SORCERER (New Digital Restoration of the 1977 Classic, Supervised By Director William Friedkin) - Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw in his Colonial Report on Cinema from the Dominion of Canada in the super-cool movie mag in the UK, "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema".

SORCERER
*****

(1977)

Dir. William Friedkin

Starring

Roy Scheider

Francisco Rabal

Bruno Cremer

Amidou

Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw

In 1977, my virginal plunge into the sweaty, nerve-wracking maw of this insane jungle thriller about four desperate men transporting nitroglycerine across the most treacherous topography imaginable, was, for me, an epiphany. During a myriad of subsequent viewings, and now, with this brand new digital restoration overseen by director William Friedkin, Sorcerer was always, still remains and always will be a movie that repeatedly whacks you with a two-by-four across the teeth.

My review of this new restoration can be found in my column "The Colonial Report on Cinema from the Dominion of Canada" in the ever-so-cool UK-based movie mag "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema".

My full review of SORCERER can be read HERE.

The Toronto International Film Festival’s TIFF Bell Lightbox will be screening the all-new digital restoration (supervised by director William Friedkin) of the 1977 remake of The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer on 12, 15 and 18 April 2014 as a TIFF Cinematheque Special Screening. This is part of a grand spring series that includes a new 35mm restoration of Joseph Losey’s The Servant, new 35mm prints of Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, Nagisa Ôshima’s Boy, Alain Resnais’s Je t’aime, je t’aime, Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, a new digital restoration of the 248 minute ‘roadshow’ version of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra, new 4K digital restorations of Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House/Hausu, John Sturges’s The Great Escape, Elio Petri’s Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, and 35mm Archival prints of Humberto Solas’s Lucia and most excitingly, H.G. Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear.

Anyone planning to be in Toronto for these screenings is well advised to order seats in advance. For dates, tickets and further information, please visit the TIFF website HERE.

INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR. Review By Greg Klymkiw - Klymkiw HOT DOCS 2013 HOT PICKS

Interior. Leather Bar. (2013) ****
Dir. James Franco, Travis Mathews
Starring: James Franco, Val Lauren, Travis Mathews

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is one sloppy tossed salad of a movie. Adorned with thick runny lumps of yummy dressing that spew from a long-necked bottle, held and shaken with manly vigour over the wide awaiting receptacle, never mixed or smeared into the veins of fleshy arugula, lying in wait for a fork to prong into it to greedily ingest the globules that stick upon their resting place, this magnificent Salade de cinéma is an utterly pretentious, self-indulgent wank-fest of the highest (or lowest order, depending on how you view these things).

And Damn! It's a lot of fun.

James Franco, one of the great actors of the 21st century, teamed up with acclaimed queer filmmaker Travis Mathews to co-direct this exploration of gay male sexuality within the context of re-imagining 40 minutes of excised lost footage from Cruising, William Friedkin's MPAA-butchered masterpiece from 1980. A lack of time and money, however, forced the filmmakers of Interior. Leather Bar. to re-imagine their re-imagining, so what we're treated to is a documentary about the making of a re-imagining as re-imagined by Franco and Mathews before, during and after they re-imagine it.

Fine by me.

Franco, who seems particularly obsessed with what he might discover for (and about) himself (and, by extension, society as a whole), hires a straight actor (Val Lauren) to play the Al Pacino role from Cruising and film the entire process. Lauren and Franco engage in a series of conversations that feel very real (but conversely seem, perhaps, to be scripted) and deal with straight attitudes to gay sex in the world at large, but also within the macrocosmic context of the film-shoot itself. Lauren is constantly on edge and always questioning Franco's motives while Franco often retorts with the notion of how sexuality in the cinema (and in particular, gay sexuality) is repressed, while violence is celebrated. (Indeed, the MPAA ratings board were happy to allow all the graphic butchery to remain in the film over the explicit gay sex.)

Furthermore, Franco laments his upbringing (and that of straight society) which ignores, represses and/or vilifies gay sexuality. He uses toothpaste commercials to illustrate this. I mean, really, what's not to love about James Franco?

