INTERSTELLAR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Nolan finally achieves a smidgen of competence.

Interstellar (2014)
Dir. Christopher Nolan
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Matt Damon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There isn't one single Christopher Nolan movie I've ever liked. He's humourless, pretentious and worst of all, he's a veritable Blind Pew when it comes to directing action scenes (which is a bit of a problem since three of his pictures are superhero movies). However, Interstellar is cause for a thimble-sized celebratory quaff o' bubbly since I was able to actually sit through the movie and not hate it - too much. Basically what we're dealing with here is an almost 3-hour-long cerebral-style sci-fi soaper involving a dying Earth and a whack of astronauts searching for habitable planets beyond a black hole that opens up into a faraway galaxy.

First of all, the movie has no major action set-pieces for Nolan to screw-up. The handful there are genuinely have an accent on suspense and Nolan handles them reasonably well. Also, the picture is replete with low-key dialogue scenes in a claustrophobic spaceship which allows for some fine acting from Matthew McConaughey as the ship's captain, Anne Hathaway as the science officer (and daughter of Michael Caine, the back-on-Earth mastermind of the endeavour to save the human race) as well as the always astonishing Jessica Chastain as McConaughey's back-on-Earth scientist daughter.

For such a long, humourless picture, it almost never feels dull and offers a compelling-enough journey to keep us in our seats. There's one humungous problem, however. The ride provided is decent enough, but there isn't a moment when we don't know where the movie is headed. The predictability-factor is disappointingly up there.

I defy anyone to not figure out the big secret in the early going when McConaughey's daughter (as a little girl) begs him not to go on the journey. I annoyingly tried to explain to my wife where the movie was headed and she asked me politely to keep my mouth shut. "Oh come," I insisted, "It's going to have worm holes and time travel elements, so how can it not be . . . " At this point, my daughter sharply cut me off with an aggressive finger to her lips and a loud, "Ssssshhhhhhh!!!!!"

I also defy anyone to not figure out from the very moment we meet Matt Damon that he isn't all he's cracked up to . . . oh, I'll shut it!!!

The movie is perfectly watchable, though, and based upon its relative competence I'd suggest that maybe, just maybe, Nolan has figured out how to make movies. Interstellar still bears the Christopher "One Idea" Nolan imprimatur - he'll never shake that, but at least you'll not be checking what time it is every five-to-minutes.

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

Interstellar screens the world over via Paramount.

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THE BETTER ANGELS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Malick protege's gorgeous rural period piece

1817.
Indiana.
Log cabin.
Deep woods.
A boy's love
for his mother.

The Better Angels (2014)
Dir. A.J. Edwards
Starring: Jason Clarke, Diane Kruger, Brit Marling, Braydon Denney

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In life and even after death, our real angels are indeed, as the title of this great film tells us, The Better Angels.

Fading up from a pitch black silent screen, one simple, powerful quotation from President Abraham Lincoln, tells us, and in retrospect, corroborates that this is the very core and essence of the dazzling directorial debut of Terrence Malick's longtime editor A.J. Edwards. It reads:

"All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

As the text fades down, we're left with a silent black screen for a few moments until a stately, ravishingly composed and arranged orchestral score envelopes us in the dark. Once the piece ends, we're greeted by harsh monochrome light attempting to break through an overcast sky and resting upon a set of steps that lead upwards to a series of majestic columns.

Moving inside and beyond this brief exterior shot, we're treated to a series of images by a camera aimed along the massive columns as they try to reach beyond the ceiling to be nourished by the light of the heavens. We get a brief glimpse of a bronze plaque embedded into the back wall and try as we might, it's impossible to make out what the words represent since the camera turns itself around as if from the point of view of these words, the plaque flanked by sculpted doves.

From within the darkness of this perspective we finally get a glimpse of the light pouring through the massive columns as the voice of an old man asks, "You wondering what kind of boy he was?" And then, we're gloriously winded by a smash cut to a river at dusk, the still water defined on either side by banks of majestic trees casting dark shadows upon the shimmering beauty, at once beautiful and alternately not unlike a visual representative of a lamentation for a time long passed.

This transition from the cold stone under grey light, representing something long dead, but worthy of the sort of worship its architecture demands, to the stunning beauty of the natural world is not only cinematically powerful, but in fact, is part of the film's overall style and storytelling techniques which, far exceed the cerebral pretence of Edwards' mentor, colleague and producer of this film. Terrence Malick's Tree of Life and To The Wonder were both such ludicrous wanks that it's kind of cool seeing the wankier inspirations being transformed into simple, emotional storytelling.

