THE TERMINAL MAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Neglected 70s Science Fiction Classic by Mike Hodges

The Terminal Man (1974) ****
dir. Mike Hodges

Starring: George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard A. Dysart, Jill Clayburgh, Donald Moffat, Matt Clark,
Michael C. Gwynne, James B. Sikking,
William Hansen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Forces increasingly dominate us beyond our control.

In this respect, Mike Hodges’s brilliant 1974 science fiction thriller The Terminal Man, adapted from Michael Crichton’s chilling novel of the same name, seems more scary and necessary than ever. A few nitpicking details from when the film was made over 35-years-ago – outmoded robots and doctors puffing away on cigarettes in a hospital – are not enough to seriously date it. This is a picture that displays a keen ahead-of-its-time sophistication in both execution and subject matter.

Harry Benson (George Segal) is a brilliant young computer scientist. He suffers from epileptic blackouts wherein aberrant behaviour, including vicious uncontrollable acts of violence lead to criminal incarceration. Adding to this mix is Harry’s paranoia-fuelled mistrust of computers themselves – an especially queer fear for someone considered above the curve in terms of his research. In seeming desperation, Harry agrees to become a human guinea pig for a group of surgeons who believe behaviour can be controlled by implanting chips and electrodes in the brain, which, in turn, are connected to a mini-computer within the body.

Like any great Frankenstein tale, shit goes wrong - horribly wrong.

Screenwriter-director Mike Hodges is working at the peak of his powers here. Having just rendered Get Carter, the extraordinary and deliciously nasty British crime thriller with Michael Caine), Hodges infuses this sci-fi nerve-jangler with an ultra-creepy mise-en-scene that, for its first half, keeps you super-glued to your seat, eyeballs locked firmly on the screen.

What gets to you is how quiet the movie is. The hollow, late evening reverberations permeating the hospital wherein much of the movie is set, slither deeply into your guts so that every sound you DO hear is fraught with urgency so that the hushed tones of doctors and nurses infuse everything with paranoia.

One of the stranger cutaways in the picture is when Hodges occasionally directs us to a group of proletarian orderlies guffawing away as they disparage their charges. It’s an odd visual and aural juxtaposition between opposite ends of the hospital hierarchy. Those on the “bottom” are upfront about their contempt while those on “top” hold their proverbial cards close to their chests. On one hand, this seems like an obvious directorial touch. And yes, it is obvious. Importantly it doesn’t take you out of the drama, but forces you at the proper juncture in the story to come to this juxtapositional conclusion and, in fact, adds to the overall feeling of manipulation that is directed at Harry. It also suggests that the world is increasingly fraught with a lack of caring and where self-preservation and contempt are perfectly comfortable bedfellows.

There is also no traditional musical score save for the occasional use of Glenn Gould tinkling his creepy ivories with one of the Goldberg Variations and a brief moment when hospital Muzak filters onto the soundtrack and into Harry’s brain as he is wheeled into the operating theatre. Lack of a full-bodied orchestral score for a thriller was – even in the 70s – a brave, unconventional move. These days – when every thriller is replete with herky-jerky cutting and bombast – such a touch is virtually unheard of (much, I think to the detriment of the genre, audiences and cinema on the whole). Val Lewton’s thrillers for RKO in the 40s were a perfect example of how true horror could be found in the dark and by what you didn’t see. With The Terminal Man, it’s what you don’t HEAR that adds to the terror.

One of the more grotesque elements of Hodges’s terrific picture is how so much of the film is set in a hospital, but even more intense is the inclusion of a brilliant sequence when the operation itself is performed upon Harry. He keeps his lens trained on virtually every pre-op, post-op and during-op moment – the sweat, the rubber gloves, the clamps, the needles, the scalpels, the blinding lights, the fluorescent glare and the ever-present view of white-coated officials viewing the proceedings from above behind glass.

The look of the film also adds to the creep factor. The movie is drained of primary colour – white rules, as does the darkness, the black shroud of evil. The only colours to ever punch out are (appropriately enough) red (during several shocking punctuations of blood-letting) and a typically sad 70s climax/conclusion set amidst the grey tombstones in a lush, green cemetery. Hodges's compositions are straight forward and many of the shots play long - allowing for maximum dramatic impact. One of the more chilling shots that recurs throughout the film is an eye through a peephole, surrounded only by pitch black and framed so that our eyes are drawn immediately to the exposed image and stay there - almost as if we were one the other side being examined.

The cast is first-rate. The gorgeous Joan Hackett provides a bit of offbeat warmth as a psychiatrist who doesn’t trust the operation being performed on Harry. She is surrounded by stalwart 70s character actors like Richard A. Dysart, Matt Clark, Michael C. Gwynne, James B. Sikking and Donald Moffat all delivering their cold, calculating best as the raft of bureaucrats, doctors and scientists. There’s a terrific cameo from the great William Hansen as a doctor from the “old school” who delivers a stirring condemnation of the use of surgery for mental illness and a very young and hot Jill Clayburgh briefly lights up the screen as Harry’s sex kitten girlfriend.

