylor-Johnson must risk life and limb to defuse the nukes.

He survives. So does his wife. So does his obnoxious brat. Godzilla kills the bad monsters, but sadly dies when crushed by a skyscraper. Or does he? Nope. He's alive. Godzilla is here for AMERICA. He wanders back into the ocean where he'll remain until the sequel.

If you see this movie, your pocket will have been picked and will be picked again and again via the inevitable sequels.

For my money, I'm just going to watch the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Gojira again.

Godzilla is playing all over the world via Warner Brothers.

VERONICA MARS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Movies are getting so awful that too many feel like bad TV.

*NOTE* I couldn't believe how awful this movie was. After I wrote this review, I did a quickie Google and discovered a whole lot of background info that makes me hate this movie even more. I'm especially happy to watch movies without knowing anything (or as little as humanly possible) about them and even happier to not write the pieces with pre-conceived notions (well, as best as one can in this day and age). I'm also happy I don't watch TV or trailers, nor read reviews, puff pieces or press kits before I see movies and write about them. In spite of what I now know about this horrendous excuse for a "major" motion picture, I'm even happier to stand by this review without amending it to reflect any of the ghastly information that now roils about in my brain like some rogue tapeworm bent on total ingestion.

Beneath my Beautiful Golden Tresses is, uh, nothing - reflecting, of course,
the collective total I.Q. of my loyal fans who love me without even thinking
about it, because happily, they can't think. Kinda like me. Tee-hee-hee!!!

Veronica Mars (2014)
LOWEST FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL and DINING LOUNGE
Dir. Rob Thomas, Starring: Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni
Review By Greg Klymkiw


What in Christ's name is this movie? Why was it made? Who is it supposed to please? How can any major feature film be so awful? How can a respected studio like Warner Brothers attach themselves to a feature film that seems, for all intents and purposes, to be little more than a vapid, incompetently crafted television drama stretched out to an interminable length?

I normally would have walked out of something this dreadful after two minutes, but I was, frankly, so utterly agog at the film's wretchedness and inconsequence I girded my mighty loins and nailed my feet to the floor.

The first ten (or maybe longer) minutes of the movie is some of the most ludicrous expositional material I've ever seen in any movie - ever. At least it seemed that way. Incomprehensibly shoehorned and top loaded into the picture is a putrid miasma of horrendously written voice-over that explained a whole whack of information so quickly that all I could really glean from it was that the main character was once a teenage private detective in a small California resort town and now, many years later, finds herself in the big city looking for a job as a lawyer in a high-profile firm.

The voice-over, however, is not only incomprehensible, but so flatly delivered by Kristen Bell, the purported actress in the title role, that when she finally opens her mouth by way of interacting with other characters, her delivery is as fake and vapid as the dialogue implanted in her brain via microchip. It's impossible to believe she could even graduate from the scuzziest community college with a certificate in septic sanitation maintenance, let alone garner a degree in Psychology and then (I guffawed) Law.

When it appears that an old friend (we're supposed to know he's an old friend because the movie tells us in the aforementioned expositional voiceover) is being charged with murder, our heroine hightails it back to her hometown and we're forced to suffer through a lugubrious series of perfunctory TV-style murder mystery machinations, punctuated every so often as Veronica reunites with a myriad of characters introduced to us in the said same aforementioned expositional voiceover and at this point, we still don't really know who anyone is as none of them appear to resemble characters in a movie other than the fact that the movie, via the - ahem - said same aforementioned expositional voiceover - tells us they're characters.

The only thing for sure is that our title character knows who they are.

The movie continues to plod mercilessly through one of the most uninteresting murder mysteries ever committed to film and we're forced to tolerate a hit parade of mostly no-name actors who look like they're delivering lines by rote in an overlong failed television pilot. There are minor appearances - extended cameos - by real actors like Jamie Lee Curtis and James Franco, who all provide ever-so brief oases from the dreadful semi-sitcom-styled acting.

Most egregiously, we have to experience a solid performance, in spite of the horrendous script, from Enrico Colantoni who seems like he deserves a more distinguished career than playing second fiddle to Kristen Bell whose only claim to fame was making poor Jason Segel's life miserable in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and prancing around in her knickers in the kitsch-fest Burlesque. I can't, sadly remember ever seeing Colantoni in any features films of note, but he appeared in a great Canadian short film called Winter Garden from earlier last year. If the Gods are smiling, he might still knock us on our butts with work in a terrific feature with a great role and real writing. In the 70s, he'd have had a decent shot as a leading character star a la Gene Hackman, but nobody makes movies like that anymore other than Quentin Tarantino. Hmmmmmmmmm. If I were Colantoni's agent, I know who's door I'd be knocking on.