Cruising is the perfect launch pad for this exploration. The film was, and continues to be alternately vilified and celebrated by members of the gay community. Even during its making, hordes of angry gay men protested at the filming locations and the studio hired over 300 off-duty NYC officers to keep the peace. Mistakenly perceived as an anti-gay anthem on celluloid, Cruising is a relentless and unnerving mystery thriller about a "homo killer" on the loose in New York and a straight, doe-eyed rookie cop (played by Al Pacino) who matches the physical attributes of the victims and is sent to live undercover within the Big Apple's sect of leather bar S&M aficionados. Pacino becomes a sort of Dorothy in the Land of Oz - introduced to genuine friendship with a gay neighbour (Don Scardino) and most importantly, the joys of leather-clad gentlemen openly fellating, sodomizing and fist-fucking each other in gay leather bars whilst one of the best soundtracks in movie history grinds out the ever-so cool and malevolent sounds of John Hiatt, Rough Trade, Willy DeVille, Madelynn von Ritz, Lump and a bevy of others.

Friedkin's film is a masterpiece - albeit a flawed masterpiece. When submitting the film to the MPAA to get a rating, he was forced to make cuts totalling 40 minutes. This does wreak some havoc with the film's narrative, but what remains is a nightmarish vision of how homophobia (and closeted self-hatred) manifest themselves into the ultimate assault upon homosexuality - a serial killer who butchers beautiful young men he's attracted to during and/or after he's had sex with them runs rampant amongst the leather bar community clearly has considerable metaphoric value. Some might argue that Friedkin creates an inferno of evil when his camera "cruises" the streets and bars, but frankly, it's not this world of leather-clad Hershey Highway Lovers that ever seemed evil to me. It's all so stylishly, lovingly rendered that I always found it unbelievably sexy and cool. The men, all shapes and sizes, are simply mouth watering and the endless array of sexual activity is tantalizing.

At one point in Franco's film, he talks about his re-imagining by stating that he wants to render the evil images from Friedkin's film into something fresh and beautiful. This is not the first, nor last time Franco contradicts himself in the movie (since he also extols the virtues of Cruising). I suspect these odd contradictions are part of the overall design and if not, they at least feel like it and add to the film's wonky charm.

And while this might sound weird, charm is what this movie has in spades. Franco and Mathews are a charming team and whether we see them in action during the prep or production, it's always a blast hearing Franco waxing eloquent while Mathews is a rock solid filmmaker attacking everything with both art and craft. Val Lauren is completely and utterly charming as the young actor chosen to recreate the Al Pacino role. What's always cool is that the film is capturing a genuine actor who must play the thing he is - a straight man who needs to cruise a bar. He's a bundle of trepidation and excitement. Watching the lad ruminate during prep, slowly get into character until he fits in the leather bar scenes perfectly and gaze on with Franco, agog, yet delighted with a sex act performed in front of them, it's so obvious why Franco loves working with him and how, if the heavens are properly aligned, this could be a star-making performance for Lauren.

The bottom line is this: I love James Franco, I love Cruising, I love Friedkin, I love charming, naked men and I love seeing stuff on screen that I can genuinely walk out of the cinema and declare I've never seen before. If you feel likewise, you'll probably love the movie as much as I do.

"Interior. Leather Bar." is playing at the Hot Docs Film Festival 2013. For tickets and showtimes, contact the Hot Docs website HERE."

Take a look at this sequence from CRUISING and THEN try to tell me that William Friedkin is NOT one of the world's greatest living film directors.What you'll see here are a series of montages with Al Pacino cruising bar after bar after bar. Includes, my fave, "Precinct Night" and some fab Crisco action.

Enjoy!

And here's a taste of INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR.

KILLER JOE (KILLER BILL) --- An appreciation of one of the greatest living American directors: WILLIAM FRIEDKIN - By Greg Klymkiw

KILLER JOE (KILLER BILL)
In Praise of William Friedkin
An Appreciation of a Great American Director

By Greg Klymkiw

A few days ago, I had the pleasure and honour to speak over the telephone with one of the world's greatest living filmmakers William Friedkin. Before diving into a delightful conversation about his new film and previous hits, I had to don my Geek FanBoy Hat and express my complete and utter love for Killer Joe.

So, somewhat nervously and haltingly I said:

"Now perhaps, Mr. Friedkin, even you will think I'm out of my mind - and I say this, only because whenever I tell many others my feelings about Killer Joe, they look at me as if I'm Norman Bates. But bear with me, here. The God's honest truth is this: When I first saw your film last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, I felt as if your movie was shooting thousands of volts of electricity through me. From beginning to end, my delight was so palpable that aside from constant shocks, surprises, jolts, gooseflesh and yes, laughs - many, many laughs of the most raucous variety - the joy your film brought me was physical, visceral and so insanely mind-numbing and mind-expanding all at once, that upon leaving the theatre after the lights came up, I can only describe how I felt in one word. Mr. Friedkin, your film put such a spring in my step that I felt utterly and positively . . . BUOYANT!"