Our narrator gives us few details about "the boy", but then, we don't need too much more than what we actually see ourselves. What we do see is delivered in the measured pace of rural existence and though there are many Malick-like bits of cerebral looking-up-at-trees and so forth, it's all rooted in character and narrative (albeit a smidgen off the regular beaten path) in addition to the film's extraordinary tone.

The picture is ultimately so gorgeous, so inspiring and often heart-wrenching that this story about a little boy growing up in a little log cabin in Indiana in 1817 is compulsively watchable.

We learn from our narrator that the lad's name is Abe (Braydon Denney) and that he'll eventually leave home at the age of 21. It wouldn't take an Albert Einstein to figure out we're in on the childhood of Honest Abe Lincoln himself, but I suspect if I hadn't known before going in that this is whom/what the picture was dealing with, I'd like to think I'd have potentially been watching the story of a young boy, any young boy and his deep, undying love for his mother.

I will say, though, that the images and events rendered by Edwards and his cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd, all underscored by a gorgeous soundtrack composed by Hunan Townshend, are ultimately so potent that I did indeed file away my knowledge that we were following the young boy who eventually became one of the great presidents of the United States of America. What's kind of cool about this is that we're left with an evocative portrait of pioneer life that gives us a sense of both the hardships and joys of working the land and being inextricably linked to it.

The narrative of Abe's younger years is presented in a series of impressions of days and nights that proceed over the course of time and we're moved forward by some of the most spectacular jump cuts rendered in any film in recent memory. Though some cuts are clearly of the breathtaking variety, many seem so perfectly fluid and in fact seem as gentle as required, when required. We get impressions of children at play and at work, but we're almost always within Abe's sphere and/or POV. Ultimately, the film focuses upon a simple trinity of characters overwhelming all others populating the frame. The most important relationships involve Abe and his stern father (Jason Clarke) and his truly angelic mother (Diane Kruger).

When Abe raises the ire of his father and gets a stern lecture and/or a painful whipping, it's of course his mother who applies the gentle words to calm Abe and to help him understand and love his father in spite of the punishment. One of the most moving sequences is when Abe's mother tenderly describes the look on her husband's face when he first laid eyes on the boy after birth. She assures him that his father had nothing but adoration in his eyes and that she knew that he would always go to the wall for Abe and protect him with his very life.

We do indeed experience moments of tenderness between Abe and his Dad. We also come to understand that it's Abe's mother who recognizes the boy's special gifts and tries to convince her husband that Abe's not cut out for the rough, brutal hardships of working the land. Dad seems at first to dismiss this out of spite or even jealousy, but as the film progresses, we see that Abe's Dad wants to build fortitude and perseverance in his son.

When Abe's mother is taken ill and dies, Abe's Dad marries anew and Abe's stepmother (Brit Marling) proves to be as angelic, if not even more spiritually connected to the boy. The trinity of Father, Son and Stepmother is also as strong and important as the first one.

In both cases, it is the MOTHER (by blood and by marriage) who is able to outwardly perceive Abe's intelligence and sensitivity, whilst Dad is the hide toughener. One sequence even has a dreamy, ghostly moment when both mothers connect fleetingly and we are infused with an almost spiritual warmth, a glow that carries us and Abe through whatever hardships he continues to face.

And as haunting and sad as many of the impressions Edwards imparts are, we're always tied to the glory and spirit of the natural world and the special love that only a mother and son can have. The film paints a portrait of the formative years of a great man, but what we're often aware of is the potential of greatness in any man who honours God, nature and of course, his mother.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

The Better Angels is in platform theatrical release via levelFILM and can be seen in Toronto at the Carlton Cinema. Why this isn't also unspooling at TIFF Bell Lightbox and/or a decent Cineplex screen is beyond me. It's worth seeing as soon as possible, but I suspect its astounding picture and sound will shine ever-beautifully once the film is released on Blu-Ray.

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SHARKNADO 2: THE SECOND ONE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A Masterpiece of shark poop

YOU WILL
BELIEVE
A SHARK
CAN FLY
AND IF
YOU
BELIEVE
THAT
I'VE GOT A
BROOKLYN
BRIDGE
I CAN SELL
CHEAP!

Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)
Dir. Anthony C. Ferrante
Starring: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Vivica A. Fox, Judd Hirsch, Robert Kline, Robert Hays, Billy Ray Cyrus, Perez Hilton, Kelly Ripa, Al Roker, Kari Wuhrer, Wil Wheaton

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Inclement weather hits the New York-bound flight from L.A. Never fear, though. Robert Hays (Airplane!) is the pilot. But, wait! What's that we see out the window?

