THE INTERVIEW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - KimJong-un AssassinationComedy not funny

The cast of
THE INTERVIEW
has way more fun
than its audience will.

The Interview (2014)
Dir. Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Scr. Dan Sterling
Starring: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Randall Park, Lizzy Caplan, Diana Bang, Eminem, Rob Lowe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

On paper, this must have sounded pretty good. The producer (Seth Rogen) and host (James Franco) of a highly rated sleaze-o-rama TV interview show specialize in outrageous shock-value exposes of American pop culture celebrities: for example, Eminem announces his homosexuality on the show, whilst Rob Lowe removes a toupee and there's talk of interviewing Matthew McConaughey about his sexual relations with a goat. When the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, a huge fan of the show agrees to an interview, our bro-mantic couple are not only going to be shipped all expenses paid to North Korea, but are approached and trained by the CIA to assassinate him.


Hilarity, supposedly, ensues.

Unfortunately, The Interview just isn't very funny and spins its wheels most of the time in a sort of schizophrenic manner - never reaching the level of bonafide satire, nor lowering itself to the depths of just plain outrageous humour. Franco and Rogen are, as per usual, engaging enough and manage to squeeze out a few mild chuckles along the way, but because their performances are both pitched so high in the tongue-in-cheek department, it manages to mute whatever laugh potential existed in the material if it had been played with much straighter faces.




The picture's attempts at a kind of good-natured balancing act between blinkered American racism and ethnocentrism never works since the film is so far removed from being genuine satire that such extremities which, might have been delightfully, darkly and viciously funny in that context, just fall flat. As it stands, jokes about how cute dogs can only live freely in America instead of being eaten by ravenous, starving North Koreans or how stupid the North Korean security forces are that they never implant surveillance equipment in the rooms occupied by the leading men (as they openly discuss their assassination plans) and Kim Jong-un's secret obsession with Katy Perry music (and the list, goes on and on and on) all feel like discarded SNL gags.

In terms of the picture's potential to poke fun at America's constant attempts to overthrow dictators - not because it's the right thing to do, but because they can gain economic and political footholds the world over - is all dashed when the seemingly friendly Kim Jong-un is eventually revealed to be the psychotic despot everyone has assumed he was to begin with. American might is right and assassination IS the ONLY answer. It's here where the movie is a not-so-shameless propping up of American Imperialism at its worst.

Some might suggest I doth pretest too much - that The Interview is just meant to be a silly, good-natured comedy. Stupid, however, is not silly and assassination is not good-natured. Worst of all, the movie isn't even supremely godawful, it's just crashingly mediocre. Did I smile and chuckle? Very occasionally. Did the movie ever bore me? Well, uh yeah, actually it did. Did, God Forbid, the movie offend me? Well, sort of - only insofar as its subject matter could well have been exploited for its satirical potential and instead, took incendiary material and reduced it to the level of a sub-par buddy comedy a la Bing and Bob On the Road (but lacking even the "sophistication" of those creaky endeavours).

The Eminem and Rob Lowe cameo interviews are not without some meagre merit and Randall Park genuinely delivers a standout performance as the dictator - delivering most of his stuff with a straight face and only eventually going into over-the-top territory where the script, such as it is, demands the actor to go. Sadly, the scene with the greatest potential to be inspired lunacy involves finger-biting, but it never goes as far as it should. It injects something potentially outrageous, but holds back where it counts the most. All one need do is recall the Monty Python sketch entitled "Salad Days By Sam Peckinpah" to acknowledge the missed potential here.

Overall, The Interview proves to be one rancid, overcooked bowl of kimchi.

The funniest moment for me was when Kim Jong-un reveals a tank bestowed upon North Korea by Stalin. James Franco corrects the dictator by saying, "In my country, we pronounce his name as "Stallone."

This, garnering the biggest laugh from me, simply hammered home that the movie is unequivocally lame at best.

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

The Interview is in limited theatrical release and playing day-and-date on VOD via Sony Pictures.

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Greg Klymkiw picks The Film Corner's Top 21 Documentaries of 2014 - Stellar Year 4 DOCS - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, Planet Out 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

Documentary cinema in 2014 was so powerful that it seems almost ludicrous to even attempt a list honouring only 10 movies, so I've decided to include a few categories here that are comprised of a variety of films within them which I've chosen to bundle together and furthermore present my picks as the Top 21 Documentaries of 2014. The list will be in alphabetical order by category and title.

Documentaries on the Artistic Process:


Altman
Dir. Ron Mann
Focusing on the genius maverick director, the picture exceeds all expectations by being the most perfect film biography of Robert Altman that one could ever want.

