HARD CORE LOGO II - Review By Greg Klymkiw - This offbeat and deeply personal sequel to Bruce McDonald's legendary 1996 punk extravaganza is a surprisingly truthful and elegiac tribute to a lost generation.

Hard Core Logo II (2011) dir. Bruce McDonald
Starring: Bruce McDonald, Care Failure, Julian Richings, Shannon Jardine, Peter Moore

****

By Greg Klymkiw

I have to admit that part of my favourable response to Hard Core Logo II is strictly on a personal level. Firstly, my inauguration into the canon of director Bruce McDonald was Roadkill, his crazed rock and road odyssey through Northwestern Ontario. It was the fall of 1989 and during the last year in which I was writing about films. And I really did love writing about movies. I'd been doing so since the late 70s, but I was about to turn a corner in my life and this part of it would be ending a few months or so later.

At the time I was attending the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and in addition to doing some marketing work on behalf of the film co-operative The Winnipeg Film Group, I was moonlighting as a writer for the now-defunct "Cinema Canada" magazine and was presented with the task of reviewing McDonald's movie. It wasn't hard work at all. It was a terrific picture and my delight with it poured from my soul and through my fingertips and into my word processor like shit through the proverbial Canadian Goose.

At the time it reminded me of both David Lynch's Eraserhead and Allan Arkush's Rock n' Roll High School - hypnotic, dream-like, gloriously black and white, energetic, madly nutty,laugh-out-loud funny and pure rock and roll joy.

I've seen it a few times since and I stand by this assessment.

And goddamn! Roadkill was as Canadian as a fucking beaver pelt adorning Norman Jewison's pate. Every surreal moment from my punk years in Winnipeg seemed to spring miraculously to life. Endless nights in dark, now-defunct watering-holes like the "Native Club", "The Royal Albert Arms" and the basement of the "St. Charles Hotel" (AKA "The Chuckles") - seeing everyone who passed through (early XTC, the Popular Mechanix, the notorious rape-rockers The Mentors) to insane seven-hour drives to Thunder Bay to listen to heavy metal bands (often of the local variety) at the Inn-Towner - that miraculous dive where every chick had hair permed-out like Medusa which, under black light it glowed with an almost radioactive "buy-me-some-fuckin-beer-and-maybe-we-can-fuck-eh" come-hither-with-a-stubby quality.

I felt as if I had died and gone to Heaven.

From here I followed Bruce's films passionately. Most of them I loved, some of them I liked and a number of them had me scratching my head with a kind of what-in-the-fuck-are-you-doing-you-psycho response. In 1996, when I saw his Hard Core Logo, which I loved, I remember being swept away by this road movie involving the crazy punker Joe Dick and his band on a comeback tour through the western prairies of Canada and was convinced McDonald would never top the film.

I was wrong, of course. Throughout the years he delivered one terrific picture after another - most notably his brilliant zombie picture set entirely in a rural radio station Pontypool and his truly whacked adaptation of Maureen Medved's novel The Tracy Fragments. The only film of his I didn't see was the notorious Picture Claire. At TIFF it was screening while 9/11 was happening. The night he was showing his "director commentary" cut at the Bloor Cinema, I was in Winnipeg. I'm cool with that. Every director I love has one or two "Holy Grail" pictures that I hope to partake in someday.

So let's fast forward to the present and how seeing Hard Core Logo II hit me where all the best movies should - on a personal level. Firstly, I bring you back to my own personal full-circle coincidence of HCL II being the first McDonald movie I've seen to write about since I stopped writing about movies. And yeah, here I am, 23 years later, back to the future, so to speak - again writing about movies (amongst other writing chores like screenplays and a text book). I have to admit to a certain sentimental attachment going in to seeing HCL II on this level.

Beyond that though, is the personal relationship one forges with certain artists and their art. Bruce was born about a month after me in the same year. He was born in Kingston and grew up in Scarborough. I was conceived in Detroit and born/raised in Winnipeg. Same difference, really. For many years, without knowing each other in any way, shape or form, we grew up with similar interests and experiences. On that level alone, he's a filmmaker who spoke to me as a contemporary and I've lived through 23 years of his work - connecting aesthetically, but also personally - his work seeming to almost umbilically connect to my very being.