Oh, Jesus! No!

SHARKS!

This is more than mere inclement weather. This is that meteorological phenomenon which hit L.A. last year. It's a sharknado - a tornado so fierce it rips thousands of sharks out of the ocean and has them whipping around within the funnels of H2O, allowing for extra propulsion to dive at their targets, jaws agape, lusting to ingest whatever their tummies desire.

Within the first ten-or-so minutes of Anthony C. Ferrante's Sharknado 2: The Second One. a passenger is decapitated by a shark (in the plane), our leading lady (Tara Reid) has her hand bitten off by a shark (in the plane) and the pilot is swallowed whole when a shark crashes into the cockpit (uh, you guessed it, in the plane), until our stalwart hero from the first Sharknado (Ian Ziering) commandeers the controls, dodging hundreds of hungry airborne sharks until he can safely crash-land the airplane.

Alas, New York is about to be hit with a shit-storm of sharks because frankly, there's not one, but two - count 'em - TWO sharknados headed for the Big Apple from opposite directions like mega, funnel-shaped Twin Towers threatening to collide with each other in the heart of Times Square. And as we watch, mouths agape, we realize we're about to participate in what might be one of the most gloriously ludicrous monster movies of all time.

The first Sharknado was happily stupid. Sharknado 2 grabs a nursing sow by the teats and begins pulling maniacally like Quasimodo the Notre Dame bell ringer. Whereas the first titty twister of a Sharknado was so awful it was good, our followup picture is so good, it's hard to believe how awful it truly is - but in all the right ways - and possibly in ways that might actually be good. At a certain point, surrealism overtakes the whole affair and your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not the picture is endowed with considerable merit (or not, or whatever, it doesn't matter). Director Ferrante and screenwriter Thunder (Surely Not His Real Name) Levin have us soiling ourselves from beginning to end, not out of fright, but because the movie is genuinely funny.

Where writer Not His Real Name excels beyond the preposterous genius and variety of tornado-propelled shark attacks are some of the finest lines of dialogue ever scribed in an awful movie. My favourite, by far is when our bland leading man visits our bland leading lady in the hospital where she's recovering from a shark biting off her hand (yes, she's the one, the lassie who gets chomped by a shark in the plane in the first ten minutes), he attempts some levity meant to cheer her up, points to her bloodied, bandaged stump and remarks:

"The next time you offer to lend a hand don’t be so literal about it."

I'm still slapping my knee over that one, good golly gee. My other knee is also sissy-boy-slapped all to hell from laughter over seeing the head of the Statue of Liberty crash into downtown Manhattan and take out an unsuspecting bystander. Will wonders never cease? No, they don't. Witness, if you dare, our dreadful leading lady retrieve her hand from the jaws of a shark to get her wedding ring back.

This, I believe, is truly worthy of a full-on sissy-boy slap-party of guffaws.

With an atrocious leading man and equally abominable leading lady, a handful of fun supporting turns (notably Judd Hirsch as a cab driver) and the most ridiculous number of cameos by American pop culture icons (Billy Ray Cyrus, Kelly Ripa, Al Roker, etc.), there's no way anyone but some high-falutin' egg head is going to not love this tasty mound of fresh, steaming shark poop. The special visual effects are undeniably atrocious, but they're so unsparing in their sheer volume, that you occasionally convince yourself how great they are. Which, of course, they are most certainly not.

That, ladies and gentlemen, takes some doing and Sharknado 2: The Second One does it real good.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Sharknado 2: The Second One is available on an outlandishly rich Blu-Ray edition from VSC that includes 2 commentary tracks - TWO!!! - tons of behind the scenes featurettes, a genuinely fun and informative short on casting the cameos, a gag reel, extended and deleted scenes and gorgeously moronic cover art and menus. Feel free to order the movie directly via the appropriate Amazon links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

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GETTING STRAIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Important 70s examination of academia, civil unrest from Richard Rush, director of The Stunt Man, featuring a truly GREAT performance by Elliot Gould. This movie demands a proper Criterion or Kino Lorber edition featuring my dream commentary w/ Gould & Rush moderated by critic Kim Morgan!

Every kid growing up in the 70s wanted to be Elliot Gould because he was (and still is) so FUCKING COOL!

ELLIOT GOULD
with preppie/druggie
HARRISON FORD

Getting Straight (1970)
dir. Richard Rush
Starring: Elliot Gould, Candice Bergen, Harrison Ford, Brenda Sykes

Review By Greg Klymkiw

During the general 60s/70s American mayhem of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, protests, the draft and the JFK/RFK/King assassinations, one event still stands apart from the rest.