Art and Craft
Dir. Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman
Co-Dir/Editor: Mark Becker
This is the stuff movies (and by extension, dreams) are made of. Filmmakers Cullman, Grausman and Becker have fashioned a thoroughly engaging portrait of an artist as an old man, but not just any garden variety artist. Landis is a sweet, committed, meticulous and gentle craftsman of the highest order. In fact, he's no mere copy cat, he is an artist - reproducing with astonishing detail work that touches and moves, not only himself, but millions. Furthermore, he might well be the ultimate performance artist insofar as his entire life seems like a veritable work of art and certainly, his "cons" in costume are also art of the highest order.

Giuseppe Makes a Movie
Dir. Adam Rifkin
This superbly directed films is a wild, wooly and supremely entertaining portrait of underground filmmaker Giuseppe Andrews, a fringe-player of the highest order. Out of his fevered imagination, he crafts work that captures a very desperate, real and sad truth about America's fringes that are, frankly, not so outside the Status Quo as the country descends even deeper into a kind of Third World divide twixt rich and poor. Through Adam Rifkin's lens we see America according to Andrews, a country rife with abject poverty, alcoholism, exploitation, cruelty and violence. Trailer parks and cheap motels provide the visual backdrop by which Andrews etches his original portraits of depravity, but they are ALWAYS tinged with humanity.

Life Itself
Dir. Steve James
This documentary portrait of writer Roger Ebert is a beautiful, touching and heart wrenching portrait of a man that most anyone who loves movies worshipped and/or admired. Shot primarily during the last few months of his life, it focuses on Ebert's indomitable will to live and allows allows him to take on an aura of saintliness that seems perfectly apt.

Natan
Dir. David Cairns, Paul Duane
This profoundly moving and imaginative film expertly places Bernard Natan, the Father of French Cinema, back where he truly belongs. Though the visionary Romanian-Jew in Paris was eventually the victim of Nazi genocide in Auschwitz, his very memory was erased and tarnished by antisemitism perpetrated by the Vichy and a contemporary academic's boneheaded scholarship. Cairns and Duane have created a brilliant artistic vessel to tell Natan's story.

To Be Takei
Dir. Jennifer M. Kroot
This is as close as we're likely to get to actually being able to mainline actor/activist George Takei as if he were the purest form of heroin imaginable. By focusing so resolutely on his achievements with all the aplomb of a master storyteller, director Kroot has made a movie that not only dazzles, informs and entertains, but is - without question - as important a film as any of us really want all of our film experiences to be.

Documentaries on Eastern Europe:

The Condemned
Dir. Nick Read
We are in Russia, or if you will, Hell. For many who are enclosed within the perimeter of fencing and locked gates, this will be their Purgatory until death takes them to the fiery eternal abode of Mephistopheles. Those who are not here for life, came in as young men and will leave as old men. This is the Federal Penal Colony No. 56 in Central Russia, surrounded by hundreds of square miles of deep forest in the Russian taiga. There's only one road in and one road out. The nearest populated community is a seven-hour drive away. The temperatures here frequently dip to 40 below zero. There's no escape.

Maidan
Dir. Sergey Loznitsa
Using long takes, beautifully composed with no camera movement, Loznitsa captures key moments, both specific historical incidents and deeply, profoundly moving human elements during the Ukrainian Revoultion. As such, it evokes stirring and fundamental narrative, thematic and emotional sensations which place us directly in the eye of the storm.

Love Me
Dir. Jonathon Narducci
The world of mail-order brides is the focus of Jonathon Narducci's thorough and affecting film. Using the online dating service "A Foreign Affair" as the door into this world, Love Me focuses upon five men (3 schlubs, 2 not-so-much) who dump thousands upon thousands of dollars on the company's services. From membership fees to per-transaction fees for the online aspect of the service to the actual whirlwind guided tours to Ukraine, Narducci expertly wends his way through a massive amount of material and subjects, but does so with impeccable skill and movie-making savvy.

Ukraine is not a Brothel
Dir. Kitty Green
The unconventional feminist activists who are the subjects of this important documentary are, via the commitment and artistry of the movie's director, proof positive that Ukraine must be personified as matriarchal, rather than patriarchal, if it is to have any potential to survive as a nation at all. As such, the country must not be bought and sold, but will need, in order to stave off the horse trading at every level, the political will of its people to thrive beyond all shackles, beyond all influence, save for that which comes from within.

Documentaries on Latin America:

The Engineer
Dir. Dir. Juan Passarelli, Mathew Charles
This superbly wrought motion picture focuses on one horrific aspect of America's legacy in El Salvador. The suffering experienced is palpable. As the murder rate laughably goes down, the missing person rates climb astronomically. It is up to one man, the subject of the film's title to forensically investigate and exhume the bodies of those who go missing.