As the title character, George Segal is the true revelation. He was the go-to guy for 70s romantic comedies – in fact, a whole whack of great comedies, my favourite being the thoroughly insane black comedy Where’s Poppa where Ruth Gordon pulls down his pants to kiss his “tuschy”. Segal was, and still is, a great actor and certainly, as he proves in this picture, no mere lightweight. He always had an edge that many comic actors lacked. His performance as Nick in the Mike Nichols film version of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf proved that in spades. Here, he blends his edgier qualities with his lighter leading man qualities to present a character we’re with from beginning to end.

The Terminal Man suffers slightly from inevitabilities inherent in both the genre and narrative itself. The movie is a Frankenstein story, after all, and it's only a matter of time before Harry runs amuck and must be hunted down. The journey to get there, however, is tremendously compelling.

Mike Hodges is a ludicrously underrated director. Not only is it worth seeing The Terminal Man, but I highly recommend the aforementioned Get Carter, his strange crime comedy Pulp, the wonderful Flash Gordon, a joyous 80s celebration of sci-fi cheese with a score (no-less) by Queen and one of the best British films of the past couple of decades, Croupier.

The Terminal Man is available via on-demand special order from Warner Home Entertainment via the Warner Archives collection. You’ll also find it for sale or rent in specialty video stores. In Toronto, Canada the only retail outlet that carries a wide selection of these titles is the flagship store of Sunrise Records at Yonge and Dundas. As per usual with the archives, the item a simple on-demand package. The DVD-R features the movie and the trailer. The transfer is from best available materials. One can see the reel change markers every so often, so it has obviously been taken from a solid archival print. The colours – when Hodges allows them – are vivid and the whites are suitably stark. I was especially impressed, as I have been with many of the Warner Archives transfers, with the grain. It’s there!!! And it’s doing its magical dance as only grain can. I’m thankful no over-zealous control room hack has taken the time to mute it.

I’m disturbed, however, that Warner Bros. has chosen not to release this film properly. It’s a sci-fi picture that the core audience – especially of a certain age – absolutely love. Those who missed it the first time (I was a 15-year-old genre geek when I saw it first-run in the 70s on a big screen), will love it. As well, a whole new generation of geeks deserves to experience it. Given that director Mike Hodges, stars George Segal, Richard A. Dysart, Michael C. Gwynne, Donald Moffat and Matt Clark are all still alive and also given the film’s many admirers (one of whom is Terrence Malick), I’m sure there would be a huge audience if the movie was properly transferred to Blu-Ray (where I think it would look magnificent) and featuring a solid Laurent Bouzereau-styled documentary and one or two commentary tracks.

Warner Home Entertainment: ARE YOU LISTENING?

The film (in addition to some other cool period sci-fi) is available online at the various Amazon sites which you can order directly from these links and, in so doing, assist with the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner:



And here is a selection of some terrific Mike Hodges movies:

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Will I EVER like a comic book movie? Well, if they're directed by the likes of Sam Raimi, Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez, the answer's YES!

This is MY Captain America Golden Age and no movie has yet come close.

Scarlett (UGH!!!) Johansson
in a Captain America movie is
SACRILEGE!!!

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) *1/2
Dirs. Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I do have a bias when it comes to comic book movies and it's simple: I want them to capture the spirit of the comics I loved when I first discovered them. I am, however, not curmudgeonly-narrow-enough to dismiss said pictures if they're directed by real directors with something resembling panache. God knows I love all three Sam Raimi Spiderman movies (even part 3) because they not only capture the essence of Marvel during MY primetime enjoyment of the comics during the 60s and early 70s, but they're all superbly directed. Zack Snyder's Man of Steel rocked my world because it not only captured the DC items I loved in the 60s, but came closest to the first brilliant season of the George Reeves TV series which was dark, nasty and noir-like. Oh yeah, and Snyder can direct rings round most filmmakers. His work on graphic novels like 300 as well as that of Rodriguez's top-dips into such adaptations like Sin City kick major, royal ass from stylistic standpoints.

All the others pretty much stink (though Jon Favreau's first Iron Man was watchable, Kenneth Branagh's Thor was decently written and even well directed except for the action scenes and Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk had tons of visual panache, decent tone, though a disappointing script). The big reason the contemporary comic book movies drive me nuts is that they usually offend my bias, but are also miserably directed.

Captain America: The First Avenger fell into a disappointing, but not terribly offensive middle ground for me. Director Joe Johnston is an agreeable enough hack. His action scenes were relatively comprehensible (though a tad dull) and thankfully weren't of the herky-jerky variety (used by losers who mask their directorial incompetence with way too many poorly composed closeups and ludicrous lightning cuts). Unfortunately, aside from the great Hugo Weaving as The Red Skull, the movie seemed woefully all over the place in terms of tone and, of course, the screenplay left a lot to be desired.

And so, that brings us to the equally humdrum Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Tonally, it offends my bias, but at least the action scenes have some decent fight choreography that Anthony and Joe Russo manage to shoot in focus with a few nicely composed fixed-camera positions and minimal rapid-fire cuts. Like the first instalment, it features a terrific villain, though here it's not the super-villain, but the slimy political weasel played really well by Robert Redford.