Mr. Friedkin let out a huge laugh.

He repeated the word: "Buoyant!" and he continued laughing.

I suspect, given the fact that Killer Joe is one of the most violent and delectably nasty black-comedy-crime-thrillers in years that "buoyant" is the last word Mr. Friedkin would ever associate with someone's response to the picture.

To say this pleased me would be an understatement.

I love Friedkin, have always loved Friedkin and will, no doubt, continue to love Friedkin. In these dark days with American cinema plunging into the same (if not -gulp- worse) hollow pit it wallowed in during the period Pauline Kael more than adequately summed up as the "state of the art" 1980s, I am so grateful that a few filmmakers, like Friedkin, are left with the chutzpah to deliver movies that are as uncompromising as they are wildly entertaining.

For me, William Friedkin makes "feel good" movies.

Movies like The King's Speech to single out one especially execrable example of my worst celluloid nightmare, doesn't make me feel good at all. In fact, it gave me piles. If anything, when I see a movie that scares the shit out of me or drags me through mud AND is brilliantly and stylishly rendered, I feel mighty fine, indeed!

In addition to Friedkin and a few others, I often use Ulrich Seidl's Dogdays as an example of my idea of a "feel good" movie - one which wallows in the most grotesque human depravities, cruelties and all manner of nastiness and, in fact, has far more HUMANITY than a million King's Speech-type movies.

Is Friedkin, then, a humanist? Well, perhaps not in the Jean Renoir sense - though give me some time, and I could potentially argue that - but as horrific, harrowing or violent his work is, he does, much like the aforementioned Austrian madman Seidl find humanity in all manner of extreme human behaviour.

And in the case of Killer Joe, Friedkin also makes us laugh, which is the cherry on that particular sundae, gloopy-glopped ever-so generously with the syrup of White Trash depravity.

Besides, there are genuine "feel-good" pictures in the traditional sense that don't serve the empty calories offered-up by crap like The King's Speech. Frank Capra, for example, has often been wrongly chastised (mostly by assholes trying to be clever) as doling out sentimental globs of "Capra-corn". Nothing could be further from the truth within the context of his best movies.

Yes, It's a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Lady For a Day and Mr. Deeds Goes To Town to name just a few of Capra's "feel-good" efforts, are all infused with traditional elements of "feel good", but his characters and the audience are dragged through so many beds of hot coals to get there that we earn the right to feel good.

Even more interesting to me, though, is that I often feel Capra delivers a dual-edged sword on this front. Yes, WE usually feel good, but part of me wonders how his protagonists have truly been affected by the suffering they've gone through and the seemingly insurmountable hurdles they've had to mount - which they sometimes slam upon legs wide open, their scrotums and pudenda rendered to so much bruised pulp as they scramble to get back in the race of survival and eventual triumph.

Last month I had the pleasure of reading a fine piece on Friedkin by Olivier Père in "Cinema Scope" magazine. During the interview, Mr. Friedkin and Père had the pleasure, if you will, of being interrupted by two female diners. The two bovine gorgers had been eavesdropping on the conversation and for reasons known only to these busybodies, they jumped into the fray and chimed in on what movies are truly the best. "Movies that make people feel good, like The King's Speech," said one of the taste-deprived cud-chewers.

Once the ladies vacated the immediate vicinity, Friedkin made the following remarks to Mr. Père:

"These perfectly normal American women probably have an education, and are gainfully employed, but I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. The movies they liked, 'feel-good movies,' are fucking awful, beyond stupid, like Sex and the City. I don’t want to make films for these stupid women; I don’t care what they like or don’t like. I don’t respect their opinion; that is not an audience that wants to be challenged; they just want to 'feel good.'

Thank Christ Friedkin still makes movies. The brilliant Killer Joe features, among many audacious humanist activities, a femme fatale type forced at gunpoint to perform fellatio upon a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

That's pretty goddamned feel-good if you ask me.