Marmato
Dir. Marc Grieco
When 500 years of your ancestors have lived on one of the largest, richest mountains of gold in the world, the last thing you want are foreign investors, corporate pigs and a corrupt government decimating your homes and livelihood. This, however, has been the reality suffered by the people who do most of the living, working and dying in Marmato, Colombia. To say this film is an important film reflecting the exploitation of the poor by the rich would be an understatement.

Documentaries on Native Peoples:

Pine Ridge
Dir. Anna Eborn
Life pulsates at the heart of this powerful evocation of the land's natural beauty that's mirrored in the light of her subjects' eyes. Many look forward to assuming and/or resuming an exploration of the world beyond, but always acknowledge the pull of the reservation to bring them back to a home, grudgingly given to them with the spilling of blood.

Trick or Treaty?
Dir. Alanis Obomsawin
Focusing upon a massive peaceful protest in Ottawa that's designed to force Canadian Chancellor Stephen Harper to meet face-to-face with First Nations Chiefs most affected by the over-100-year-old James Bay Treaty, designed and implemented to steal land and not allow any meaningful sharing in the decision-making process of said land. The result has been abject poverty, skyrocketing rates of suicide and environmental destruction, all of which affects not just our First Nations, but ALL Canadians.

Documentaries on a Variety of Subjects: Albinism, Victims, The Homeless, Porn Addiction, Orwellian Measures, Serial Killers, Terrorists, Criminals

The Boy From Geita
Dir. Vic Sarin
In Tanzania, if you're born with albinism, a rare genetic condition that severely lightens the pigmentation of your skin and renders you susceptible to dangerous, damaging effects from the sun's rays, you are less than zero.For as long as albinos have existed in this part of the African continent, they have been subject to prejudice at best and at worst, mutilation or murder. The legendary cinematographer and filmmaker Vic Sarin presents a story that is, at once appallingly grotesque, yet also, out of the dark side of the human spirit is a tale of profound and deep compassion.

The Look of Silence
Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer's follow-up to the extraordinary The Act of Killing  focuses, not on the mass murderers and torture squads of Indonesia, but the victims. If the film isn't quite as bravura stylistically as its one-of-a-kind  predecessor, it more than makes up for it in terms of overall emotional impact. This time, you're not only knocked squarely upon you butt, but constantly moved to tears. Astounding and devastating. Oppenheimer still towers above most filmmakers.

The Overnighters
Dir. Jesse Moss
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. This moving and at times, deeply disturbing documentary focuses on one man who cares, Pastor Jay Reinke, an intelligent and deeply committed man of God who opens the doors of his parish to the homeless.

RUN RUN IT'S HIM
Dir. Matthew (Matt) Pollack
Co-Producer/Cinematographer: Jamie Popowich
This is an obsessive, hilarious, shocking, touching, imaginative, inventive and altogether astonishing personal portrait of a young man’s addiction to pornography and masturbation. It’s a genuine underground film about WANKING that’s delectably imbued with plenty of WANK qualities. Any obsessive will respond to this, not in spite, but BECAUSE of the picture’s meandering, borderline structure and roughness - its HONESTY! Pollack’s film touches the soul (and a few other, uh, personal places) because it's so goddamn, heart-achingly real.




The Secret Trial 5
Dir. Amar Wala
Audiences all over the world need to see this film. It's proof that IF a so-called benign democratic stronghold like Canada is willing to engage in such fascist activities, imagine just how horrendous the whole wide world is becoming with respect to the thug-like imposition of Orwellian measures to keep everyone in their place.

Tales of The Grim Sleeper
Dir. Nick Broomfield
Broomfield's film sheds a huge light upon how a killer openly went about his tireless, prodigious, dirty business - pretty much in plain view. The LAPD, not surprisingly, refused Broomfield's requests to be interviewed. We only see the cops on camera through news footage wherein they're extolling their "genius" at cracking the case through good, old-fashioned police work. As Broomfield's film more than ably proves, the police pretty much did nothing while one woman, after another and another and another, ad nauseam, were brutally murdered. Well, the cops DID manage to brag about how much they did.

Terror at the Mall
Dir. Dan Reed
The horrific experience of knowing we are seeing actual footage of terrorism is balanced in profoundly moving ways since director Reed provides, ultimately, is a testament to the courage of ordinary people. There is fear, to be sure, but in many ways, true courage can only be borne out of fear and one ultimately must salute Reed and his team for giving these people a voice in light of actions that will be seared upon them forever.

Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger
Dir. Joe Berlinger
This film is one of the most harrowing crime pictures ever made. It's no drama, however, but is certainly imbued with a compulsive narrative expertly unfurled by ace documentary filmmaker Berlinger. The picture leaves you breathlessly agog at the utter brutality and sordid corruption of a system that allowed a monster like American gangster James Bulger to get away with his crimes for so long. The film will, no doubt remain a classic of great American cinema long after all of us have gone from this Earth. It's what cinema should be - it's for the ages.