Alas, the rest of the movie stinks.

At least the Russos keep the camera still enough to display the fight
choreography. Not that it matters much, since the movie is Dullsville.

The I-could-care-less plot involves Cappy Am (Chris Evans) embroiled in some tiresome hijinx involving Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) being assassinated by Bucky-Barnes-incarnation The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) and slimy Redford being behind a plot to take down SHIELD and the Cap needing to team up with the tediously uninteresting Black Widow (Scarlett "UGH - get off the screen, already" Johansson) and the ridiculous Falcon (Anthony Mackie), a character who, in the 70s Marvel Comics started to turn me off to Captain America. This all results in a bunch of decently directed action scenes with virtually no dramatic investment for us since the plot is as perfunctory as they get, lacking any of the truly haunting tone the pre-Falcon Marvel comics had.

Call me a sourball. I don't care. I'm getting sick of these pictures. Given how dreadfully directed The Avengers, Iron Man III, Thor: The Dark World and the completely useless Amazing Spiderman reboots have been (and don't get me started on the Christopher "One Idea" Nolan Dark Knight garbage), I'm feeling like life is getting too short to watch anymore of these unless real directors are attached to them.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is in wide release from Walt Disney Pictures.

THE GREAT BEAUTY (Criterion Blu-Ray) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Dual Format Criterion Special Edition of Paolo Sorrentino's Deserving Best Foreign Language Oscar Winner is a perfect package of anything one could ever need in a home entertainment edition of this, one of the truly great films of the New Millennium

The Great Beauty (2013) *****
Dir. Paolo Sorrentino, Scr. Umberto Contarello
Starring: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I have a hard time imagining how anyone could not worship the exquisite perfection of Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty, but then I try to think how I might have responded to it as a very young man. Is it possible I'd have responded to it the same way I actually did in my late teens and early 20s to Hitchock's Vertigo and Renoir's The Rules of the Game? These two pictures I admired, almost grudgingly, but respectively and highly preferred other seminal works by their directors like, say, Rear Window and The Grand Illusion. The latter titles offered easy ways in to their brilliance by opening their doors ever-so widely for me to respond more viscerally to them. But then, a funny thing would happen on my way to enlightenment: subsequent viewings of the former titles would come and go, yet with each passing year ever-accumulating waves of life experience would wash over me and allow me to begin responding evermore openly to the films.

Finding my own way through a Knossos-like maze, my maturation became the ball of string I'd left along the trail that would lead me back towards the films themselves and to discover their inherent greatness as art. Eventually, a screening of each would occur that'd hit me with the force of a gale wind and I'd achieve an explosive, near-orgasmic epiphany once the works' obsessions nestled perfectly in tandem with my combined years of sorrow, happiness, heartache, gains, losses, triumphs and failures. And indeed, this is what happened to me with Vertigo and The Rules of the Game. I suspect then, that I would indeed have a similarly fractious on-again-off-again relationship with The Great Beauty. The difference now, however, is that I experience Sorrentino's picture having already acquired the necessary life experience so that my first helping hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks and subsequent screenings spoke to me as loudly as any great movie I'd ever seen.

Each subsequent screening, several of them on a big screen at The Toronto International Film Festival 2013 proper, then during a theatrical engagement at TIFF's Bell Lightbox, would each peel back layer upon layer so that every viewing was as intensive as the last one, and then, more so. And now, the film exists on an absolutely perfect home video format thanks to the Criterion Collection: complete with one Blu-Ray and two DVDs - the emphasis initially being on the stunningly meticulous digital transfer to both formats and finally with the seemingly modest, but ultimately rich bonus features - detailed, inspirational and meticulously shepherded 30-40 minute interviews with director Sorrentino, star Servillo and writer Contarello.

This Criterion volume, then, is an object of both desire and perfection - a special edition if there ever was one and a great, beautifully designed box that serves to preserve the film for subsequent viewings and added features that enhance and enrich an already monumental experience and achievement. The Criterion Collection edition of The Great Beauty is a must-own item for anyone who cares about great cinema. And now, allow me to present a slightly expanded version of my original take on the film during its initial TIFF offering and eventual theatrical release via Mongrel Media, but now guided and influenced by my near-obsessive study of The Criterion Collection Director Approved edition.

* * * * *

Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty opens with a bang - literally. A cannon blasts right into our faces - its explosive force signalling the beginning of the greatest party sequence - bar none - in movie history. Not a single screen revelry comes even close. The first few minutes of this movie throbs and pulsates with the most gorgeous, dazzling, opulent images of triumphant excess ever to strut and swagger before our eyes. This polychromatic orgy of beautiful people and their devil-may-care debauchery is the kind of sordid, celebratory saturnalia that the movies seem to have been invented for.

The party isn't just debauchery for debauchery's sake (though I'd settle for that), but the sequence actually builds deftly to the utterly astounding entrance of the film's main character. On just the right hit of music, at just the right cut-point, our eyes catch the tell-tale jiggle of the delectable jowls of the smiling, long-faced, twinkle-eyed and unequalled sexiest-ugly movie star of our time. We are dazzled, delighted and tempted to cheer as his presence comes like an explosion as great as the aforementioned cannon blast.