The Kent State University Massacre in Ohio of 1970 continues to send shudders through us all - that horrific moment when American National Guardsmen fired off live rounds of ammunition into throngs of innocent student protesters. As horrific as anything imaginable, this was a case where a government turned its fascist guns against its own people - its hope for the future, its youth.

Dissent would NOT be tolerated and Big Daddy Establishment was steadfastly unable to spare the rod against its seemingly spoiled, stubbornly non-compliant progeny.

During this period, the unrest was mirrored and examined in the popular culture – especially the movies, where filmmakers like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, Sam Peckinpah and many others sought to expose the violence and hypocrisy of American life. Many of these films were not only boxoffice hits in their day, but continue to be revered and recognized to this day. And then, there’s all the rest.

While there are several worthy forgotten pictures from this era, one in particular stands out – Richard Rush’s fascinating and entertaining Getting Straight, a counter culture drama based on Ken Kolb’s novel (with Robert Kaufman's screenplay adaptation) about post-secondary academic hypocrisy. Rush is a great, but hardly prolific filmmaker. His biggest claim to fame is The Stunt Man, a wonky, obsessive and utterly anarchic look at the blurry lines between fantasy and reality in the movie business starring a completely and deliciously over-the-top Peter O’Toole whose thespian excess in the picture is rivaled only by Rush’s controlled manic directorial style.

Looking at Getting Straight 45 years years since its release (during the very year of the aforementioned Kent State Massacre) and in the context of The Stunt Man, one is immediately taken with Rush’s fascination with the blurring of borders. In Getting Straight, the divides are simply and clearly between old and new.

Harry Bailey (Elliot Gould) is the mustachioed, side-burned and amiably rumpled protagonist of Getting Straight – a Vietnam veteran returned from the war and in the last year of his English Literature Masters degree and a sessional lecturer. Harry is a man without (so to speak) a country. He wants to teach – desperately, but is, alas, faced with the dilemma of being too world wise to be a true part of the youth movement he so desperately craves to reach and too hip to embrace the staid complacency of the established order of academia.

He wanders through the picture, not so much torn between both worlds, but observing them and wondering how he can be a part of both. This noble effort, on the part of the character makes for fascinating viewing as we take on his perspective, but it’s also probably the main reason why Getting Straight has disappeared into the ether.

Rush bravely chooses to maintain the perspective of a man divided to lead us through the narrative – a worthwhile goal and certainly not flawed, but over the decades, audiences have become so bludgeoned into needing a character with firm coattails to grab onto in order to - ugh! - root for him/her, that part of the picture's relative obscurity has probably been affected by this the most. Like Gould’s Harry Bailey, we, the audience, wander through a world where students protest the outmoded academic ideals of the institution and Gould himself tries to utilize new methods to reach his students, but he also craves to play the game of an establishment he wants to change. This, of course, is what makes the film so fascinating.

Two Harry Baileys.
Both went to war.
One Harry won
the Congressional
Medal of Honor,
The Other Harry
got screwed
by The Man.

Harry Bailey’s namesake is, of course, a character from Frank Capra’s stunning post-WWII classic It’s A Wonderful Life. The difference between the two characters is especially intriguing since Capra’s Harry is anything but indecisive. As Harry Bailey's big brother George (in the form of James Stewart) declares, “Harry Bailey went to war, he won the Congressional Medal of Honor, he saved the lives of every man” under his command. And when Capra’s Harry returns from the war, he knows EXACTLY what he wants.

Rush’s Harry is probably closer to Capra’s big brother figure, George. He wants to join the establishment in order to change it. In Capra’s post-war fantasy, George Bailey gets to do exactly that, but in Rush’s world, with roles clearly reversed, Harry learns that straddling the fencepost can never yield true change – it instead equals stasis.

Getting Straight falls a bit short of greatness, but in many ways, it's one of the few pictures that comes closest to capturing the complexity of the period in which it’s set. In this sense, it has NOT dated. It is genuinely a project of its time – perfectly reflective of the complexities of the blurred lines on both sides of the old and new world orders. The two main things that work against the picture’s bid for the kind of immortality it probably craved are as follows: the aforementioned passivity of Gould’s character – it’s right for the movie and right for the world of the movie, but at the same time, fights against what mainstream movie drama is MOSTLY made of – a clear goal, clear stakes and a satisfyingly wrought conclusion.