As for direction - what direction? Rob Thomas, the no-name first-time feature director (well, I assume it's a first feature since I try to see every feature that opens and I'd remember the name of anyone so bereft of talent) proves that he can direct bad overlong television, but he clearly can't even do it competently. His coverage is so pathetically generated I'd hazard a guess that he might actually be the directorial equivalent to Mr. Magoo.

Earlier I asked who this movie is for. I saw it with a whole mess of tween and teen girls and their mothers. They all seemed to know what was going on and squealed with delight at every character introduction and reference to plot points regurgitated later on in the movie from the ludicrous - you guessed it - said same aforementioned expositional voiceover.

Christ, I felt like I was sitting through those wretched Sex and the City movies. Though Veronica Mars is thankfully without the equine Sarah Jessica Harper braying throughout the movie, I was even more appalled to see such young ladies in the audience shovelling this crap down their gullets. It's one thing seeing bovine forty-something women screeching over Sex and the City, but here we're talking about the next generation.

All I can do is sigh and continue to mourn at the cultural decline of Western Civilization.

"Veronica Mars" is not, it seems, in that wide of a theatrical release via Warner Bros. but mostly available on VOD.

THE BLIND SIDE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - On the precipice of Sandra Bullock possibly winning another Oscar for an awful movie, perhaps the time is right to look at the awful movie that started it all.

"Look, a lot of rich White people, but mostly me, have been really, really
kind to you and I think you better start winning some games - not for
us, but for yourself. Well, and for me, too. Mostly for me, okay?
But mostly, TO BETTER YOURSELF!!!"

The Blind Side (2009) *½
dir. John Lee Hancock
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Kathy Bates

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching people be nice to other people is, for the most part, pretty boring. It's simply and unequivocally not very interesting and as such, makes for poor drama. In fact, it pretty much makes for NO drama at all. As Frank Capra proved on so many occasions, the only time in the movies that seeing people be nice to other people had anything in the way of dramatic impact was when the feel-good cinematic epiphanies were preceded by pain, suffering and/or conflict of the most unbearable kind.

The Blind Side is pretty unbearable, too, but not because the movie drags us through hot coals to get to the nirvana of feel-good, but because it's just so unbearably... feel-good.

Based on the true story of rich White people who helped a poor Black boy become a football player,The Blind Side could have been unbearable on the same kind of political grounds that so many movies have been where rich White people are seen as the real heroes in the salvation of Black people from their "lowly" station. This, however, is the least of the movie's problems.

The picture's biggest failing is that a lot happens, but for most of the film's running time it feels like not much of ANYTHING has happened.

Real-life football legend Michael Oher (surname pronounced like "oar") is fictionally presented to us in his adolescence as a big, quiet, seemingly oafish, physically powerful and possibly retarded Black boy - kind of like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. His Momma is a crack addict, but luckily, a kindly neighbour from the wrong side of the Memphis tracks has not only provided him with a home, but is especially kind to him by taking the lad to a high-toned private Christian school to get an education and possibly a sports scholarship. The Coach at the school also proves to be very kind to Michael and fights the good fight with the school administration to let him be admitted as a student. Some of the teachers are not pleased with his lack of academic prowess, but sooner than you can say, "White people are the saviours of Black people", the Science teacher realizes how smart he is and becomes very kind to him. Soon, all the teachers are kind to him (with the exception of the nasty English teacher who thinks he is an illiterate moron).

Alas, Michael becomes homeless when the kindly fellow from the beginning of the movie is unable to extend further kindness since his offscreen wife (like in Diner where we hear, but don't see Steve Guttenberg's wife-to-be) wants this large homeless boy off their couch. Michael sleeps where he can, hand washes his clothes in a laundromat and dries them in dryers left spinning and unattended. Still, this is a minor setback since by this point, so many people have been kind to him, that it's merely a matter of running time before someone will be kind to him again.