Playing the former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, Toni Servillo knocked us on our collective butts in Sorrentino's Il Divo. Here, Servillo continues to electrify - this time etching a very different "Il Divo" - Jep Gambardella, the crown prince of Roman journalism. Jep is a one-novel-wonder, resting on the literary laurels of a single work of genius from his youth, who now, at this august stage of existence, has earned celebrity as a hack scribe of gossipy, sardonic puff pieces for one of Italy's most influential rags.

Jep is surrounded by a seemingly infinite number of losers who think they're winners, as well as a veritable army of the rich and famous and their hangers-on. We find Jep at the epicentre of the aforementioned on-screen party - one we wish would never end. Alas it must - at least until the next one. Rest assured there will be plenty more revelries, but between the indulgences, we follow the powerful and bored-with-his-power Jep as he reaches a crisis point in his 65th year of life. He knows he's not lived up to his promise, but he's still a master wordsmith and puffs himself up with his dazzling prose and his expertise at self-puffery.

He's surrounded by worshippers, but their adulation means nothing to him. Gorgeous women throw themselves at Jep, but he doesn't even much enjoy sex. He longs for a love that escaped him in his youth and tries to find it in the rapturously beautiful daughter of a pimp. His best friend, as best a friend that someone like Jep could ever hope for, is desperate to make a mark for himself as a literary figure but can only think of using Jep as a subject for a book.

Most of all, Jep seems happiest when he's alone. That said, even when he's surrounded by slavering hangers-on, he appears even more solitary than when he's by himself, but at least his private brand of emptiness is more palatable than the sheer nothingness of those in his ultimately pathetic coterie of nothingness - the nothingness of a ruling class who take and take and take all the excess there is to be had, and then some. Italy is on the brink of ruin, but the ruling class is in denial so long as they can cling to celebrity - even if that celebrity is in their own minds.

With The Great Beauty, Sorrentino is clearly paying homage to Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (with dollops of 8 1/2), but this is no mere nod to cinematic mastery (one which might even be working at a subconscious level) - he explores a world the late maestro visited half-a-century ago and uses it as a springboard into contemporary Italy and most importantly, as a flagrantly florid rumination upon the decline of culture, the long-ago loss of youthful ideals and the deep melancholy that sets in from Jep seeking answers to why the woman he loved the most left him behind to his own devices. Set against the backdrop of a historic Rome in ruins, the empire that fell so mightily, we're plunged into a dizzying nocturnal world as blank and vacant as the eyes of a ruling class that rules nothingness.

Finally, it is Jep's moments of introspection when he is alone most mornings, slightly hung-over and bleary-eyed, washing his face in public fountains, then casually strolling through the Rome he loves and where he observes simple beauty, often for the first and possibly only time. He clings to these moments as passionately as he clings to his memories of his one great love - the love that inspired his great novel and only novel. His odyssey is partially to discover and acknowledge the beauty and purity of that great love so that maybe, just maybe, he will write something again - something that matters, like the Great elusive, yet omnipresent Beauty.

Jep is clearly set upon an odyssey by Sorrentino - one that might have been avoided if he could only recognize what he sees in a mirror. Men like Jep, however, have a hard time recognizing the clear reality that stares them in the face and the final third of Sorrentino's masterpiece plunges Jep and the audience through a looking glass in search of a truth they (nor, for that matter, we) might never find.

But the ride will have been worth it.

THE LOST HIGHWAY (Theatrical Directors' Cut) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - One Chance in Toronto to see this entertainingly compelling picture the way its directors intended it to be seen until an expurgated version plays on the public educational broadcast entity TVO (TV Ontario) for reasons not known specifically to me (though I suppose I could guess), but certainly for reasons the filmmakers and the broadcaster DO know.

Once a major route between
Canada's largest city, Toronto
& Canada's Capital city, Ottawa,
this stretch of the Trans Canada
is one endless Ghost Town.

The Lost Highway (2013) ***½
Dir. Neil Graham, Derreck Roemer
Review By Greg Klymkiw

I could say life is just a bowl of Jello
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can't get it out of my heart!
Not this heart ... -- from "South Pacific"
the hit musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Canada is overflowing with communities like Arden, Ontario. These towns, villages and hamlets are replete with piles of refuse, old abandoned vehicles, shuttered, rotting storefronts, eateries, motels, gas stations, homes and an almost cavernous, echoing cornucopia of other deader-than-a-doornail businesses and structures. Dolloped like mounds of waste matter along long stretches of abandoned highways and byways of our great country, they seem even more depressing to the naked eye than urban blight. We expect blight in larger urban cesspools, but not amidst the natural beauty resting beyond the borders of our deceptively genteel Gotham Cities. Our eyes see waste and decay in this rural paradise, but our hearts and minds are with those who once thrived in these locales. Sometimes, we even turn our thoughts to those who do manage to carve out a living in such places and we like to positively think that it might not be so bad. We imagine it might be a warm, restful and comfortable place to live, work and thrive. For all of us, who've had such thoughts, filmmakers Neil Graham and Derreck Roemer aim their camera-eyes upon one tiny slice of an alternately literal and figurative wasteland in their compelling, revealing and downright informative 74-minute documentary The Lost Highway.