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Greg Klymkiw's 10 BEST HORROR/SCI-FI/FANTASY/ACTION FILMS of 2014 - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

Berkshire County
Dir. Audrey Cummings, Scr. Chris Gamble, Prod. A71 Productions, High Star Entertainment, Narrow Edge Productions
Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business.

The Editor
Dir. Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Scr. Brooks, Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Prod. Astron-6
Blonde Stud: So where were you on the night of the murder?
Blonde Babe: I was at home washing my hair and shaving my pussy.

Ejecta
Dir. dir. Dir. Chad Archibald, Matt Wiele, Scr. Tony Burgess, Prod. Foresight Features
There are no happy-faced hairless alien midgets gesticulating Zoltán Kodály Hand Signals whilst smiling at a beaming Francois Truffaut. No-siree-Spielberg. These mo-fos induce horror that inspires drawer-filling of the highest order.

Hellmouth 
Dir. John Geddes, Scr. Tony Burgess, Prod. Foresight Features
To both the living and perhaps even the dead, old graveyards are as comforting as they are creepy. Screenwriter Tony Burgess seems to understand this better than most and as such, he's crafted one of the most deliciously insane horror treats of the new millennium.

Honeymoon
Dir. Leigh Janiak , Scr. Phil Graziadei, Janiak, Prod. Fewlas Entertainment
An extrication violates an opening of extreme indelicacy. It inspires, not only horror, but deep shame. Beware the forest. Beware the night. Most of all, beware the light.

Late Phases
Dir. Adrián García Bogliano, Scr. Eric Stolze, Prod. Larry Fessenden
Just after a full moon, there is a period of calm in werewolf country as the glistening orb settles benignly into its last quarter, new moon and then, first quarter phases. It's here, during this month of calm where one can best prepare for the next onslaught of a werewolf attack. Ambrose, played by Nick Damici, one of the best actors working in America today, is a blind man. That won't stop him, though. A lycanthrope must be taken out.

Oculus
Dir. Mike Flanagan, Scr. Flanagan, Jeff Howard, Jeff Seidman, Prod. Lasser Productions
During a disquieting evening, a Hunky Brother (fresh out of the loony bin) and his Babe-o-licious Sister (having prepared both of them for the worst), square off against an antique mirror which, during their childhood, transformed their happy Daddy into a hot-headed abuser and their Hot Mama into a willing victim of torture at the hands of mega-bunyip hubby-pants.

See No Evil 2
Dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Scr. Nathan Brookes, Bobby Lee Darby, Prod. WWE Studios
It's a quiet night night in the city morgue, but not for long. Soon it will be flooded with corpses from a nearby mass-killing-spree, including the body of the killer himself, the seven-foot, 300-pound, Jacob Goodnight. The lad's merely been resting. Now he's ready for more naughty horseplay.

Time Lapse
Dir. Bradley King , Scr. King, B.P. Cooper, Prod. Uncooperative Pictures, Veritas Productions
Twilight Zone-like science fiction and horror dips its toe into the film noir territory of a criminal underbelly when a trio of young people happen upon a mysterious camera that seems to have the power to capture images from the future and a malevolent scum-bucket bookie wants his piece of the action. Mounting greed, sexual tension and backstabbing eventually ooze into the buoyant shenanigans. Genre-bending murder and mayhem aren’t far behind.

Wyrmwood
Dir. Kiah Roache-Turner, Scr. Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner, Prod. Guerilla Films
This white-knuckle roller coaster ride through the unyielding Australian bushland focuses upon a family man (who's had to slaughter his family when they "turn" into zombies) and a ragtag group of tough guys, equip themselves with heavy-duty armour, armament and steely resolve to blast through hordes of flesh-eating slabs of viscous decay and careen on a collision course with a group of Nazi-like government soldiers who are kidnapping both zombies and humans so a wing-nut scientist can perform brutal experiments upon them. Scary-ass thrills in the best action film of the year.

These terrific films were launched during a myriad of great film festivals like Toronto After Dark Film Festival, Montreal's FantAsia International Film Festival, TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival and the Blood in the Snow Film Festival. They are officially being released via VSC, Raven Banner, Elevation Pictures, A-71, Anchor Bay Entertainment (Canada), IFC, Relativity Media, Magnet Releasing and MPI. They have all, or will be soon available on a variety of media. They can be ordered by clicking on the various links below

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

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, naked!

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

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

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

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

You have hereby been warned:

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

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

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

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

SEE NO EVIL 2 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Soskas deliver goods w/gun-for-hire slasher pic

If this happy fellow was stalking you
in a morgue at night, it would probably NOT
be an ideal situation for you to be in.