In the school yard, for example, when Michael sees some cute little girls on the swings and tries to give them a push, they run away - thinking, perhaps, that he's Chester the Child Molester. Well, sooner than you can say, "White people say wise things to Black people they could never have thought of by themselves," in walks a horrendously cute little White boy (Jae Head) who is quick with the wisecracks and overflowing with precocity. "Try smiling," Whitey says to the hulking, dour Black boy. And Goldurn' all ta' hail, if'n dis' don't work wonders. Michael smiles and soon, this 200 pounds of brawn is happily pushing pubescent girlies on the swings. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but this CAN work for child molesters, mais non?)

At this point in the proceedings, things could be going a lot worse for our hero, but so far, people have been kind to him. Then one night, the rain comes down like cats and dogs. The White boy and his family drive by our drenched hero and the Mom (Sandra Bullock) is shocked that this boy is homeless. Quicker than you can say, "Rich White people are the only ones who can put roofs over the heads of homeless Black people," she lets him sleep in their suburban mini-mansion. At first, he sleeps on the couch, but when his girth threatens to collapse it, Mom kindly buys a bed and gives him his own room.

Mom takes a real shine to this silent oaf and proceeds, for most of the film's interminable running time, to be... you guessed it!... kind to him. Her kindness is overflowing. One scene after another follows where Mom is not only kind to him, but gets others to be kind to him to.

One of Mom's friends remarks, "You're really changing that boy's life." Mom stares off wistfully and says, "No, he's changing mine." How he's changing HER life is a tad beyond me. She's gorgeous, has a gorgeous husband, two gorgeous kids, a gorgeous mansion and a gorgeous wardrobe. Since she's been very kind to him already, one can only suspect that her life changes since she becomes even MORE kind to him. Eventually, everything this Black boy deserves is handed to him on a silver platter - thanks to the kindness of Mom and so many other kind White people.

But wait! Conflict is on the horizon! To get into college to play football, our hero needs a higher Grade Point Average.Well, you might be surprised to hear this, but Mom hires him a private tutor (Kathy Bates). Damn, this tutor is good! And most of all, she is so kind to him. Even more surprising is that his teachers are kind to him and give him the support he needs to get the grades he needs.

But, hark! Do I hear the sound of even more conflict a-rumbling?

You bet! Remember that mean English teacher? Well, he's still pretty mean and it looks like he might not give our boy the grade he needs.

Oops, false alarm! He's kind too. Those pesky English teachers may seem like old sticks in the mud, but deep down, they're very kind - especially when they're White and want to teach some hard academic lessons to Black people that other White people are afraid to teach.

During the last few minutes of the movie, there is one final bit of conflict when a mean Black lady puts some bad ideas into our hero's head about the rich White lady who is so kind to him and he goes back to the Projects where he meets some not-very-nice Black boys and things get a tiny bit too unpleasant for all concerned.

Thankfully, this does not last long. Kindness rules and all is well again.

Written (I use the term loosely here) and directed (so to speak) by John Lee Hancock, The Blind Side is a movie that has very little going for it - no drama, virtually no conflict or tension, a running time that feels at least forty five minutes too long, a vaguely foul odour of racial condescension and globs of un-earned feel-good.

If, however, there is a plus-side to this odious trough of pap, it's oddly displayed in the presence and performance of Sandra Bullock. She is someone I always found incredibly hard to take. Her earnest perkiness, a perpetually stupid grin plastered on that long, horsey face and a yippy-yappy voice that made me long for the incessant barking of a rabid chihuahua always inspired in me a considerable expulsion of bile.

These feelings eventually shifted from nut-sack squeezing to admiration and, I must shyly admit to a regained firmness of a key appendage at the very sight of her. Somewhere around the time of her appearance in Paul Haggis's heavy-handed, overrated glorified TV-movie Crash, Bullock blossomed into something far more palatable and genuinely appealing. Some age, some maturity, some well-placed heft on her frame have all contributed to the enhancement of her ability to woo the lens of the camera. She also invested her peformance in Crash and the flawed, but underrated Alejandro Agresti film The Lake House with the kind of chops I never realized she had. In the latter title, she actually moved me. And no, it wasn't a bowel movement. The girl made me cry. And Christ Almighty! I even found her sexy and funny in "The Proposal".

In The Blind Side, she commands the screen like a pitbull - ravaging the lens with the kind of intensity I wish the movie itself had. Her performance has Oscar-bait written all over it, but within that context, I'd have to say it's entirely deserved.

If her second Oscar win is for Gravity, it will be for an equally intolerable movie, but at least The Blind Side is moronically entertaining instead of the dull, dour and idiotically overrated sudsy space opera. The Blind Side works very hard to be as awful and stupid as it is.