The results prove to be less than positive once we meet the people. Sure, good intentions, good ideas and a kind of cockeyed optimism are the order of the day, but optimism, much less cockeyed optimism, doesn't put bread on the table and certainly doesn't point towards the healthiest of futures.

Once the main route from Canada's largest city, Toronto, to the nation's capital, Ottawa, Highway 7 has long been supplanted by larger highways and a once bustling two-lane-blacktop might well be the country's largest, longest strip of ghost town. Curiously, I've taken the route myself and have always found it to be a far more pleasant alternative to the supposed super highways that are so often wall-to-wall traffic jams, but there's no accounting for humanity's lemming-like behaviour, especially Torontonians who are infused with an almost pathological desire to lineup for everything.

The movie focuses primarily upon two families. One is Howard Gibbs, an 80-year-old owner of a gas station that's been part of his family for close to a century. His dream is to keep the business in the family. His daughter is a single mom and she decides to move to the old homestead and take a shot at it. Howard's a wily, irascible old coot - kind of like Bruce Dern in Nebraska, but with a decidedly Canadian timbre in his voice. He's a former local politician and full of the delightful corn-pone double-speak so many rural politicians are endowed with (and unlike some, he's not a crack user). It doesn't take us too long to realize there might be more than a few secrets Bill's keeping from us and by extension, his daughter. Alas, it seems to take her a longer time to figure that out and contributes mightily to the narrative thrust of the picture.

In fairness to the cracker-barrel-funny Howard, he's facing a disaster of monumental proportions. Some idiot bureaucrat (is there any other kind?) demands he sell off his remaining gas and shut his gas station down until an environmental assessment can be undertaken, the result of which will most certainly involve replacing the tanks. Bureaucrats demanding such things are always the sort of losers to target people who can't afford to properly fight them and the costs associated with these demands are extremely usurious. Howard assumes the idiot government doesn't want to discourage business and that if they're especially concerned about the environmental issues surrounding the state of the station's tanks, that they'll provide some form of financial relief. We wait, like Howard and his daughter, with baited breath to see if this will be so. In the meantime, Howard is forced to clear cut his acreage and sell off the trees as timber to make ends meet. So much for the environment. Fucking idiot bureaucrats!

The other family is a couple from the "big city" who move to Arden with a dream to build a swanky upscale lodge. This isn't the craziest idea in the world - if they can market to people who already use the route as an alternative to the superhighways or even institute a marketing plan that includes persuading people to consider the alternate route, they might just make it. Unfortunately, business doesn't boom. They were properly capitalized to setup, but don't necessarily have the capital to weather the usual early storms new businesses face.

Add to this, marital strife.

And yes, there's certainly even strife on display of a different kind between Howard and his daughter. He's either intentionally or naively withholding truths from her. The film takes on an added and harrowing dimension of parallel narratives involving family conflicts. (There's also a - I know, it shouldn't be funny, but it is - sequence where Howard just up and mysteriously disappears. Turns out, he's been on some wild shack-up with a friendly lassie.

In addition to the aforementioned, there's a nice subplot involving the remaining residents of Arden and their attempts to get people to stop in the town. Close, but no cigar, folks. There's really nothing in Arden to attract anyone to stop. Even if they did, what would they spend money on? What would they do? Patronize the one craft store that's not even open all year round? And no offence, but almost everyone living there seems ready for respite. Youth and plenty of it is what's needed, but in places like Arden, those not in their dotage are in short supply.

Directors Graham and Roemer have great material on their hands and within the slight, but perfectly pleasing 74-minute running time, they weave a tale that on the surface is exquisitely simple and direct, but just below the flesh, the movie reveals several layers that run deep to the core. There's also something very special and uniquely Canadian about the film and this version of the film would, no doubt, be of considerable interest to communities outside of the major centres. In a perfect world, it's the kind of picture that should be touring rural areas from coast to coast. The problems facing the town and subjects of the film are universal and not unlike those many communities face across the country. I daresay the film's universal qualities could even translate into rural areas throughout America's heartland. That the movie also presents a very real human element in terms of deception and strife amongst families, is a very luscious cherry on the hot fudge sundae.

And who knows, maybe the movie will even inspire a few lemmings from Toronto to take Highway 7.