Moments of Tenderness - Soska Style

See No Evil 2 (2014)
Dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska
Scr. Nathan Brookes, Bobby Lee Darby
Starring: Glenn "Kane" Jacobs, Danielle Harris, Katharine Isabelle

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I couldn't get Alfred Hitchcock out of my head while watching the third feature film by the Soska Sisters. In particular I was forced to recall Hitch's espionage thriller Torn Curtain. His picture has one of the most brilliant, harrowing and excruciatingly violent set pieces in movie history which, I believe, should be every young filmmaker's guide to what makes a movie great (and not just those who are making genre films). At the very least, the scene provides an example of the sort of elements most naturally-gifted filmmakers should always be thinking about.

The scene involves a mathematician and a simple rural housewife forced to kill a deadly East German Stasi agent as silently as possible in a farmhouse kitchen. Neither man nor woman have experience in such heinous shenanigans. The odds of succeeding are stacked against them big time and as such, the hurdles they face are rife with conflict. Even more importantly, Hitch makes the fullest use of the setting for the foul deed to be carried out, thus begging the question: if they're not killers and don't even have the required implements to kill, what do they use? Anything and everything at their disposal in the kitchen. (Just thinking about this probably places any number of horrendous thoughts in your head and yet, none of them will come close to the sheer horror and brutality of what's actually used.) The bottom line is that the scene must naturally use what would be at these characters' fingertips and be the sorts of things they'd need to use with very little time to think it through (hence, the aforementioned notion of not automatically guessing what's used).

Fuelling the scene thematically is Hitchcock's desire to make it clear just how hard it is for a "normal" person to kill someone - taking a life is not an easy thing, even if it's the only thing to do to survive - especially on the levels of practicality and morality. The cherry Hitch places on the ice cream sundae is that the historical backdrop is post-war Communist Germany during the Cold War. The victim is a German. His last breath will occur within a household item that's sickeningly symbolic of what Germans did to their prisoners in concentration camps.

You might wonder why I'm spending so much time discussing this ONE scene in an old (and even quite flawed, save for a few great scenes) Hitchcock film. Well, it serves two purposes. One, it places the Soskas, as filmmakers, in that wonderful sphere of natural born killers - or rather, uh, directors.

Though See No Evil 2, a sequel to Gregory Dark's mediocre slasher film made eight years earlier for WWE is clearly a gun-for-hire picture for the identical twin auteurs, they seem to have been given a great deal of rope to assist in the development of a screenplay that not only includes many of their trademark touches and thematic concerns, but, in so doing, they've also been blessed to employ their natural gifts as genuine filmmakers and as if, by osmosis, have conjured Hitch's spirit in rendering a picture that is sickeningly brutal, but also darkly, grotesquely funny and most of all, employs the most important elements of setting in order to reflect upon character, theme and just plain old terror-inducement.

It's a quiet night night in the city morgue. Good thing, too. Wheelchair-bound boss-man Holden (Michael Eklund) seems happy enough to let his star employee Amy (Danielle Harris, the always gorgeous scream queen) book off early to join some pals at the bar to celebrate her birthday while he and her significant-sniffer-around-her beau Seth (Kaj-Erik Eriksen) preside over the dull goings-on. Ah, but as fate would have it, all three need to hang about since an emergency phone call informs them that the morgue is going to be soon flooded with corpses from a nearby mass-killing-spree. Gosh, golly, gee! They're also going to be blessed with the body of the killer himself, the seven-foot, 300-pound, Jacob Goodnight (former WWE wrasslin' champ Glenn "Kane" Jacobs).

That's a decent stacked deck. To begin with, that is.

Once Amy informs her pals she's gotta work, they decide to bring the party to the morgue. Armed with all manner of booze and hallucinogenic comestibles, Amy's goth-and-death-obsessed party animal bestie Tamara (Katharine Isabelle), babe-o-licious and hunk-o-licious pals (respectively), Kayla (Chelan Simmons) and Carter (Lee Majdoub), plus Amy's dour, obsessive (almost creepily Oedipal) brother Will (Greyston Holt). Needless to say, this clutch of new characters add a number of interesting elements to the mix, but also beef up what will, no doubt be added slasher fodder.

Good, another stacked deck. Oh, and might I remind you, we're in a morgue. Feel free to do the math on what implements (and inmates) this joint will be loaded with to add to the inevitable party games.