A STAR IS BORN (1954) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

JUDY GARLAND
Mrs. Norman Maine

A Star Is Born (1954) dir. George Cukor *****
Starring: Judy Garland, James Mason, Charles Bickford, Jack Carson, Tommy Noonan, Amanda Blake

Review By By Greg Klymkiw

The devastating effects of alcoholism have seldom been captured with the kind of force that permeates director George Cukor's 1954 rendering of this classic tale of a star rising, another star burning out and the bond of love between them.

A Star is Born as a much-beloved screen entity began with David O. Selznick's early attempt at R.K.O. Pictures to tell a true-to-life story about Hollywood. Securing Adela Rogers St. Johns to write the story and subsequently employing a myriad of screenwriters, Selznick teamed up with his good friend George Cukor to bring the world What Price Hollywood? in 1932. It's a solid film with an especially great performance from Lowell Sherman as the alcoholic who feels he is holding back the genius of the woman he loves and subsequently commits suicide to "free" her. Constance Bennett in the female role was good, but not great. In 1937, Selznick returned to the material and delivered what would be the first picture officially bearing the title A Star is Born. This fine version, sans Cukor and helmed by the stalwart William Wellman, starred Fredric March as the drunken star and also featured exquisite production value. Alas, Janet Gaynor as its leading lady was simply no match for Mr. March. The film, whilst good, fell short of the greatness it was clearly striving for.

The cinematic marriage made in Heaven for this material occurred when Judy Garland's husband, Sidney Luft, seeking a comeback project for his troubled wife, convinced Warner Brothers to bankroll a musical version of the tale with George Cukor directing and the inimitable Moss Hart writing the screenplay adaptation of Dorothy Parker's 1937 screenplay. The casting of James Mason as Judy Garland's husband was a stroke of genius and for once, the material had two great stars - evenly matched in talent and screen presence.

The simple, well-told tale involves singer Esther Blodgett (Garland) who meets-cute with Hollywood star Norman Maine (Mason) at a ritzy film business fundraiser wherein the completely sloshed actor ends up on stage with a chorus line of performers, one of whom is our heroine. Esther knows who Norman is, and also realizes how drunk he is, but she's both star-struck and charmed and engages him in a fun, silly dance that entertains the audience and, in so doing, allows Norman to retain the dignity of a stalwart performer letting loose (as opposed to being seen as a buffoon).

Eventually, the two becomes friends and lovers and most importantly, Norman becomes Esther's benign Svengali and he uses all his powers to turn her into a huge star. The paternal studio head Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford) gets Esther to change her name to Vicki Lester and further builds her into the studio's most valuable asset.

Alas, Norman's continued drunken antics have made him a huge liability to the studio and his contract is not renewed. People he thought were his friends ignore him, and the slimy studio publicity chief played by the inimitable Jack Carson, tell hims to his face how much he's always hated him and pretended to be his friend because it was his job. This latter blow comes after Norman is off the wagon and leads to him hitting the bottle even harder.

Esther/Vicki rises to the top, and Norman falls further than anyone could have imagined. Loving his wife desperately, but feeling he is holding her back, Norman makes what he thinks is the ultimate sacrifice so she can truly shine.

While there are plenty of musical numbers in the picture - including Garland's knockout rendition of Arlen and Gershwin's great song "The Man That Got Away" - the movie is at its absolute best when Garland and Mason share the screen together. Cukor and his two great actors brilliantly capture the initial attraction, their growing love, the mutual dependency upon each other (positive and negative) - all the ups and downs one expects from characters that are deeply wrought and ultimately, sympathetic because of the simple, delicate humanity with which they're handled.

An extremely interesting aspect to this story is that so many pictures from the Golden Age of Cinema were weepers of the highest order and often used female characters in the position of feeling like a millstone around either their lovers' or children's necks and making huge sacrifices to free those they love from their burdensome presence. "A Star is Born" - especially in this version - is a powerful reversal of this storytelling tradition.

One of the more astounding sequences in the movie is when Esther/Vicky is at the Academy Awards, desperately awaiting to see if she wins, but even more desperate as she wonders and waits where an absent Norman is. Garland's performance here is heartbreaking, but when Norman finally appears at the awards ceremony - completely plastered, Garland's performance reaches stratospheric heights when she deals with how Norman humiliates her.