This, I'd say, IS extremely important. When a filmmaker connects with audiences on this level, then truly this is an artist worth studying and revering. However, it's especially noteworthy that his work connects with me as a Canadian with shared experiences.

Hard Core Logo II is NOT a retread or reboot. It IS, a sequel. HCL I, a clever mock-doc wherein the lead character blew his brains out on-camera at the end seemed pretty much sequel-proof. What McDonald does, however, is turn the next phase of the tale into a semi-personal and quasi-fictional mock-doc - focusing on the character he himself played, "Bruce" the filmmaker.

And here, 23-years later, "Bruce" is working successfully in American television. He's the creator and director of "The Pilgrim", a ridiculously popular Christian western aimed squarely (and somewhat cynically on the part of the fictional/actual filmmaker) at the moronic religious right. When the star of the series Rufus Melon (a brilliantly scuzzy and hilarious Adrien Dorval) is caught in a horrendous sexual scandal, the show is immediately cancelled and Bruce is without a job.

Where he'd previously been ignoring reports that rock singer Care Failure (played, no less, by Care Failure of "Die Mannequin" fame) has psychically channeled the spirit of the late Hard Core Logo frontman Joe Dick, "Bruce" now drops everything to make a new documentary to reclaim his former glory as an independent filmmaker.

Going the super-kamikaze filmmaking route, he leaves his wife and child home alone and brings along only one crew member - his next door neighbour, the completely bonkers New Age Wiccan video/performance artiste Liz (Shannon Jardine). She mans, as it were, the camera, while he records sound, directs and interviews. He's promised Liz a co-directing credit, but as his personal notes reveal later on, he just needs (and treats her) as a glorified schlepper.

The two of them follow Care to Saskatchewan where she will record a solo album under the guidance of Joe Dick's former mentor Bucky Haight (Julian Richings, repeating his original HCL role and astoundingly proving again why he's one of Canada's greatest character actors).

McDonald and his co-writer Dave Griffith put together a number of scenes which give a strong sense of the drudgery and boredom involved in producing an album but when things threaten to get a bit too languid, we're tossed a few phantasmagorical montage sequences (something McDonald has been obsessed with in his latter output and which are handled with aplomb by editor Duff Smith). These insane patchwork quilts of exorcism, talking animals, flashbacks to Joe Dick blowing his brains out, etc. are worthy of such 70s and 80s head films like Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain and Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky.

The dreary Saskatchewan locations also add considerable Canadian chic to the whole affair. I used to think, for example, that looking at the topography surrounding my old hometown whenever I landed in a plane at the Winnipeg International Airport was the most depressing thing in the world. Hard Core Logo II reminded me that NO - landing at the Regina Airport is far more soul-sucking.

We're guided through this oddball low-key tale, contrasting nicely and unexpectedly with HCL's raging drive, through the laid-back journal entries of filmmaker "Bruce". If anything drives the engine of this happily sputtering engine it's exploitation.

Because this is a Canadian film in a Canadian setting with Canadian characters - the exploitation is, not surprisingly, Canadian. That is, characters gently, subtly remind each other how much they're exploiting each other. McDonald's film captures this exploitation ever-so subtly.

There are the newspaper clippings accusing "Bruce" of exploiting Joe Dick from the original film. There's the implication that Care is exploiting the memory of Joe and furthermore, by possibly pretending to be possessed to get "Bruce" to make a film about her. Bucky accuses "Bruce" of exploiting Care. "Bruce" accuses Bucky of exploiting her. Care accuses both of them of exploiting her. "Bruce" and Bucky gently suggest mutual exploitation of the dead Joe Dick. "Bruce" is clearly exploiting the mad schlepper Wiccan and even the disgraced actor Rufus Melon shows up to exploit "Bruce", in order to party with Care and to get a guest spot with CBC's "Strombo" to declare his "healing".

Gentle, subtle exploitation is always the Canadian way. Canadians prefer smiling and alternately stabbing in the back - gently. They almost never look someone squarely in the eyes to gut them.

And within the context of the world McDonald creates - nobody (much like Canadians in reality) seems to want anything of any real import.

Except for one thing.