The Lost Highway, at least for now, can only be seen in the manner its filmmakers intended, at one show, in one theatre, in one city: Sunday, April 6, 2014 at 4:00pm at the lovely community cinema The Revue at 400 Roncesvalles in the heart of Little Poland and High Park in Toronto. Rural viewers should be pestering the TIFF Film Circuit HERE about arranging screenings of this feature length cut. A version that appears to be less than one-hour-long will be playing on TVO's Doc Studio HERE, so Ontario viewers can watch this short version, or instead, start harassing the PUBLIC BROADCASTER to play the real version. A very nice lady who might be amenable to your desires is the Doc Studio's Commissioning Editor. She can be reached by emailing her HERE

THE GREAT FLOOD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - B/W footage of 1927 Mississippi River flood antidote to NOAH

The Great Flood (2012) ***1/2
Dir. Bill Morrison, Music: Bill Frisell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In the few years since the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, there is considerable merit to be found in Bill Morrison's poetic examination of the great 1927 flood along the mighty Mississippi River. From top to bottom, the river and its innumerable tributaries surged past breakwaters and covered the land with a force that must have felt like the legendary fairy tale flood Noah erected his Ark for. The Great Flood is no fairy tale, though and nor, thankfully, an overblown, unintentionally funny Biblical epic pretending not to be a Biblical epic. Morrison has painstakingly scoured the archives and retrieved a wealth of eerily beautiful, standard frame black and white footage of the flood and cut together this compelling history of a seldom paralleled destructive force.

The sheer magnitude of the flood is virtually unimaginable, but no more. In fact, the movie skillfully and artistically presents the power of such a disaster in a manner in which it symbolically represents all such disasters. We get a sense of the genuine scope of how overwhelming a force of nature can and will be. Yes, seeing such footage in bits and pieces is not without power, but the manner in which Morrison assembles his material is no mere middle of the road TV doc interspersed with gravely intoned narration and a parade of talking heads.

The movie - first and foremost - is an artistic rendering of this historical event using existing footage in a most unique fashion. The narrative arc, from beginning to end is very clear. We get a taste of the flood's scope and eventually, the film narrows in on life before the disaster, preparations for the flood, the devastation once it hits full force, the vast migration of a huge population - mostly of African Americans from the delta to points far north. However, there is no narration, no interviews, no spoken word of any kind - just the superbly wrought storytelling of silent footage, all scored by famed jazz guitarist and composer Bill Frisell.

There is, beyond the story of the flood itself, a subtextual tale of how the culture and music of the south was forced to physically migrate north and create movements and styles that were rooted in one place, but influenced and modified by others. Both the surface narrative and its subtext walk hand in hand beautifully and deliver yet another compelling argument as to how cinema itself is an art form like no other and is, indeed a great gift that both reflects upon our world and can, in fact, change it too.

My only annoying speed bump throughout the picture was Frisell's music. It's simply a matter of taste here. His clearly gifted ability to musically accompany the narrative is without question, but I personally did not always respond to his jazzy riffs and occasional dissonant tones and tempos. Given the subtext, I was often forced to recall feature docs like Philippe Mora's groundbreaking 1975 archival footage feature about the Great Depression, Brother Can You Spare a Dime?, which wrought its poetic tale using music from the period.

This is not to say I'd hoped Morrison would ape Mora's approach, but it would be remiss of me not to mention that at several points during The Great Flood that I'd be hearing early Mississippi Delta Blues and Chicago jazz styling from the 30s wafting in and out of my imagination, mingling, but mostly in collision with Frisell's music. I will say, though, that it was this very collision of an imaginary score drifting across my cerebellum and actual score emanating from the film's soundtrack that, in combination with the haunting images, did have me soaring in ways I'd wished could have happened throughout the picture (rather than the fits and starts I personally experienced).

This, of course, might be an unfair response, but it's one I genuinely felt while watching the film. However, in retrospect it is the very thing that makes me admire it. Go figure. Chances are good, this is what Morrison wanted exactly. If so, he delivered big time. If not, it's still a pretty cool movie and that's what ultimately really counts.

The Great Flood is currently playing theatrically at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto.

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Moe Does Rum Real Good - Opens Bloor Hot Docs Apr. 4

The Unknown Known (2013) ****
Dir. Errol Morris
Starring: Donald Rumsfeld

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ace master documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is back in familiar territory with this one-on-one exploration of the life and times of George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the clearly gifted master of political doubletalk, misinformation, disinformation and perhaps one of the most dangerous, despicable and evil Americans of the past decade. Much like The Fog of War, Morris' exploration of Robert McNamara, Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War, Morris hits his new subject with tough questions. Blending archival footage, graphs, charts and an assortment of Rumsfeld's memos (numbering over 20,000 he issued during a six-year period) the veteran documentarian attempts to paint as honest a portrait as possible of a political mastermind of legal mass murder, or, if you will, the war against terror. (The only thing missing is a Philip Glass score - inexplicably replaced with a so-so Danny Elfman score.) McNamara was a different beast, though. He at least seemed to be telling the truth. None of that - truth, that is - appears to be on display here.