Besides, who in their right mind wouldn't prefer forced chicken leg fellatio over a stuttering King taking forever to do his fucking job and deliver his goddamned speech or crass pre-menopausal consumption from a bunch of really grotesque actresses wearing expensive clothes?

Part of me wishes I could take those two aforementioned diners who interrupted Friedkin's interview with their bovine cud spewing and strap them into chairs, their eyes forced open with A Clockwork Orange-styled clips on their eyelids and enema hoses shoved deep up their butts while they're forced repeatedly to watch Cruising.

There's some mighty fine feel-good in that!

The bottom line remains the same.

Friedkin's output right from the beginning of his feature film career to the present day is proof positive of his greatness.

His early work is, to say the least, diverse. The Sonny and Cher movie Good Times is a bit of a mess, but it's amiable and entertaining in that lovely 60s/70s "head film" way. The Night They Raided Minsky's might, for some, be a bit overwrought, but it's got plenty in the way of good laughs.The Caretaker is still the best Pinter on film - bar none and continuing his streak of stage to screen adaptations, The Boys in the Band feels dated to some, but only because contemporary audiences usually have a hard time swallowing the painful in-the-closet self-loathing not uncommon for that era. Here as well, Friedkin's direction is dazzling. It's a marvellous pre-cursor to his canon of films involving claustrophobic spaces.

The French Connection is one of the greatest cop thrillers of all time. With a cinema verite style it jangles the nerves in ways similar films can only dream of.

Still the scariest film ever made, The Exorcist balances shocks with quiet Val Lewton inspired creepy crawly terror. The French Connection and The Exorcist are bonafide masterpieces of cinema and it sure doesn't get more feel-good than chasing down heroin dealers and doing battle with Satan.

Sorcerer is a passionate, audacious and thrilling remake of Clouzot's Wages of Fear. It's so intense and dangerous one suspects it represents the work of a certifiable madman.

Are there, perhaps, a few movies in the Friedkin canon that don't quite cut the mustard? Of course. The Brink's Job feels like it was destroyed by the studio, but has so many individual moments of greatness, especially from it's top-flight cast, that it might be due for some reassessment as a flawed masterwork. And yes, I'll say it - Deal of the Century, The Guardian and Jade all stink. Big deal. Capra, Ford, Cukor - the list goes on - all made a few stinkers. Besides, making a few stinkers can be bracing.

Cruising is a bonafide masterpiece. This absolutely terrifying and vicious thriller about a serial killer targeting gay men amongst a small NYC subculture was vilified at the time of its release by gay rights organizations. It's hardly homophobic, though I'd say the movie is definitely audacious and incendiary on a number of levels which place it well at the top of the heap of 70s policiers. Oh, and it really does scare the shit out of you.

To Live and Die in L.A. is a cop-crime picture that kicks mega-ass, comes close to the perfection of The French Connection and has a sympathetic psychopathic villain who makes the corrupt, nasty psychopathic cops far more insidiously evil. Along with Michael Mann's Manhunter, it's also a perfect rendering of the creepy emptiness of the loathsome 1980s.

Rampage still has one of the most powerful courtroom sequences in movie history when the prosecutor forces everyone to pay attention to the ticking clock for the amount of time a victim of torture takes to eventually die - no overt violence in the film (save for some horrendous stuff early on), but the whole picture is creepy, scary and sickening all the same. This overlooked and underrated movie is damn close to being a masterpiece. Oh, and it's unapologetically a pro-capital-punishment film. How more feel-good can a picture get?

Rules of Engagement and The Hunted are both solidly directed action pictures and Blue Chips is a terrific sports picture - one of the best, in fact. These all feel slightly like gun-for-hire efforts, save for clear dollops of Friedkin's distinctive voice as well as levels of proficiency that most directors will never rise to.

The first two-thirds of Bug are perfect and even the final third which, for me, is a bit of a wheel-spinner, is still damned entertaining. Friedkin's first collaboration with writer Tracy Letts is a tour-de-force two hander with Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd and more paranoia in 90 minutes than all the years put together of Art Bell on the radio waves.

And what, pray tell, of Killer Joe?

Every fucking frame of Killer Joe made me feel good to be alive.

"Buoyant", I believe, is the word I used.