And this is the surprising, profoundly and deeply moving aspect of Hard Core Logo II. When it is determined what is truly important, a sacrifice is made - one which takes us into an afterlife and where the spirit of love and of family overtakes and overwhelms us.

I must admit to being taken completely off guard here. I should have seen it coming, since the film is strangely bookended with something so uniquely personal that it's often the element that - subtly - sneaks its way through the entire film. And when this sequence occurs, I must admit that I was touched emotionally in ways I never expected. It's both a heartbreaker and a spirit-lifter.

The movie begins, builds and ends with a humanity that's been hinted at in some of McDonald's earlier work, but explodes in ways that will, I think, especially touch a particular generation of Canadian with an equally particular series of experiences.

The movie is probably not for everyone. Those expecting a replay of McDonald's earlier successes will be denied an easy road. He delivers an offbeat journey and one that perfectly exemplifies a segment of the punk generation - that generation (especially, I think, in Canada) that sprouted at the tail-end of the baby boom and created a whole group of rebels who existed between the hippie sellouts and the Gen-X McJobbers.

The real rebels. Those who truly had to pay a price for their ideals and in so doing, continue to clutch desperately and/or longingly at those things everyone thinks they want, but for this generation, when they discover that wondrous thing, they know it's exactly what makes life worth living.

"Hard Core Logo II" is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and other select cinemas across Canada. It is being released by Alliance Films. For information of tickets, playdates and showtimes at TIFF, click HERE.

THE VANISHING SPRING LIGHT: TALES OF WEST STREET - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Xan Yu's extraordinary film is a document in its purest and most poetic form.

The Vanishing Spring Light: Tales of West Street (2011) dir. Xun Yu "Fish" Starring: "Grandma" Jiang Su-Ha, Xiao Da Wan-Bi, Xiang Qian-Hong

****

By Greg Klymkiw

“How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again . . . it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life . . . and once in a while, once in a long time, you remembered, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart.” - James Agee, A Death in the Family

Grandma Jiang is dying.

Wracked with pain after suffering a massive stroke, she lies in her bed, physically unable to assume her usual perch in front of the family home on her beloved West Street. This World Cultural Heritage Site in Dujiangyan (Southwest China) in the Sichuan Province near the site of an irrigation system that was a massive feat of ancient engineering, has housed generations upon generations of families who lived a simple, traditional life.

This is where Grandma Jiang lived for 50 of her 75 years.

In the time of her life, Grandma Jiang loved nothing more than passing endless days on the porch - smoking cigarettes, taking in the sights and sounds passing by this historic street that once served as the gateway to the Silk Road and sharing conversations with friends, neighbours and occasional visiting relatives. Her loyal daughter-in-law Xiao Da manages the mahjong parlour in the living room while her bumblingly good-natured son Xiang Qian drives cab, when not blind drunk, but often hung-over.

Though petty squabbles erupt amongst her daughters who live their own lives and almost grudgingly make efforts to visit and care for her, Grandma Jiang has, in the words of the Armenian-American writer William Saroyan, striven to "discover in all things, that which shines and is beyond corruption and encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world".

But now, wrapped in blankets, looking like a living mummy (and still puffing on cigarettes), she is alone save for Xun Yu, the filmmaker who spent two years living with this family before taking an additional two years shooting the first of four documentaries about West Street and its gentrification (and by extension, the modernization of China).

"All I can hope for is a quick death," Grandma Joang tells Yu. "And after death? I guess I'm headed for the Afterlife. Where else can I go?"

In spite of the fact that it's about death, The Vanishing Spring Light: Tales of West Street is a celebration of life. Through the changing of the seasons, the increasing metamorphoses of West Street and the diminishing health of Grandma Jiang, Yu trains his eye upon the passage of existence. Simple, often beautifully composed shots in very long takes create a rhythm that is hypnotic and compelling.

This is a document in its purest and most poetic form. Yes, it is slow, but it is never boring. Yu allows his camera to capture all the pleasures, sorrows and intricacies of lives that are well, and in some cases, not-so-well lived. Through his caring and carefully placed lens we come to know and care for Grandma Jiang and those around her as if we were there ourselves.