With a malevolent grin, Rumsfeld makes you think he's letting the cat in the bag slip out, but in the same breath, he's letting you know the cat's still in the bag and that his final word on the matter will always ensure that the bag's indeed, in the river. In fact, we never get a clear picture of anything from Rumsfeld. It always seems clear, but never feels truthful. In several contexts, Rumsfeld is caught completely contradicting himself and hilariously ignoring and/or talking his way out of his obvious falsehoods and/or contradictions

The film delivers a good deal of personal and historical detail on Rumsfeld, the most fascinating of which is his keen interest in and study of history - especially, not surprisingly, in terms of war. When he discusses America's past, one gets a clear sense of how his own decisions are colored by his analysis of past American failures and triumphs. For example, he refers to America's unpreparedness for the attack on Pearl Harbor as "a failure of the imagination". Of course, he prides himself on his own imagination and how it leads to a constant state of "worry" - one which he maintains is the ultimate state of preparedness. He goes so far as to suggest that great nations must never accept the notion that peace can ever be achieved.

"If you wish for peace," Rumsfeld maintains you must immediately begin to "prepare for war."

Morris usually keeps his cool as the off-screen interviewer, but on occasion, his utter incredulity with respect to Rumsfeld's delectable twisting of the truth is genuinely entertaining. We're witness to one magnificent turn of phrase after another. The man is a master spin doctor and even more astoundingly, he might actually be the best generator of juicy sound bites in the world - ever. Here's a tiny, but choice grocery list of a few of them:

"All generalizations are false, including this one," he proclaims.

"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," he opines on weapons of mass destruction or lack thereof in Iraq.

Of course, Rumsfeld treats us to one of his astounding humdingers (which Morris uses for the film's title): "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know. The unknown known, however, is a thing that we know, but are unaware of knowing."

And there are even some sound bites that feel genuine, almost moving, such as his response to 9/11 and an explanation for his subsequent actions: "Something terrible happened on my watch."

If Rumsfeld seems less up-front in this film than McNamara was in The Fog of War, it doesn't make him any less fascinating and Morris expertly presents us with a movie that might have even more obvious entertainment value. The almost-easy-to-swallow nature of The Unknown Known in terms of how engaging it is as a movie, also doesn't make it any less an important record of contemporary American history - and by extension, world history.

The whole movie, in fact, is a hoot from beginning to end, but what we're ultimately presented and left with is 96 minutes of lies - or, at the very least, what Rumsfeld wants us to hear, even if we don't believe a word.

The man has no shame. None. He could have been a President.

"The Unknown Known" plays theatrically at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. For dates, showtimes and tickets visit HERE.

ICE SOLDIERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Dreadful Canadian 80s Throwback to Straight-to-VHS Action Films

"I'm not quite as stupid as I look. The people who made this movie and gave me a nice fat paycheque are far more stupid than I could ever be.

Ice Soldiers (2013) 1 Pubic Hair - Second Lowest Rating
Dir. Sturla Gunnarson, Starring: Dominic Purcell, Adam Beach, Michael Ironside, Gabriel Hogan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Cuban Missile Crisis is in full swing whilst up in the Canadian Arctic, a bunch of Americans at a military outpost go out onto the Tundra to investigate a mysterious crash. Here they find three gentlemen with identical blonde haircuts who all bear a resemblance to Dolph Lundgren in his prime. They're encased in pods and appear to be dead. The biggest of them (Gabriel Hogan) opens his eyes.

Cut to: The Military outpost. Dolph Lundgren Lookalike #1 (DLL#1) is strapped down in a metal containment area. One of the characters TELLS US how dangerous DLL#1 is. He TELLS US he lost half of his men. He TELLS US they needed to plug several high-power tranquilizers in the Hairless Aryan Beast.

So, a quick question. How then do we know we're watching a Canadian movie? Any thoughts? Give up? Okay, for those dim bulbs out there who can't quite get it, the answer is simple. The movie is set in Canada, with a bunch of Canadian actors playing Americans and there clearly wasn't enough money to actually shoot the spectacular carnage - even though it's the beginning of the movie and you'd probably want to open with a bang, not a whimper. But it's a Canadian movie, so a whimper it will be and instead of seeing the wham-bam, we must be told about it.

Another clue is that the outpost's scientist is a babe-o-licious French gal from La Bell Province. The sultry Quebecois brunette looks sadly upon the blonde, super-ripped, manacled DLL#1 and makes it clear her only interest is his well being. He eyes her lasciviously. Hmmmm.

When the 3 DLLs break free, they kill all the men - quite unspectacularly. After all, this is a Canadian movie pretending to be an American movie and as such, there's no money to deliver-up the goods. Our brunette French gal is spared, but not before being raped off-screen by DLL#1. It has to happen off-screen because - come on, guess! Oh, okay. I'll tell you. It's a Canadian movie and Canadians are far too civilized to put a rape scene up there for all to see. God knows, if they did that, they might also violate the content conditions placed on them to receive taxpayer money to finance a good chunk of the film via tax credits and/or investment.

Up to this point, the movie's pretty much been a washout in the action, suspense and gratuitous rape scene department, but because the film is set during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we get to see the soldiers watching a live telecast of JFK during some of the tenser moments with the threat to America from the Russkies. By default, this old news footage wins a Kewpie Doll for being the most suspenseful stuff thus far.