Killer Joe (2011)
dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church, Juno Temple

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I don't think I'll have to kill her. Just slap that pretty face into hamburger meat."
- Jim Thompson dialogue from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing

At one point during William Friedkin's Killer Joe, an unexpected roundhouse to the face renders its recipient’s visage to a pulpy, swollen, glistening, blood-caked skillet of corned beef hash. Said recipient is then forced at gunpoint to fellate a grease-drenched KFC drumstick and moan in ecstasy while family-members have little choice but to witness this horrendous act of violence and humiliation.

William Friedkin, it seems, has his mojo back. (Not that he ever really lost it, but this movie is so tremendous, it just feels that way.)

He’s found his muse in Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts. The two collaborated in 2007 on the nerve-wracking film adaptation of Bug, a paranoia-laden thriller with Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd. Set mostly within the dank, smoky confines of a sleazy motel room, both dialogue and character was scrumptiously gothic. The narrative was full of unexpected beats, driving the action forward with so much mystery that we could never see what was coming. Bug was one of the most compelling and original works of its year.

Killer Joe is a total whack job of a movie, and delightfully so. I'd also suggest that like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom, Killer Joe is an ideal date movie. If your date isn't into any of these movies, you know he/she is not the guy/gal for you.

Set against the backdrop of Texas white trash, the picture opens with a torrential downpour that turns the mud-lot of a trailer park into the country-cousin of war-torn Beirut. Amidst tire tracks turning into small lakes, apocalyptic squalor and lightning flashes revealing a nasty barking mastiff, a scruffy Chris (Emile Hirsch), drenched from head to toe, bangs on the door of a trailer. When it creaks open, a muff-dive-view of the pubic thatch belonging to his ne'er do well Dad's girlfriend Sharla (Gina Gershon) leads Chris to the bleary-eyed Ansel (Thomas Haden Church).

Chris desperately needs to clear up a gambling debt and suggests they order a hit to knock off his Mom, Ansel’s ex-wife. She has a whopping life insurance policy and its sole recipient is Dottie (Juno Temple), the nubile, mentally unstable sister and daughter of Chris and Ansel respectively. Once they collect, Chris proposes they split the dough.

To secure the services of the charming Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) they need to pay his fee upfront. Father and son propose Joe take a commission on the insurance money once it pays out. This is initially not an acceptable proposal until Joe catches sight of the comely Dottie. He agrees to take the job in exchange for a “retainer” – sexual ownership of Dottie.

Father and brother of said sexy teen agree to these terms, though Chris betrays some apprehension as he appears to bear an incestuous interest in his dear sister.

From here, we’re handed plenty of lascivious sexuality, double-crosses, triple-crosses and eventually, violence so horrendous, so sickening that even those with strong stomachs might need to reach for the Pepto Bismol.

Basically, we’re in territory that shares some might lofty space with the grand master of sleazy, white trash pulp fiction Jim Thompson. Killer Joe is nasty, sleazy and insanely, darkly hilarious. This celluloid bucket of glorious untreated sewage is directed with Friedkin’s indelible command of the medium and shot with a terrible beauty by ace cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.

Friedkin, the legendary director of The French Connection, The Exorcist and Cruising, dives face first into the slop with the exuberance of a starving hog at the trough and his cast delivers the goods with all the relish needed to guarantee a heapin’ helpin’ of Southern inbred Gothic.

This, my friends, is the kind of movie they don’t make anymore.

Trust William Friedkin to bring us back so profoundly and entertainingly to those halcyon days.

Oh, and if you’ve ever desired to see a drumstick adorned with Colonel Sanders’ batter, fellated with Linda Lovelace gusto, allow me to reiterate that you’ll see it here.

It is, I believe, a first.

BUG - Collaboration with playwright Tracy Letts yields homerun for William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, French Connection & Cruising

Bug (2007) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.

***1/2

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Without question, Bug is one of the most compelling, terrifying and compulsively watchable pictures to grace the screen in quite some time. Directed by William Friedkin, that venerable master of all that can be deliciously and artfully nasty-minded in cinema, it is a picture that some might even view as a bit of a comeback for the filmmaker who unleashed, among many others, The Exorcist, The French Connection and Cruising. I am, however, not all that fond of the notion of comebacks – especially as they relate to men of Friedkin’s talent and vision – as Norma Desmond said, “it’s the pictures that got smaller”, and certainly in the case of Friedkin, the motion picture industry and the marketplace itself has changed, and certainly not for the better.