Mason captures his character's pathetic inner helplessness while Garland displays pure love - not a stalwart attempt at maintaining dignity, but love! A love that means helping her husband at all costs and no matter how much he's made a fool of himself - Garland conveys that it is her love that is stronger than his illness and that sacrifice is perhaps the greatest force of love. In fact, her kind, resolute handling of the embarrassing situation plays as a sacrifice and yet, below the surface, there is the subtext - delivered mostly through Garland's performance - suggesting that for Esther/Vicki, helping someone you love maintain THEIR dignity might be SEEN as a sacrifice, but that she doesn't view it that way. It's what one does when one is in love.

One of the reasons Garland's Blodgett/Lester seems so evenly matched is the juxtaposition between one character's discovery and the other's loss - the latter clearly being the loss of one's way in the world to the point where the only way to move forward is to seek death. Garland discovers, not only her talent, but that she has the capacity for undying love and sensuality while Mason can only empower himself in making a star out of someone even as he has lost all of his lustre.

While there is a certain surface bravery to Mason's sacrifice, there is a cowardice to it as well - a cowardice that is only too human, and in so being, FEELS heroic. His sacrifice, however, pales in comparison to the endless sacrifices Garland makes.

It was my most recent viewing of this film, on the Warner Home Entertainment Blu-Ray Special Edition release where my eyes were drawn almost inextricably to the eyes of both performers. It was, perhaps the clarity of the format itself that allowed me access to the souls of the characters through these two pairs of eyes. Both Garland and Mason express a myriad of emotions and there's never a false note from either of them. And as truly great as Garland is in the film, we once again have a film version of the story where the actor playing Norman - in this case, Mason - is such a compelling tragic figure that it's impossible not to be deeply moved by him to the point where our heroine becomes somewhat muted in comparison.

Thankfully, though, Garland is only occasionally overshadowed by Mr. Mason and is certainly a match for him. At the conclusion of the film, when she proclaims that her name is "Mrs. Norman Maine" - suggesting, of course, how their souls are inextricably connected for an eternity - we realize just how utterly perfect Cukor's handling of this vital love is.

That said, Mason's last scenes in the magic hour of his final day on Earth, come close to ripping one's heart out of one's chest. The little looks and smiles of love and determination he delivers, wrench such pure emotion from an audience, that it's easy to see how Mason comes close to walking away with the picture. As well, anyone who has suffered from alcoholism either directly or indirectly will realize just how great Mason is in the picture.

It's truly a testament to Mason, Garland and Cukor that alcoholism is treated with all the sad truth the subject requires and most of all, that its viewed as it should be - a disease that can rip the lifeblood out of everyone, not just the individual afflicted with the disease.

A Star Is Born is a classic - end of story.

It might well be over fifty years old, but it feels as fresh and vital as if it had been made just yesterday.

"A Star Is Born" is available on Warner Home Entertainement on DVD and Blu-Ray with a restoration that brings the recut 177 minute version - as close to Cukor's original cut (over 180 mins.) before the studio truncated it to 154 minutes soon after its initial theatrical release. You'll also note I have made absolutely no mention of the execrable 1970s film version of the story. The less said about it, the better.

2 Movies opening this weekend (10/4/2013) that STINK: GRAVITY and PARKLAND - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw

Hi! My name is Sandy. I enjoy floating in my undies.
Too bad George Clooney is dead. Now he can't see
my hot bod. What's a girl to do? There aren't ANY
poor Black Boys up here to educate & encourage.

GRAVITY (2013) *1/2

Dir. Alfonso Cuarón

Starring:
Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

Review By Greg Klymkiw

NOTE: Seeing "Gravity" in 3-D adds NOTHING to the movie (as per usual). If you must waste your time and money, try to see it flat (2-D) and you'll at least be able to enjoy the visuals without the stupid 3-D glasses that mute the colour and contrast and pretty much everything else - and it will be a lot cheaper without paying surcharges for a sub-par product. HINT: It will be cheaper yet if you sneak in your own beverages and munchies.