So, let us flash forward 50 years later. A group of soldiers for hire (led by Michael "What the fuck am I doing in this piece of shit?" Ironside) and a Blonde Babe-o-licious scientist are there on behalf of an oil company to do whatever it is they're supposed to do. They have another mission: to assist Malraux (Dominic Purcell) a beefy, BRUNETTE Dolph Lundgren lookalike SCIENTIST from La Belle Province who is there to search for the bodies of the mysterious DLLs who wiped everyone out in the backstory.

At this woeful point, I did the math and frankly, it was of the 1 + 1 = 2 variety. A mysterious dark haired Dolph Lundgren lookalike scientist with a French surname is really interested in finding the three Blonde Dolph Lundgren lookalikes who murdered everyone on the base 50 years earlier and raped (demurely off-screen) the French woman scientist who was brunette and left alive. Add to the equation, a really stupid piece of dialogue where the Blonde Babe scientist states how young looking Dominic Purcell looks and that she expected someone who was 50 years old and voila! The supposedly shocker ending comes about 20 minutes into the movie. (Oh, and anyone who couldn't figure this out by this point is a moron, so you do not have my sympathy for what you might call a "spoiler".)

Okay, the movie is pretty awful by this point anyway, but any hope it would get better was dashed when I realize that the good guy is the biological son of the main bad guy. And yup, the bad guys are superhuman clones developed by the Russkies during the Cold War with a mission to destroy New York City in a terrorist attack and the good guy is the bastard child of one of them and seeks to stop their deadly mission AND get payback for the rape of his mother.

Oh, I kid you not.

The stupidities don't end there. Purcell eventually finds the bodies of the Lundgren Boys all by his lonesome. He knows damn well who they are, but he has them moved to the outpost to do tests on them just to make sure. Good idea. This gives them a chance to break free, kill everyone (boringly and with no genuine action movie flourish) and head to the nearest town (in the fucking Arctic!!!!?????) to kill everyone, including the strippers (in the fucking Arctic? Just around the corner from Santa's workshop????) and hijack a plane to New York. Why these clowns decided to take a rest in the snow and stay frozen for 50 years instead of continuing their mission in the first place is beyond me.

I guess if they did, there wouldn't be a movie. That, however, wouldn't be the stupidest idea I've heard in awhile since there really is no reason for Ice Soldiers to exist. That this film was made takes the prize for that.

Look, a whole lot of nothing happens in this purported movie until the final confrontation. There are a few poorly directed action scenes, a lot of really stupid dialogue, and more anachronisms and inaccuracies than one would find in the absolute worst Grade Z 50s science fiction films. When the final confrontation comes, it's a washout since the film's director has no idea of how to direct action scenes and, in fairness, probably didn't have the budget for it since, one imagines, a good chunk of that change went into someone else's pocket.

On the plus side, there's some fine outdoor photography by one of Canada's best cinematographers Stephen Reizes. If there'd been something resembling a script and a director, this could have been a decent low-budget action thriller. (His individual shots during the action scenes are fine - what goes on in them and how lamely they're cut is the problem.)

I'm a great actor, but a paycheque
is a paycheque, even if I have to
play a stereotypical Aboriginal
trapper who guides the hero
through an Arctic forest
above the tree line.

I certainly hope the great actor Adam Beach got a good chunk of change for wasting his life doing this picture. He's a breath of fresh air in the last half hour, to be sure, but alas, he is saddled with the role of an offensively stereotypical Aboriginal Cree trapper (in the Arctic!!!!!?????) with a booze problem.

He's also skilled in the ways of the Arctic. Even though there are no trees in the Arctic, he manages to guide Dominic Purcell through a thick forest to find the bad guy.

Our movie draws to a close with Adam Beach setting up a Native funeral pyre as he and Purcell watch the Dolph Lundgren lookalikes burn until Purcell utters the knee-slappingly hilarious lines:

"He was my Father! He raped my Mother!"

These are lines worthy only of a screenwriter who penned dumb dialogue for the real Dolph Lundgren. Oh, mercy me! That's the case. Screenwriter Jonathan Tydor wrote the crappy 1990 Dolph Lundgren movie I Come in Peace.

Oy! Only a Canadian would be pathetic enough to shake the dust off someone like Tydor to write a script for their movie. About the only thing that can really be said in this picture's favour is that it's better than Passchendaele, the worst Canadian movie of all time.

Ice Soldiers is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from levelFilm.

NOW HERE'S THE GOOD NEWS, I HAVE ON OFFER, ONE FREE DVD COPY OF ICE SOLDIERS TO THE FIRST PERSON WHO SENDS IN THEIR ANSWER TO THE FOLLOWING TRIVIA QUESTION. IN ICE SOLDIERS, THERE IS A LAME CROSSING THE ICE FLOE SUSPENSE SCENE. NAME THE DIRECTOR AND TITLE OF THE FAMOUS SILENT MOVIE FROM BIOGRAPH PICTURES THAT HAS SUCH A SCENE AND NAME THE DIRECTOR AND TITLE OF THE RUSSIAN FILM WHICH FEATURES A BATTLE SCENE ON ICE FLOES. SEND YOUR ANSWERS TO klymkiwfilmcornerATyahooDOTca AND IF YOU HAVE THE CORRECT ANSWER FIRST, YOU WILL WIN!!!!