Bug tells the seemingly simple tale of a lonely working class woman (Ashley Judd) who finds a glimmer of happiness with a mysterious handsome stranger (Michael Shannon), only to be drawn into his web of paranoia. By finding love, they also discover pain, and eventually true happiness proves to be as elusive and delusional as their respective and, finally, collective states of mind.

In the end, does this really sound that simple? To be frank, it isn’t. In fact, one almost wants to avoid lavishing too much (or even any) attention to the plot since, for most of the picture’s running time, Bug careens madly into very dangerous and surprising territory. So surprising, in fact, that one of the minor disappointments is that the script by Tracy Letts (from his play of the same name) veers into some not-so-surprising territory in the last third of the picture’s running time.

However, for the first two-thirds of the picture, one never really gets a handle on where it is going. And in an age of cookie-cutter story telling, being surprised with every turn is not only rare, but in the case of Bug, supremely engaging and, even during some especially stomach-turning moments, entertainment of the highest order.

Friedkin is responsible for so much of this. Based on a theatrical piece, the movie wisely does not betray its roots but enhances them in a wholly cinematic way. Since most of the picture involves two people (with a handful of occasional “interlopers”) in one motel room, this could have (in less capable hands) been a dull, dreary mess. Friedkin keeps us glued to the screen with a keen eye that makes every shot a pleasure to look at, but also resonating with dramatic intensity. Not that the style is intrusive or obvious – it is, in fact, a delicious bird’s eye view of two people spiraling into a pit of insanity presented with verve and honesty.

This should come as no surprise to Friedkin followers. His early career as a documentary filmmaker in addition to his years of experience as a visual storyteller serves him very well. He has also adapted theatre to the big screen – most notably with the slightly dated, but still groundbreaking motion picture of Mart Crowley’s play The Boys In The Band. Friedkin is not one of those filmmakers who fall into the cliché of having to unnaturally “open up” a theatrical work and/or gussy it up with overly fussy visual details. Friedkin embraces the proscenium in a variety of inventive ways – preserving the claustrophobic intensity of the piece, but allowing it to still breathe as a work of cinema.

But perhaps Friedkin’s greatest gift as a storyteller is his audacity. When necessary, he will push the boundaries, up the ante and shove us headfirst into territory that most filmmakers who prefer to hide from or even worse, try to mute. Not Friedkin. He ‘rub our noses’ in the worlds of his various films and succeeds admirably.

Can anyone forget how far Friedkin took us in The Exorcist? Developing compelling characters and charting their journeys with the precision of a master documentarian and slowly building to a series of crescendos in which he earned and flung all manner of visceral atrocities in our face. Friedkin ensured that The Exorcist would be a true classic with lasting value by never forgetting that movies are a rollercoaster ride and that one must build to the peaks and valleys of terror with skill and precision to make sure that the moments of viscera stay with us forever.

With Cruising, Friedkin blended the tried and true ‘policier’ with a descent into a sexy, thrilling, Bosch-like world of gay S&M clubs. Some found this offensive and/or homophobic - too bad for them. They lose. It was supposed to be thrilling. And so it was.

And in The French Connection who can ever forget the moments of utter terror behind the wheel of Gene Hackman’s speeding car as it tore through the grubby, crowded streets of New York in pursuit of a train?

With Bug, Friedkin takes us on an equally compelling rollercoaster ride. As thrilling and memorable as the ride is, there is a point in the story where one gets a nagging feeling that it could go in a certain and potentially ho-hum direction, but because the picture has been surprising you all along and because the ride has been so happily infused with style, you repress your doubts and believe it will go into more unpredictable directions. The ride continues and it is still thrilling, but the eventual outcome was what you will, no doubt, have predicted at that earlier juncture. This is a bit of a drag.

But no matter: there are so few movies around these days as provocative and stunningly directed as Bug that one can forgive a flaw that would sink most other pictures.

The performance Friedkin coaxes from a slightly de-glammed, but still delectably sexy Ashley Judd is a tour-de-force – ranging from shy submission to out and out over-the-top insanity. Michael Shannon has had plenty of time to perfect his performance as the paranoid war vet on the stage, but he seems as fresh as if he were doing it for the first time. And in a supporting role as Judd’s psychotically abusive ex, Harry Connick Jr. shocks and surprises with a performance that is as sexy as it is terrifying.

Bug is a must-see motion picture. Even if you end up hating it, you’ll probably admire it anyway for both audacity and Friedkin's relentless directorial virtuosity.