Rush does not achieve this, though in all fairness, it’s clearly not his intent to do so. The second roadblock facing the picture's grab for greatness, and it is (and must have been) insurmountable, is the utterly dreadful performance of its leading lady Candice Bergen as the Ice Goddess grad student who is in love with Harry. Bergen is horrendous. Her lines are delivered with the kind of soullessness, which goes well beyond that of the character’s cold shiksa-like station. Bergen’s deliveries are flat and so is her face. Though this movie was made well before the Botox revolution, Bergen wanders through the picture like a poster-child for the toxic protein of choice to render the flesh immovable and wrinkle-free.

That said, there’s just so goddamn much to admire in the film. Elliot Gould works boundlessly with his character's passivity, indecision, confusion, complexity and manages to always maintain a fun, funny, sexy and amiable screen presence. When Harry Bailey is called upon to be active, especially during a brilliant thesis-defense sequence, one can see precisely how and why Gould was such a big star during this period and why he hit such a responsive chord with audiences. He's a laconic wiseacre who saves his best explosions of force for when he needs them. HE IS SO FUCKING COOL you just WANT to BE Elliot Gould. (At least I did as a kid and probably still do.)

The film's supporting cast is marvelous, especially a very young Harrison Ford as a wide-eyed preppie-druggie. It's also great seeing sexy Brenda (Mandingo) Sykes and counter-culture star of Zachariah, John Rubinstein.

Rush’s direction is suitably obsessive and detailed. There is a protest scene that is as breathtaking and chilling as anything you’re likely to see and the numerous party scenes are all infused with the kind of immediacy that allows you to observe AND participate.

At the end of the day, Getting Straight accomplishes much of what it set out to achieve and is, finally, an evocative window into a time and place that seems so distant, and at the same time, so current.

Look around. Innocent people are being killed indiscriminately by The Man everyday.

In that sense, things never really change that much, do they?

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

Getting Straight is available on Sony Pictures’ inexplicably titled and oddly programmed DVD label “Martini Movies”. This movie is begging for a proper Blu-Ray release, transfer and special edition via Criterion or Kino Lorber. I also dream of a commentary track featuring Gould and Rush and, most importantly, moderated by Kim Morgan (whose piece on California Split for the L.A. Review of Books is a poster-child for WHY SHE'D BE PERFECT).

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THE DARK SIDE OF THE CHEW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Closing Gala Planet In Focus

Gum. The DIRTY secret.
The HEART of DARKNESS!
The desecration of body,
of soul, of Mother Earth!
The environmental PESTILENCE!

The Dark Side of the Chew (2014)
Dir. Andrew Nisker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching this film was so utterly repulsive that I found myself gagging and retching throughout. These aberrant expulsions and reflex actions had nothing to do with the quality of the film or lack thereof. In fact, the picture so successfully delivered an important Western Union to my brain that I could have no other response. You see, I hate gum. I have always hated gum. Even as a kid, the very idea of incessantly chomping upon an atrophied orb that I had to spit out, leaving the mindlessly masticated, gob-glistening wad of filth on the ground, sickened me to the soul. And believe me, I had to spit out that malformed plug of putrescence for others to step upon because the very idea of having to, God forbid, touch it with my fingers, if even to dispose of it, induced within me a need to blow chunks of bilious puke willy nilly.

I hated seeing people chew gum. I hated when those same people blew bubbles, cracked it and even worse, chewed it with their maws agape. Where, when, why and how I developed this hatred of gum is a mystery to me. All I know for sure is that I've always possessed this unhinged aversion to it. Worse yet, in middle-age-crazy, my hatred for gum has accelerated with such force that I still go apoplectic when I see and/or hear anyone chewing it, but now, I know that if I was allowed to legally carry a handgun, I'd be tempted to use it upon whatever miscreant displayed such bovine behaviour.

My victims could be man, woman and child. My aim would be so true that I'd show no discriminatory mercy. I'd fill anyone full of lead and proudly declare that I'd be much happier watching an endless loop of Divine eating fresh, steaming dog shit in John Waters's Pink Flamingoes than to ever again witness purported human beings chew their goddamn gum as if they were raised in Texas.

Andrew Nisker's The Dark Side of the Chew is, at least for me, both a blessing and a curse. His one-hour TV Ontario (TVO) documentary beads its eyes upon the environmental pestilence of gum and has given me even more reasons to justify my hatred towards it.

Appearing in the movie himself, Nisker shanghais us aboard his Conradian tugboat for a country-hopping journey into a veritable Heart of Darkness. Nisker is Willard. Gum is Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.