This is one of the most staggering and profoundly moving documentaries I have seen in many years. In its own way, the film is as challenging as Pirjo Honkasalo's stunning exploration of the effects of the Chechen War The Three Rooms of Melancholia or Ulrich Seidl's almost unclassifiable, yet forceful Jesus, You Know or most profoundly, the late Frank Cole's masterwork of artful observation, A Life. Like those films, and even to an extent the works of Frederick Wiseman (though without his traditional lack or preparation), Yu lets life unfold as it most naturally does.

And just prior to her final death rattles, Grandma Jiang's eyes - forced by her position on the bed to look upwards, her gaze seeming to hug the infinite - she openly and alternately fears and welcomes death. She laments that she "didn't follow the teachings well", feeling now, more than ever. like "a would-be Buddhist". Though even as we hear her say this, we have clearly witnessed an individual who has lived life to its fullest and Yu's film shares this extraordinarily humanist event with us, as its subjects have shared their lives with him.

"I can only die the way I have lived," Grandma Jiang says before death.

And so it is, so it has been and so it will be for all of us.

Xan Yu's beautiful, elegiac and sometimes heart-breaking film is a testament to Grandma Jiang and all those who lived their lives as she did. As William Saroyan wrote: "In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time, you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

"The Vanishing Spring Light: Tales of West Street" is currently in release via Kinosmith and in Toronto is playing at the Bloor Hot Docs Conema where the film's visionary Canadian producer and filmmaker Daniel Cross will be present for the screenings to discuss the making of the film. For showtimes and tickets, visit the website HERE.

A LITTLE BIT ZOMBIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A terrific script is almost undone by wildly erratic direction that veers from overwrought comic styling to TV-styled camera jockeying.

A Little Bit Zombie (2012) dir. Casey Walker
Starring: Kristopher Turner, Crystal Lowe, Shawn Roberts, Kristen Hager, Emilie Ullerup and Stephen McHattie, George Buza, Robert Maillet

**1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Mixing horror with comedy is a noble enough tradition. An American Werewolf in London, Shaun of the Dead and Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn have become modern classics of this winning hybrid, but what makes them great is that the emphasis is always on horror and the comedy elements stem naturally from the drama. Even Sam Raimi's sequel/remake to his decidedly serious The Evil Dead manages to adhere to this with several clever Looney Tunes homages doubling as whacko POVs whilst Bruce Campbell's Ash is increasingly infused with terror and paranoia.

A Little Bit Zombie breaks this rule, but not too successfully. It's first and foremost a comedy, but as such, seems to just miss the boat on the laughs. I think the problem is that for much of the film, director Casey Walker tries too hard to make it funny. A lot of the performances and comic set-pieces are played broadly to the point of annoyance and seem just plain juvenile. That said, I watched it with my 11-year-old daughter and she laughed all the way through it. Best of all, for her, she was never scared and enjoyed all the jokey violence.

She is, however, 11-years-old.

I ultimately think the movie would have genuinely been so much funnier and possibly even deliciously creepy if Walker had pitched things much straighter. There's frankly an overabundance of "Hey Ma, look at me, I'm funny" mugging amongst a few of the actors.

The movie, however, is paced like shit through a goose and the screenplay is full of so many clever ideas that it still manages to be entertaining enough for a die-hard horror and dark comedy fan like myself. I just wish I didn't have to groan all through the picture - lamenting how one great idea after another kept hitting the floor like lead balloons due to the overwrought pitch of the direction.

It's a great story, though.

Two couples drive to a remote cabin in cottage country to plan the upcoming nuptials of Steve (Kristopher Turner) and Tina (Crystal Lowe). Steve's sister Sarah (Kristin Hager) is a smart, unpretentious lassie and detests her soon-to-be-sister-in-law's prissy consumerist girlie-girl nattering and attitudes. Craig (Shawn Roberts) is both Steve's best friend and Sarah's husband. He's an amiable, dimwitted beefcake with a heart of gold.

When Steve is bitten by an especially aggressive mosquito, his body temperature starts to plummet and no matter what he eats, he immediately barfs it up. Once he starts getting an overwhelming craving for brains, we know trouble is just around the corner.