Gravity is a two-hander involving George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as AMERICAN space station astronauts who get bombarded by a storm of debris from a nearby satellite that's been nuked by its NON-AMERICAN overlords because it's no longer working properly. As we all know, America NEVER does stupid things like that because AMERICA is NEVER responsible for creating ANY form of interstellar (or Earthly) polluton and once again, it is AMERICANS who are placed at risk by goddamned FOREIGNERS. The result of the incompetence of foreigners is that Bullock gets separated from her tie-cord. Luckily, Clooney rescues her. Unluckily, when he realizes that only one person can properly get into the space station and escape, he sacrifices himself and goes hurtling into space whilst Bullock - on her own - is left kickstart the escape pod get to a Chinese space station which, goddamn it, becomes very challenging because they're babbling in Chinese and Sandy doesn't speak Chinese because she isn't a goddamn foreigner and you'll no doubt be sitting on the edge of your seat screaming: "Jesus Christ! Can't they goddamn well speak American? The girl is in trouble." Goddamn foreigners!. From here, it's all Bullock all the time. Sort of. I won't ruin the pathetic surprise for you.

"Gravity" is in wide release via Warner Bros. Read my full review from the Toronto International Film Festival 2013 HERE.

Parkland (2013) *1/2
Dir. Peter Landesman
Starring: James Badge Dale, Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Paul Giamatti,
Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver, Jackie Earle Haley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Nobody believes the findings of the Warren Commission - we all know President John F. Kennedy was murdered by forces much larger than the lone patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. Parkland, the title signifying the name of the hospital in Dallas where both JFK and Oswald were unsuccessfully operated upon, is a lame, unnecessary exploration of that tragic day 5o years ago when our world changed forever. Shot in urgent annoying shaky-cam, blended with real news footage of the time, the film details the preparations leading up to Kennedy's visit to Dallas, his assassination, all the chaos of getting him to the hospital, the desperate unsuccessful attempts to keep him alive, the various law enforcement gymnastics with respect to the FBI, CIA, Dallas Police and the Secret Service, the assessment of the Zapruder 8mm home movie footage, the capture of Oswald, the subsequent shooting of Oswald, the unsuccessful attempt to keep him alive in the hospital and finally, juxtaposing the opulent state funeral of the slain president with the threadbare proceedings afforded to the purported assassin. Screenwriter-Director Landesman chooses to accept the Warren findings and re-enacts the hodgepodge of all the above with an all-star cast parading through and having no time to create anything resembling characters. The film's reliance on trick-pony all-star cameos reminded me of George Stevens all-star Jesus biopic The Greatest Story Ever Told - so much so I half expected John Wayne to wander into the Parkland Memorial Hospital in full Roman Centurion garb and stand over JFK's corpse and intone: "Truly this Man was the son of God," before realizing he'd stepped onto the wrong sound stage via some kind of Time Machine or wormhole.

"Parkland" is in theatrical release via Remstar - just in time to "celebrate" JFK's murder.

Read my full review from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2013) HERE.

THE CONJURING - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Audiences and critics desperate for non-formula summer fare settle for the dull formula of haunted house horror distinguished only by a fine cast working valiantly with middle of the road material that feels, on the surface, more original than the usual fare, but isn't.

The Conjuring (2013) **
Dir: James Wan
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Lili Taylor, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A working class family moves into a dream home in the country. Once they've loaded all their worldly goods into the spacious, but decidedly creaky old manor, Dad (Patrick Wilson) notices that their uncharacteristically-whimpering dog refuses to enter.

Gee, what could this mean? Might there be a problem?

"Ya think?" we answer with another question, in the parlance and manner of Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana.

Well, once all the bumps in the night start making themselves known, once a mysterious room in the cellar is found crammed with all manner of odd, creepy items (which in and of itself screams, "Get the fuck out of here!"), once Mom (Lili Taylor) keeps finding huge, painful bruises all over her body, once the kiddies are being grasped and pulled out of their beds by an unseen force, once Mom is home alone with a servant of Satan clumping about on its cloven hooves whilst hubby hits the road (he's a truck drivin' man, good buddy), it's pretty clear as crystal that there indeed might be some sort of a problem. Enter a couple of ghost hunters (Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson) and before you know it, all hell breaks loose - literally - because the malevolent presence is not ghostly at all - but, wait for it, kiddies... you betcha! You got it! You win the Kewpie Doll! It's demonic - a presence as mighty as Satan himself.

Oh, and it's a true story.

Luckily, for us, The Conjuring presents another presence within its competently dull framework - one that's neither ghostly nor demonic, but is in fact that nice Ukrainian girl from New Jersey who's garnered a fair number of nominations and awards for some good films, but has, more often than not, appeared in a huge swath of mediocre and downright dreadful pictures. As per usual, though, she's riveting in everything and her performance here is just as terrific as one expects her work to be. This lady is never just cashing a paycheque.