Now, we get to the pièce de résistance of stacked decks: all seven feet, 300-lbs of serial killer Jacob Goodnight are not dead at all. The lad's merely been resting. Now he's ready for more naughty horseplay. Let's put those thinking caps back on, folks. It doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out what this bloodthirsty, mightily-engorged-penis-on-two-legs will have at his disposal. He dons a mask used for burn victims. Those, I can assure you, are bowel-movement-inducingly scary. Ah, but what else will this throbbing gristle find? Duh, it's a morgue. All manner of blades are available here and Jacob's only too delighted to pack as many delectable items as possible. He's a crafty S.O.B. so he finds a way of sealing everyone in the morgue - all ways out are locked.

We have a morgue full of babes, hunks and one cripple and a killer on the rampage.

Need I say more?

Not really, save to inform you that screenwriters Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby have imbued the tale with a whack of clearly-Soska-inspired character-quirks including guilt, Oedipal obsession, promise unfulfilled, the same promise buried deep inside and aching to be implemented in surviving, mega-grrrrrllllll-power, unabashed sexual abandon and empowerment-galore.

Danielle Harris has always displayed promise as an actress, but the Soskas manage to coax a great performance out of her that's layered, sensitive and yeah, tough and sexy. Harris is always a welcome Scream Queen, but here, she displays acting chops heretofore only hinted at. I hope she never abandons genre cinema, but the Soskas have managed to create an atmosphere wherein her genuine talent shines in ways that a few intelligent producers (mostly an oxymoron, I admit) will be offering Harris a wide bevy of roles in a whole passel of different styles of pictures. (Hell, I'd LOVE to see a contemporary version of the great Greek tragedy The Trojan Women set in the war-torn east of Ukraine and featuring Harris in the haunting, harrowing role of Cassandra.) And let's not forget all the stuff Harris normally brings to the table. There will be kills in See No Evil 2, but there will also be mucho-ass-kicking, tear-assing around and narrow-escapes and rescues, a lot of it from the hot, shapely and physically fit Ms. Harris.

Hot Canuck thespian missy Katharine Isabelle (American Mary and Ginger Snaps) is allowed to go completely into the madcap stratosphere and delivers a performance that taps delightfully into her natural sense of humour, but luckily does not leave either her intensity, nor jaw-dropping-camera-loves-her sexiness behind. (Personally, I'd love to see a Soska remake/reboot/retelling of Lynne Stopkewich's Kissed with Isabelle in the Molly Parker role. If one does a careful analysis of such things, Americans have successfully remade a number of great genre films that wisely placed them within the context of varying political/historical contexts. If any Canadian picture was ripe for this, it'd be Kissed.)

See No Evil 2 is ultimately one scary-ass, intelligent and superbly crafted slasher film - gorgeously shot, cut and, of course, directed. In actual fact of matter, there aren't too slasher pictures even worth thinking about, let alone seeing. The Soskas have delivered one that's at the top of the heap.

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

See No Evil 2 is available on Blu-Ray. Sadly, it was not released theatrically save for selected festival showings. But it's out there and definitely worth owning. Avoid digital downloads and streaming, though. It doesn't do the picture justice. Screw DVD too. Same deal. The Blu-Ray is perfection.

Greg Klymkiw, presents the The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) in this the year of Our Lord 2014 - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

THE FILM CORNER AWARDS (TFCA) 2014, 
AS SELECTED BY THE REV. GREG KLYMKIW

This will be the first in a series of year-end Film Corner round-ups of cinema in 2014. Below, you will find the citations of excellence from me, Greg Klymkiw, in the form of my annual The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) for 2014. The most interesting observation is that ALL of these films were first screened within the context of major international film festivals which is further proof of their importance in presenting audiences with the very best that cinema has to offer whilst most mainstream exhibition chains are more interested in presenting refuse on multi-screens of the most ephemeral kind. All the citations here came from films unleashed at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014), the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2014), Hot Docs 2014, Montreal's 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival and the 2014 Montreal Nouveau Cinema Festival (FNC 2014). In Canada, only two of the films cited have been released theatrically within the hardly-visionary, downright lazy mega-plex chain Cineplex Entertainment and even those films are being allowed to play on a limited number of screens in an even-more limited number of cities while ludicrous numbers of awful movies are draining screen time at the aforementioned chain's big boxes. It's not as if all the films the chain allows to hog screens are doing numbers to justify this combination of piggishness and laziness. Keep your eyes open, though. The films cited here are all astounding BIG-SCREEN experiences, which will hopefully find BIG-SCREEN exhibition before being relegated to less-than-ideal home entertainment venues. And now, here goes, The Film Corner Awards (TFCA 2014) as selected by your most Reverend Greg Klymkiw. Included are brief quotes from my original reviews  and links to the full-length reviews from the past year (just click on the title).

American cinema, more than anything, has always exemplified the American Dream. Almost in response to this, director David Zellner with his co-writer brother Nathan, have created Kumiko The Treasure Hunter, one of the most haunting, tragic and profoundly moving explorations of mental illness within the context of dashed hopes and dreams offered by the magic of movies and the wide-open expanse of a country teeming with opportunity and riches.