And yes, just around the corner in the same cottage country region, the grizzled, trigger-happy Max (Stephen McHattie) and the young, brilliant, babe-o-licious scientist Penelope (Emile Ullerup) are deep in the woods, tracking down zombies via some mysterious orb that detects the undead. Max just wants to splatter zombie brain with his shotgun. Penelope is searching for a cure to the zombie disease.

We follow the adventures of both parties until the inevitable showdown.

What's especially cool about the script by Trevor Martin and Christopher Bond is the unique take on Steve's turn to zombie-dom. Steve is still Steve. He just wants to eat brains. That's all. Oh, and he has no pulse. Some of the funniest ideas involve the trio of non-zombies trying to find ways of dealing with Steve's affliction. Even potentially funnier is how the prissy Tina is adamant that the wedding will go as planned.

I say "potentially" because everything that should elicit laughs pretty much doesn't. One is constantly amused with all the cleverly funny ideas, but most of the gags miss their mark.

McHattie is suitably over-the-top, overplaying within the context of the character he's rendering. Max is supposed to be bigger-than-life. Many of the other characters shouldn't be. I just wish someone had told this to Crystal Lowe, for example, who amongst the two beleaguered couples is so broad, that her shrill, nasty harping out-harridans even the most vile harridans we've come to know and love in the movies (notably many of the villainous harpies in the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane-styled thrillers of the early-to-mid-60s).

Even the likeable presence of Kristopher Turner as Steve gets sucked into the realm of the overwrought. When he underplays, he's terrific, but when he pushes the envelope, someone needed to keep him reined in. Shawn Roberts's bigger qualities suit his character and he's genuinely funny. Finally, it is up to Kristen Hagerman and Emile Ullerup to maintain the best balance and deliver consistently enjoyable performances by playing the crazy material straight and subsequently eliciting considerable laughs.

While there are numerous exigencies of production that can contribute to elements being less than perfect, there are so many elements that are right with the picture that I made a point of seeing it twice to pinpoint why it is that it falls short.

It has a clever script (that could have easily been interpreted closer in tone to the aforementioned classic horror pictures with comic elements), there are some genuinely on-the-money performances (and even those that fall short are not without some sporadic merit), the production value is genuinely high and we seldom see the seams of the picture's obvious low budget, the effects are skillfully and imaginatively cheesy in all the right ways, the film is well photographed and finally, the superb editing by Michael Mason addresses the elements of both pace and narrative thrust with occasional cuts of considerable aplomb.

At the end of the day, much of the success or lack thereof, finally must be attributed to the direction. Even on a first viewing, one of the things that bothered me was how so many of the dialogue scenes were shot with endless one-ers and most annoyingly the constant reliance on dirty-over shots. I longed for good master shots and solid two-shots.

There's an early scene where the couples are driving at night in their car. Much of the dialogue is between Steve and Tina in the front seat while Craig and Sarah sleep in the back. Given that this is a long dialogue scene, and especially given that much, if not all of it is rendered in the old reliable poor man's process to makes it seem like the car is actually moving, I simply had no idea why much of the conversation was not composed with a nice two shot of the couple so that their dialogue could play out in a series of longer takes and only when necessary would there be a punch-in on a oner, closeup or dirty-over.

Instead, we seemed to be cutting on virtually every line of dialogue and no nice master two-shot carrying the bulk of the scene. On a first viewing, I chose to be charitable and think that maybe the masters existed, but that the performances could not sustain that approach and it was up to the editor to save the scene and performances by using the remaining camera-jockeyed coverage.

But then, there occurred a lengthy dialogue scene on the shore of the lake and the entire conversation seemed comprised of an identical approach when clearly a much more interesting and effective way to shoot it would have been a complete reverse angle to allow for longer takes in two-shot and only occasional dirty overs, but from the front, which still could have include the lake and surrounding wilderness.

To keep the camera always behind the actors might have worked if there had been a simple wide master, followed by a few dirty overs from behind and then gradually working into the reverse angle so we could actually see the actors dead-on and let good chunks of the scene play in much longer takes.

This kind of dull, though vaguely competent TV-like approach to covering the dialogue, coupled with so much of the great script being pitched far too high suggested that direction was indeed the one primary aspect of what kept A Little Bit Zombie from being more than mildly engaging.

All this said, when I do the math on the picture, it still managed to provide enough entertainment value - even for jaded genre geeks.