What Nisker discovers is an environmental Apocalypse!

Now!

What we learn, as Nisker himself learns, is that gum is one of the biggest environmental blights upon the planet. In days of yore, gum was derived naturally from a weird-ass tree in the jungles that once teemed with the Mayan Aztecs. However, when the natural source of gum started to dry up, almost to the point of extinction, gum manufacturers had to find a new sticky source to inject with oodles of sugar and surround with flavoured, crunchy candy. And what, pray tell, did those pesky corporate piggies come up with? Well, hold onto your hats, folks.

Gum is made of plastic!

Yes, plastic. And where, oh where, does most gum end up? You guessed it. On sidewalks. Now, if it just stayed there, accumulating like some toxic, viscous gunk on the pavement, ever accumulating until. . . what? Mounds of sticky filth - impeding byways and highways? Nope. That's no good. And get this: there isn't a city that doesn't spend enough money to feed the world's starving populations several times over for several millennia to clean gum off the streets. Where does it all go? Into the water. Yup, tons and tons and tons of plastic are steamed off the streets and into the sewers and back into the water. From gum. Your gum, Clarabelle Cow. And this is not much good for any living thing.

Gum chewers are chewing plastic (cancer) infused with sugar (diabetes) or sugar-free chemicals like Aspartame (dementia), then they're spitting it up onto the ground whereupon it's "cleaned" up, right back into the environment.

This, frankly, is appalling enough, but Nisker doesn't stop there. Nay, he takes us deep into the heart of gum's darkness and we learn more about it in one hour than one would think was humanly impossible. We discover fossilized gum, we travel to various manufacturers of gum and we even get a couple of tastes of "greener" gum options. It still adds up to the same thing - waste and pollution.

Nisker even seeks to test out the scientific and medical claims made by gum manufacturers. A few of these tests are downright illuminating. Not surprisingly, we learn there is no truth to the ludicrous claims, but worse yet, we learn that many of the claims are so outrageous that they seriously affect those who buy into it and subsequently use it upon our children.

Ultimately, Nisker's film is so exhaustive, he might well have just called it Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Gum But Were Too Ignorant To Ask. We get the history of gum, its sociological and culture impact and most of all, the damage it's doing to ourselves and our planet.

All of this is presented in a breezy, clever and entertainingly digestible fashion. (Except, for me, during closeups of people chewing the wretched stuff and the clever digitally animated ooze of gum that floods the streets and even chases Nisker at one point like a river of molten lava, is hardly the stuff of intestinal comfort. I can feel the mounting need to expunge like some character in Sam Shepard's La Turista, the desire to engage in the dreaded Aztec two-step.)

For me, though, his movie makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I haven't been a madman for all these years. I now have an Encyclopedia Britannica worth of reasons to detest gum even more. And now, I even dream about gum and in my dreams I see a glob of gum crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and ending up into the eco-system, the food chain and into my mouth - to ingest the cud-chewings of plastic, spat out upon the sidewalks of the world.

It's enough to make you sick.

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

The Dark Side of the Chew is the Closing Night Gala of the 2014 Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival in Toronto. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

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THE OVERNIGHTERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - FilmsWeLike opens great doc @TIFFBellLightbox

Williston, North Dakota
has no affordable housing.
Williston, North Dakota
refuses to help the homeless.
Pastor Jay's church
becomes a homeless shelter.
Williston, North Dakota
is not amused.

The Overnighters
Dir. Jesse Moss

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The fine, God-fearing, deeply religious citizens of Williston, North Dakota, do not extend Christian charity to the homeless. They just want to run them out of town. Most of the supposed miscreants and criminals are, in actuality, dirt-poor men of all ages who've left their families, friends and hometowns behind to combat their poverty by taking advantage of the huge fracking oil boom in this otherwise dull, closed-minded little community. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be in Williston never bothered to address what would obviously have become and indeed is an affordable housing shortage. Hundreds of men from all over America have descended upon the bucolic, middle-of-nowhere burgh of Christian fundamentalism and even those who can get jobs, cannot afford to live in Williston. The citizenry do not want outsiders in their community. Outsiders might, after all, be criminals.

But, never fear, these men have a champion in the form of Pastor Jay Reinke, a caring, intelligent and deeply committed man of God who decides to open the doors of his parish to the homeless. With the assistance, though mostly support of his wife and children Reinke transforms the Concordia Lutheran Church into a massive homeless shelter.