Best Feature Film
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter

This is such a great film. I could have watched all seven minutes of it if they'd somehow been elongated to a Dreyer-like pace and spread out over 90 minutes. That said, it's perfect as it is. The fact that you don't want it to end is a testament to director Matthew Rankin as one of the young torchbearers (along with Astron-6) of the prairie post-modernist movement which hatched out of Winnipeg via the brilliantly demented minds of John Paizs and Guy Maddin. Blending gorgeously arcane techniques from old Hollywood, ancient government propaganda films with dollops of staggeringly, heart-achingly beautiful animation - bursting with colour and blended with superbly art-directed and costumed live action - Mynarski Death Plummet takes its rightful place alongside such classic Canadian short films as John Martins-Manteiga's The Mario Lanza Story, John Paizs's Springtime in Greenland, Guy Maddin's The Dead Father and Deco Dawson's Ne Crâne pas sois modeste / Keep a Modest Head. 

Best Short Film
Mynarski Death Plummet
(Matthew Rankin)

This is exactly the sort of film that restores my faith in the poetic properties of cinema and how the simplest of tales, at their surface, allow their artists to dig deep and yield the treasures inherent in the picture's soul. When a film is imbued with an inner spirit as this one is, you know you're watching something that hasn't been machine-tooled strictly for ephemeral needs. In Her Place is a film about yearning, love and the extraordinary tears and magic that are borne out of the company and shared experience of women. And, it is exquisite.

Best Canadian Feature Film
In Her Place
(Albert Shin, TimeLapse Pictures)

Avec le temps/Before I Go is 12 minutes long. Director Mark Morgenstern evokes a lifetime in that 12 minutes. It's proof positive of cinema's gifts and how they must not be squandered, but used to their absolute fullest.

The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer by one of Canada's national filmmaking treasures Randall Okita, takes the very simple story of two brothers and charts how a tragic event in childhood placed them on very different, yet equally haunted (and haunting) paths.

Best Canadian Short Film
Avec le temps/Before I Go
(Mark Morgenstern)

-tied with-
The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer
(Randall Okita)

Witnessing these events as captured by Sergey Loznitsa is a moving document of human solidarity in the face of corruption. Witnessing them as a Ukrainian, however, is to experience every beat, word and action as a series of epiphanies. Maidan is a film that places the revolution in the broader context of what is happening in Ukraine now, but in its simple, beautiful and staggering way, it is a film of considerable importance as it expresses how we must all choose revolution when the criminal actions of very few affect the lives of the majority.

Best Documentary
Maidan
(Sergey Loznitsa)

-tied with-

This film is one of the most harrowing crime pictures ever made. It's no drama, however, but is certainly imbued with a compulsive narrative expertly unfurled by ace documentary filmmaker Berlinger. The picture leaves you breathlessly agog at the utter brutality and sordid corruption of a system that allowed a monster like American gangster James Bulger to get away with his crimes for so long. The film will, no doubt remain a classic of great American cinema long after all of us have gone from this Earth. It's what cinema should be - it's for the ages.

Best Documentary
Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger
(Joe Berlinger)

The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow is a thorough delight and comes across as a Korean answer to crossing Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) with Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles). It's certainly the sort of thing we don't get to see in our soul-bereft North American multiplexes. It's a gem of a movie and I urge all parents and kids to seek it out. They won't quite know what hit them, but when it does, they'll know they want it a lot more than Madagascar 3. That's a guarantee.

Best Animated Feature
The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow
(Hyeong-yoon Jang)

Astron-6 have done the impossible by creating a film that holds its own with the greatest gialli of all time. It's laugh-out-loud funny, grotesquely gory and viciously violent. Though it draws inspiration from Argento, Fulci, Bava, et al, the movie is so dazzlingly original that you'll be weeping buckets of joy because finally, someone has managed to mix-master all the giallo elements, but in so doing has served up a delicious platter of post-modern pasta du cinema that both harkens back to simpler, bloodier and nastier times whilst also creating a piece actually made in this day and age. All that said, the following dialogue from the film says it all:

BLONDE STUD: So where were you on the night of the murder?

BLONDE BABE: I was at home washing my hair and shaving my pussy.

Best Horror Film
The Editor
(Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Astron-6)

Buoyed by intense, intelligent writing from Tony Burgess (Pontypool, Septic Man) in a screenplay that induces fingernail-ripping-and-plucking, plus a great performance by Julian (Hard Core Logo, Cube, Man of Steel) Richings, Ejecta is a movie that plunges you into the terror of one utterly horrendous night in the lives of those who make contact with aliens. They experience a series of close encounters of the third kind, though be warned, you'll find no happy-faced hairless alien midgets gesticulating Zoltán Kodály Hand Signals whilst smiling at a beaming Francois Truffaut here. No-siree-Spielberg, these mo-fos inspire drawer-filling of the highest order.