So, without further delay, let's do the math:

A Zombie mosquito.

First-rate zombie head explosions and general zombie carnage.

Stephen (God) McHattie.

Some farting.

More vomiting and regurgitation than I've ever seen in one movie.

3 Babes (1 ultra babe, 1 mega babe, 1 nasty babe).

1 manly, good-humoured hunk.

1 fey, sensitive lad for those so inclined.

Good natured, though mild homophobic homo humour.

Biting into a bunny rabbit's head.

Bunny rabbit brain eating.

White Trash Butcher who is a brain gourmand (courtesy of George Buza).

"Clinking" squirrel brains together as "bottoms up" toast.

WWF wrestling maestro Robert Maillet.

A slam-bang CAT-FIGHT twixt Ultra Babe and Nasty Babe.

Ultra Babe and Nasty Babe dolling up like hookers to seduce Robert Maillet.

Slurping brains out of someone's head with a straw.

A final 10 minutes that's so good, it makes up for all the movie's flaws.

And yes, allow me to reiterate - babes.

The sum total: If the above appeals to you - GO FOR IT!

You can, ultimately, do a lot worse than a zombie comedy that's not as funny as it really should be.

"A Little Bit Zombie" is the Closing Night Gala of the Canadian Film Fest at the Royal Theatre in Toronto. For more information, visit the Festival website HERE.

CANADIAN SHORT FILMS at CANADIAN FILM FEST 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

CANADIAN SHORT FILMS at CANADIAN FILM FEST 2012
Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw
The Canadian Film Fest 2012 at the Royal Theatre in Toronto is feature-heavy, but luckily, there are a number of shorts that will provide a nice glimpse into what several Canadian filmmakers can achieve with few dollars, tiny running times and scads of talent. Below are reviews of a few short films I had the opportunity to screen prior to the festival. Most of these will be screened in a short film program on Saturday, March 31 at 12:00pm. The following reviews are presented in alphabetical order. For tickets and further information visit the Festival website HERE.

Everybody Wing Chun Tonight (2011) dir. Karen Suzuki
Starring: Karen Suzuki, Mike Dufays, Kevin Robinson, Christopher Mott
**
By Greg Klymkiw
A group of sexist, misogynistic boneheads harass a woman verbally as she walks through the park. Little do they know she possesses the prowess of a highly skilled martial artist. It's one thing to fantasize about what she'd like to do to them, but is her true power in the knowledge that she could decimate them? Slight and didactic martial arts lesson makes its point - perhaps a bit too clearly.

Hangnail (2011) dir. Cavan Campbell
Starring: Tasha Lawrence, Dylan Scott Smith
****
By Greg Klymkiw
Shot completely in one take, this exquisitely written, acted and directed kitchen sink domestic drama examines a great divide between a couple in their bathroom. He's an immature video-game-and-porn-obsessed mall employee. She's a "dancer" in a "gentleman's club". He's taking a dump. She's taking a shower. Both of them are smoking cigarettes. The sniping is vicious, the pain is palpable. Love, however, finds itself in the strangest of places and in the most unusual circumstances. It's rare to find this level of maturity and dramatic resonance in short films these days when the emphasis in this medium is usually on one-note jokes and empty "calling card" endeavours. Hangnail takes us into the territory of despair among the disenfranchised. Though these characters live on the fringe and are often the types whose existence we'd prefer to repress, this evocative slice of their life is more universal than most will care to admit. Out of anguish can come incredible tenderness and compassion. This is a powerful work. It creates levels of complexity within a simple framework and I have to admit the film has continued to haunt me since first seeing it. I am especially eager to see more films from this clearly gifted filmmaker. He's the real thing.