In fact, I always hope with every movie she appears in, that Vera Farmiga, a beautiful, expressive and intense actress if there ever was one, will have finally nabbed a role to propel her to the kind of stardom earned by Meryl Streep at a similar stage in her career. In fact, Farmiga strikes me as having all the potential in the world to be the Streep of her generation. Alas, aside from always being so much better than the vast majority of films she's actually in, Farmiga still hasn't been blessed with a role in a movie equivalent to the likes of early Streep roles in The Deer Hunter or Kramer Vs. Kramer and as she's grown by leaps and bounds with every year, there's been a dearth of decent movies to match her formidable talent. The few good films she's been in (The Departed, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), Farmiga takes a back seat to the male pyrotechnics (in the former) and, uh, the Holocaust and those cute little boys (in the latter). Her one genuinely great picture, Down to the Bone, was a few years ago now and relegated to indie status. Even her acclaimed and much-deserved Oscar-nominated performance in Jason Reitman's competently and almost agonizingly glib Up in the Air soars well above his picture which she elevated with her presence.

That The Conjuring is a big hit, fat with inexplicably ecstatic critical notices, might signal to the uninitiated that this is, indeed, IT. Well, her performance is unquestionably great, but once again, Farmiga is doing stellar work in an artistically cellar-dwelling picture. What might be the most positive outcome of this picture is that she'll now get a flurry of fine Streep-worthy roles in a passel o' decent pictures and possibly even gain more credibility for her burgeoning directing career.

As Lorraine Warren, the better half of the famous, real-life married couple who presided over a vast assortment of hauntings and demonic possessions, including the notorious Amityville Horror case, Farmiga stabs deeply into the role of the spiritual medium with a quietly nerve-jangled fervour. Like many great actors, she slices through flesh, fat, muscle and sinew, then hacks into the bone to reach the marrow. Here, though, it feels like Farmiga is doing more work than the connect-the-dots screenplay by twin brothers Chad and Cory Haynes who are responsible for writing some of the worst contemporary horror and suspense films including Whiteout, The Reaping and the utter dreck that is the House of Wax remake.

In fairness, while the screenplay for The Conjuring leaves a whole lot to be desired, it's practically a masterpiece compared to their previous efforts. For me, the most offensive story element is that the root of evil in the film is a demonic curse placed upon the land the home rests upon (and the surrounding areas) by a witch who murdered her children and committed suicide - resulting in a couple of centuries worth of hauntings, possessions and mysterious, often violent deaths. Look, I love horror movies - including several classics involving witches, but this is the 21st Century, folks, and we all acknowledge that women were abused, tortured and murdered by Christian zealots and the male patriarchy they represented to keep them in their place. The misogynistic aspects of the "evil" permeating the film is simply appalling.

I can deal with demons or Satan - though I'm usually more fond of ghosts - but using the female-hating trope of witchcraft as the origin of Satan's work is so boneheaded and frankly, given the film's popularity - especially, I suspect, amongst right-wing, God-Squad organized religion nuts - is tantamount to being little more than an insidious form of propaganda. This might not have been the intent of the screenwriting twins and director James Wan, but ignorance is frankly NEVER an acceptable defence. I'm all for bringing God and faith BACK into the equation of fighting evil in horror films, but the movie feels vaguely like Christian propaganda without the obsessive artistry of, for example, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Wan (Saw, Insidious) has never been an exciting director and frankly, to pull off demonic possession so that it REALLY knocks the wind out of you requires directors with some panache (Friedkin, Raimi, et al).

Wan's direction is certainly competent and he gets a few nods for attempting to create suspense via atmospheric horror rather than the usual pyrotechnics, but the screenplay is so boringly unoriginal that all we're finally left with IS Farmiga's richly layered performance. It's impossible to take one's eyes off her to such an extent that when she's not onscreen, the movie suffers immeasurably. Not that the other performances are bad, mind you - far from it - but the underlying material is so grocery-list-like that anyone surrounding the 110% served up by Farmiga is virtually blown away by her considerable gifts. Watson, Taylor and Livingston (as well as the rest of the cast) all acquit themselves admirably, but it's Farmiga who elevates her role and the material to stratospheric heights.

"The Conjuring" premiered at the FanTasia 2013 Film Festival in Montreal and opened to worldwide release via Warner Bros.