The Overnighters is the title the powerful, moving, often harrowing and at times, deeply disturbing feature documentary by Jesse Moss. It also happens to be the name of the program Reinke runs, for by day, as many as 60 men are either working or looking for work and overnight, they're sleeping on floors, in pews, in storage rooms and for the many who can't get in due to Reinke's desire to avoid overcrowding, they sleep outside in their cars in the church parking lot. The idiots on the Williston municipal council have banned overnight parking on ALL city streets. Gotta love that down-home Christian charity.

Director Jesse Moss leaves no stone unturned in telling this amazing story. The central conflict is Reinke's head-butting with the municipal council, other citizens and even his own parish. The local daily newspaper hates his guts and places stories everyday that directly or indirectly slam the existence of the homeless shelter. The council even begins to dredge up all manner of legislation to make life miserable for Reinke and his overnighters. The good Pastors's family supports him, but they're also on the short end of the stick since Reinke is working everyday for long hours. He even has conflicts with some of the men.

Still and all, he's passionate and committed to extending Christian charity. Though he does extensive criminal background checks on all potential clients, he realizes that desperate men in desperate times might well have criminal records. Reinke's desire is to simply get to know the men and the circumstances which led them to commit the crimes. One of his overnighters is a registered sex offender. Fearing this will cause controversy, the Pastor removes the man from the church and, with his family's unreserved support, allows the man to sleep in the Reinke family home. Besides, the sex crimes registry in the USA is so Draconian that this middle-aged man, who now finds himself sleeping in the family's basement, has a weighty stigma attached to him because of the fact that, at the age of 18 (!!!) he was having sexual relations with his 16-year-old girlfriend (!!!).

Moss's commitment to this very long story, which transpired over a considerable period of time, is admirable. In fact, the film is ultimately a harrowing, character-driven story and we follow Reinke as he slowly begins to lose it. Shockingly, a secret is soon revealed that devastates the Pastor, his family, the community and certainly us. The sad reality exposed is that Christian charity really doesn't extend beyond fundamentalist lip service. A Pastor, a Man of God, is after all, a Human Being - deserving of both respect and forgiveness as much as any man.

It's just not in the cards. Most Christians, it seems, are the biggest hypocrites of them all.

Especially in Williston, North Dakota.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

The Overnighters is a FilmsWeLike release at TIFF Bell Lightbox. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE.

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TRICK OR TREATY? Review By Greg Klymkiw - See Canada lie in great Obomsawin film

Chancellor Stephen Harper is the most insidious
of all Canadian Colonial Backwater Prime Ministers
in the "polite" genocide of our First Nations people.
Heil Canada! Heil Old Money! Heil Der Führer!
Heil Harper!

Trick or Treaty?
Dir. Alanis Obomsawin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are many things that disgust Canadians about Chancellor Stephen Harper, but for me, the worst is his refusal to properly deal with the egregious theft of Aboriginal Rights during the signing of the notorious James Bay Treaty, as well as the veritable litany of horrendously callous issues related to our First Nations People that he simply chooses to ignore. (The epidemic of murdered and missing Native women, anyone?) As the most vile Prime Minister in Canadian history (and we've had quite a few contenders for that dubious distinction in the Dominion of Canada), his record and public stance on the Native People of our country goes well beyond the pale. This pathetic Cowboy Hitler takes the cake.

Alanis Obomsawin's important body of work, including her new film Trick or Treaty?, confirms that Canada has always been the most insidious colonial backwater of them all and the genocide it continues to perpetrate upon our First Nations is perfectly in keeping with the country's sickeningly polite approach to decimating those who would dare get in the way of Old Money's needs to keep amassing money by just taking it (tactfully, graciously and ever-so sneakily, of course). Obmosawin's new documentary focuses upon a massive peaceful protest in Ottawa, the nation's capitol, that was designed to force Chancellor Harper (and, of course, the Governor General who represents the British Monarchy) to meet face-to-face with those First Nations Chiefs most affected by the over-100-year-old treaty which was designed and implemented to steal land and not allow any meaningful sharing in the decision-making process of dealing with said land.

The result of the James Bay Treaty has been abject poverty, skyrocketing rates of suicide and environmental destruction, all of which affects not just our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, but ALL Canadians. What affects the original inhabitants of this land IS our responsibility, but most of all, when any members of our nation are hard done by, our only real choice is to ensure our elected officials and bureaucrats are going to do the right thing.

Harper and his party of Totalitarian knuckle-draggers could care less. The power of this film is seeing the efforts of Native People trying to get him to address the problem - to give him a shot at something resembling redemption. We know in our heart of hearts it won't happen, but what's on view in Obomsawin's film makes us want it to happen nevertheless.