Long Branch (2011) dir. Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart
Starring: Alex House, Jenny Raven, Al Maini
***1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
She wants a one-night stand. He's into it - bigtime. Her place is not an option. Luckily, his is. The problem, as it turns out, is that he lives two hours away via public transit. Subway. Bus. Bike. All in the frigid, snowy climes of a Canadian winter. She wants simple, fun, no-strings-attached sex. Two hours, however, leaves many opportunities for conversation. The last thing she wants is to get to know him. He's too nice. Like Willard's journey into the heart of darkness neither is quite sure what will be waiting for them in deepest, darkest suburbia. Hopefully, it won't be Col. Kurtz. Long Branch is a bright, breezy and thoroughly delightful romantic comedy. The dialogue is crisp, gorgeously performed by the two attractive leads, shot with clear, simple and direct compositions to let the magic and movement work within the frame so that every cut counts as a truly resonant dramatic beat. Though the soundtrack is peppered with far too many whiny, upbeat indie-styled songs for this curmudgeon's liking, most normal people - especially those who are not curmudgeons - will love it as much as everything else in the picture that truly deserves - uh, love.

My Loss Your Gain (2011) dir. Elli Raynai
Starring Chris Handfield
**1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
This Sci-fi-tinged one-hander is replete with cool retro-styled effects and an effectively odd obsessive quality. Take a lone scientist, a fly in a jar and imagination - the results can prove to be quite revelatory.

Onion Skin (2011) dir. Joseph Procopio
Starring: Zachary Peladeau, Vanessa Qualiara
***1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
Gorgeously photographed, well written tale of a young man who has a major crush on a beautiful young lady who is new to his high school. Instead of utilizing the contemporary communication techniques of text messaging and cel phones, he takes the time to craft a series of hand-written love letters. In our age of technologically convenient approaches to getting a message across, the young lady is initially flummoxed by this "odd" approach. Infused with heartfelt sentiment and romance, Procopio demonstrates a natural gift for creating images that are as beautiful as they are dramatically resonant. There isn't a single performance in the film that rings any less than true. All this said, there is a gorgeously acted and directed scene in the middle of the film that, from a writing standpoint provides a too convenient impetus for the young lady to discover and accept the approach of this wildly romantic suitor. It's a minor quibble, but given how terrific the film is, it's one of those elements that sticks out prominently. In time, however, I have no doubt Procopio will discover any number of narrative shorthands that will allow him to craft many more fine films that avoid the sorts of pitfalls that are ascribed in a knee-jerk fashion to young filmmakers, but are, in fact, quite prominent in any number of mainstream works made by people with far more experience and who should ultimately know better.

The Perfect Vacuum (2011) dir. Alana Cymerman
Starring: Natalie Choquette, Carl Alacchi, Pierre Lenoir, Géraldine Doucet
**
By Greg Klymkiw
Mona lives for her vacuum cleaner. She's lost her true passion and this normally inanimate object takes on a life of its own. At first she shares her perverse love with neighbours and suitors. However, in order to regain her lost passion, she abandons human contact to keep the dirt-sucking phallic symbol all to herself. Will this achieve the desired result or will tragedy strike? This slender, mildly amusing comedic musical vignette is clearly rooted in operatic and melodramatic tradition. Its visual compositions and art direction are both lovingly rendered with aplomb - resembling a curious amalgam of Frank Tashlin, Douglas Sirk and Arthur Freed. One, however, wishes the approach to the material had been less over-the-top. The material itself is already imbued with a bigger-than-life quality. Straighter playing of it might have brought out its richly and potentially hilarious perversities much more pointedly.

Sonata For Christian (2010) Dir. Stéphane Oystryk
Starring: Benjamin Beauchemain, Onalee Ames, Claire Thomas
**1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
A young lad in the leafy burbs of Winnipeg has the hots for his piano teacher. His Mom assumes he is lazily wanting to avoid going to his lessons. Nothing could be further from the truth. He fantasizes about a romantic tryst with the sexy neighbourhood keyboard instructor. This manifests itself in obsessive masturbatory shenanigans in his bedroom. If anything, he's terrified of acting on his amorous impulses. And what might be the result if she should respond? In spite of tentative performances and a script that doesn't quite deliver on its potential, there is clearly a strong talent here for visually rendering a narrative.

THE UNLEASHED - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Mediocre Canadian paranormal thriller replete with good intentions, but predictable and overlong.

The Unleashed (2011) dir. Manuel H. Da Silva
Starring: Trisha Echeverria, Jessica Salgueiro, Caroline Williams, Malcolm McDowell

*1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

God knows, and those who know me as intimately as Our Lord, are well aware of the fact that I worship the horror genre with a fervour not unlike that of a fundamentalist Bible Thumper and/or dyed-in-the-wool Satanists. I especially enjoy tales of the paranormal and have been waiting patiently for a good movie that uses a Ouija board as more than a simple prop in a scene or two, but in fact, uses the board front and centre.