Best Science Fiction Film
Ejecta
(Chad Archibald, Matt Wiele,
Tony Burgess, Foresight)

With plenty of loving homages to George Miller's Mad Max pictures, helmer Kiah Roache-Turner and his co-scribe Tristan Roache-Turner, serve up a white-knuckle roller coaster ride through the unyielding Australian bushland as a family man (who's had to slaughter his family when they "turn" into zombies) and a ragtag group of tough guys, equip themselves with heavy-duty armour, weaponry and steely resolve to survive. Director Roache-Turner mostly nice clean shots which allow the action and violence to play out stunningly (including a few harrowing chases). He manages, on what feels like a meagre budget, to put numerous blockbusting studio films of a similar ilk to shame. It delivers the goods and then some.

Best Action Film Wyrmwood
(Kiah Roache-Turner)

Movies are so often about dreams coming true, especially American movies and though the dreams don't come true for the characters in the Coen Brothers' Fargo, Zellner makes us believe that Kumiko believes that the film itself can, indeed, make her dreams come true.

Best Director
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(David Zellner)

What the Zellner duo have achieved here seems almost incalculable, especially as they eventually infuse you with joy and sadness all at once during the film's final act. One thing is certain, they have etched an indelible portrait of hope in the face of unyielding madness.

Best Original Script
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(Nathan Zellner, David Zellner)

Screenwriter Matt Rager delivers a grotesque blueprint to director James Franco that plunges William Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness prose into the same lollapalooza inbred territory as Anthony Mann's overlooked masterpiece of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre and Elia Kazan's madcap Baby Doll. And good goddamn, I accept this with open arms.

Best Screenplay Adaptation
The Sound and the Fury
(Matt Rager)

Steve Carell's performance as the eccentric billionaire is so extraordinary I managed to suppress Carell was even in the movie until the closing credits.

Best Actor:
Foxcatcher
(Steve Carell)

Fargo, the movie by the Coen Brothers, is not just the instrument which inspires Kumiko's desires, it's like a part of Kumiko's character and soul and represents an ethos of both America and madness. Kumiko is no mere stranger in a strange land, but a stranger in her own land who becomes a stranger in a strange land - a woman without a country save for that which exists in her mind.

Best Actress
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(Rinko Kikuchi)

"If you deliberately sabotage my band, I will fuck you like a pig," barks Terence Fletcher, a jazz instructor at a tony private music conservatory. As played by J. K. Simmons, Fletcher makes Gny. Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket look like your kindly old Granny Apple Doll.

Best Supporting Actor
Whiplash
(J.K. Simmons)

In Her Place quietly rips our hearts to shreds. We are included in the emotional journeys of a daughter whose child can never be hers, a mother whose daughter is everything to her but comes to this realization when it's too late and a woman who has come between them because her own desire to love and nurture is so strong and true.

Best Supporting Actress
In Her Place
(Ahn Ji-hye)

In the ever-accumulating high winds and snow under the big skies of Minnesota, Kumiko gets a bittersweet taste of happiness - a dream of triumph, a dream of reunion, a dream of peace, at last.

Best Cinematography
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
(Sean Porter)

The editing of Tom Cross leaves you breathless.

Best Editing
Whiplash
(Tom Cross)

Wrenchingly and beautifully scored by Alexandre Klinke, In Her Place is infused with a deep sensitivity that's reminiscent of a Robert Bresson film.

Best Musical Score
In Her Place
(Alexandre Klinke)

The climactic sequence is a musical equivalent to a great action-movie set-piece.

Best Overall Sound
Whiplash

Blasting through hordes of flesh-eating slabs of viscous decay, they careen on a collision course with a group of Nazi-like government soldiers who are kidnapping both zombies and humans so a wing-nut scientist can perform brutal experiments upon them.

Best Makeup/Special Effects
Wyrmwood

In 1941, the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were besieged by Russians intent upon ethnic cleansing. Thousands upon thousands of innocent people were rounded up and shipped to Siberian concentration camps.

Best Costumes
In The Crosswind

The visual beauty of suffering allows us to experience the indomitability of the human spirit and is finally the thing that gives the film its heart, which is in sharp contrast to that spirit decidedly lacking in the Russian oppressors.

Best Art Direction/Production Design
In The Crosswind

COMING SOON: THE FILM CORNER PRESENTS A VARIETY OF 2014 10-BEST LISTS SELECTED BY THE MOST REVEREND GREG KLYMKIW

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