Top: Vile Canuck Bureaucrat (is there any other kind?)
Below: The True Heroes of every living Canadian

The core of the film involves a re-enactment of the 1905 signing of the James Bay Treaty (aka Treaty No. 9) in Moose Factory, Ontario. Presided over by the brainchild of this event, the late, great Dr. Stan Louttit, Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council, presents some of the most damning evidence of Canada's wilful apartheid and genocide (take your pick, Canada's done both) against our First Nations.

One of the earliest 20th Century Canadian Nazis was a petty bureaucrat (bureaucrats are the pathetic dweebs who implement the desires of our foul politicians) who rose to power within the Department of Indian Affairs to eventually become its Obergruppenführer. In the film, Louttit brings our attention to Scott's evil when he reads the following words of the foul bureaucrat:

"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic . . ."

These are the words with which Scott extolled the virtues of Residential Schools - a horrendous program that forcibly wrenched over 150,000 Native Canadian children from their families and homes, shoving them into boarding schools designed to break their spirit and remove all vestiges of their culture from their hearts and minds. To do this involved physical and psychological abuse that was little more than torture. There was, of course, the added rampant sexual abuse, all of it perpetrated in the de rigueur fashion by - no surprise - Catholic nuns and priests.

So get this, in the film, Louttit exposes the fact that Scott, this paragon of forced assimilation, was also one of the chief bureaucrats present during the signing of the notorious James Bay Treaty where he and several others outright lied to the Native leaders about the content of the treaty and created an entire facade by which the First Nations representatives signed a document based on what the bureaucrats assured them was in the treaty as opposed to what was actually there. Louttit also exposes documentation which proves this fraud was perpetrated beyond any shadow of a doubt, so no matter what physically exists on paper in the treaty itself, the fact remains that the treaty the Chiefs signed is ultimately the treaty imparted to them verbally.

Native culture was rooted in an oral tradition and as such, especially during the time the treaty was presented, means VERY CLEARLY that the LIES of those Canadian politicians and bureaucrats present at the signing (all representing Mother England, our ruler) must, in fact, be taken as the ACTUAL TRUTH. The signatures of the Chiefs are actually "marks" (usually a single "X") since the men who signed the treaties could not read or write English and had to depend upon the aforementioned politicians and bureaucrats to tell them verbally what they were signing.

This powerful core of Obomsawin's film is deftly woven into the harrowing hunger strike implemented by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence who went on a six-week-long liquids-only program to demand a meeting with Chancellor Harper and Canada's Governor General David Johnston to address a variety of issues related to treaty rights and the economic, cultural and societal plight Native Canadians find themselves in because of said treaties like James Bay. Obomsawin also includes a pointed Native Studies lecture dealing with the exploitative aspects of Treaty No. 9 and an astonishing, by-foot journey undertaken by several young Native men across Ontario's icy tundras from the far north to Ottawa itself.

And what of Chancellor Harper in all of this? It's what he chooses not to do that's the most egregious action. Looming in the backdrop of many of the activities is the symbol of Canadian evil, the Parliament Buildings, our very own Reichstagsgebäude. Harper is nestled safely within and yet a woman is potentially dying at his feet, thousands of men and women are gathered and even engaging in several spectacular displays of Native culture and then, several young, brave men have travelled by foot, thousands of miles to be in Ottawa.

Where the fuck is Chancellor Harper? Would it have been too much for him to make a few public appearances and say a few words to the assembled (no matter how empty they would have been)? He's simply nowhere to be seen, nor heard from throughout the range of spectacular, impressive and deeply moving events captured by Obomsawin's film (including a monumental circle dance involving hundreds of people).

Trick or Treaty? was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It's somehow ironic that Harper, in his continued assault upon Canadian culture, is continually destroying the fabric of our cultural institutions and his vehement financial dismantlement of the Board itself is something we might, as a nation, never fully recover from.

At the end of her film, Obomsawin leaves us with a montage that's as heart-lifting as it's heartbreaking. It includes the powerful words of John Trudell. I'll leave you now, with the refrain:

Crazy Horse
We Hear what you say
One Earth, one Mother
One does not sell the Earth
The people walk upon
We are the land
How do we sell our Mother ?
How do we sell the stars ?
How do we sell the air ?

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

Trick or Treaty? plays at PLANET IN FOCUS, the 15th annual environmental film festival in Toronto. Obomsawin will be present for the screening. If you haven't seen it, don't miss it. If you HAVE seen it, see it again. For further information, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

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