The Unleashed partially answered my prayers - the movie has mega-Ouija Board action. Alas, the picture is barely watchable. It's too bad. Buried deep within the endless 108-minute running time is the framework for a decent genre effort within the script itself. Unfortunately, someone needed to take an axe to much of the screenplay before the film was shot and most importantly, a decent script editor, or even someone with something resembling taste, might have been able to excise a lot of the dumb dialogue and the endless yapping that doesn't really serve the plot and feels like filler. Even if the script had been shot as written, a good producer and editor might have been able to rescue this plodding would-be thriller in post-production.

The movie begins in a so-far-so-good manner. With a tone of creepy portent over the opening titles, we hear the familiar voice of Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange, O Lucky Man, Time After Time) as he narrates the following:

Along with the modern spiritual movement, there came a widespread interest in communications with the dead. The talking board is yet another tool to inspire hope that a world beyond our own can be reached. The question is this: Are the dead taunting the living or is the living taunting the dead?

Well, Malcolm, I've gotta say (after seeing the whole movie), the REAL question is this: Given that the above is the sum total of your involvement in this picture, were you paid by the hour, the day or the word? There are 52 words. If I had been your agent, I'd have negotiated the rate based on that, but I'm not, so it's a moot point.

In fairness to the producers of the film, McDowell's name does not appear on the film's poster, but much of the hype surrounding the premiere of The Unleashed at the Canadian Film Fest in Toronto was the appearance of everyone's favourite Droog at the red carpet screening.

Given that I personally try to know as little about a movie as possible before I see it, I was super-pumped. All I knew was that I'd be seeing a new low budget Canuck horror feature with a great poster AND the participation of Malcolm McDowell. What kept drifting through my mind as I watched the movie was this? When's Malcolm McDowell showing up? He doesn't. Now you know, so if you see the movie when it opens theatrically, don't bother giving his involvement a moment's thought - just let the picture work its magic.

That said, the movie has virtually no magic - certainly none of the cinematic kind. After Malcolm's narration, we get a decent seance scene set in the late 1800s involving an old crone using a Ouija Board. Decent carnage occurs and we flash forward to the present. We're clumsily introduced to the lead characters - a babe-o-licious woman who's been away from home for eight years and has returned after her Mother dies to deal with the estate, her babe-o-licious best friend from days gone by and a babe-o-licious professor of paranormal studies who is holding a series of lectures at the local secondary school. (Gee, I sure wish I had gone to a secondary school like that!)

So far, so good.

When the returning daughter's friend offers to stay with her in the family house (which, by the way, is haunted), I'm at this point thinking - "Good deal!" I did some quick math: Ouija Boards, carnage, ghosts, haunted house, babes and Sappho-action. Yee-haa! The latter, alas, does not occur (though there is one scene with the two babes in bed, but they're fully clothed and clearly have not been indulging in any forbidden nectar.)

Even worse is the fact that it took the picture 35 or so minutes to give me a tiny shiver of fright. As the film proceeds there were three or four minor jolts, many half-hearted (though nobly-intended) attempts at atmospheric horror, a few decent special effects, unexciting but certainly competent cinematography and a handful of good performances - all of which were elicited by the female actors. (The male actors in the movie are either dull and competent or just plain godawful.)

The movie throws out a couple of plot twists and surprises, but they're the sort that had me thinking early in the movie: "Oh God, I hope they're not going to , , ," And Yup, they do. I saw the ending coming far too early in the proceedings. (Even my 11-year-old daughter, who, by the way, really loved the movie, was bummed out by the ending.) Knowing where a picture will end up doesn't have to ruin it if the ride is worthwhile, but The Unleashed is not The Zipper, but rather, a merry-go-round that keeps stopping and starting.

"The Unleashed" is the Friday night red-carpet gala at this year's Canadian Film Fest running March 28-31 at the Royal Theatre in Toronto. For more information, visit the festival's website HERE.

This is a terrific trailer. Don't let it fool you though. All the best stuff is right here: