Dreamland

I am not going to waste time doing a long review of this movie. I find nothing positive, nothing good, nothing that I can put on the other side of the scale to be objective, or try to be fair. The movie is the worst movie I have seen in a long time. The script is bad, the direction is ... what direction? It seems directed by an 11-year-old boy, who is not up to date with digital technology, of course. The protagonist's double acting does not make sense. In fact, nothing in this movie has it. If you want to waste your time, go ahead and watch it. My big question is how do they get all the money to make a movie with such a script? Are they laundering money? Is it money from some eccentric millionaire? It is a mystery why there are people willing to put millions into such a project, when there are so many good projects waiting for a single penny. It's not fair. It is a waste of budget and a stone in the face of the actors who participated in it. Unbelievable.

It was ages ago when I had the pleasure of enjoying "Pontypool" for the first time, and it is still my favorite Bruce McDonald movie, favorite Stephen McHattie movie, one favorite Canadian horror movies, and horror movies in general. So you bet I was excited for "Dreamland", a movie that potentially has the makings of my beloved genre of arthouse, and has "Pontypool's" front team - director, writer and lead actor. It was a trip. A mighty flawed one, but soaked in weirdness, and we love the oddballs, yes we do.

"Dreamland" happens in a rather funky universe, which takes place in Luxembourg. Stephen McHattie portrays a killer for hire working for the grotesque gang boss Hercules or Henry Rollins, and things are set in motion when the killer is sent to collect a finger from a fading, drug-addicted jazz legend, also portrayed by Stephen McHattie. On the same day, a strange and freaky wedding is about to take place under the helm of town's richest, the Countess, brought to us by Juliette Lewis.

"Dreamland" is a movie that, in my view, is completely unashamed of itself and its odd antics, some props have to be given for the fact that it felt like they carried on exactly as they wished to. The story, environment and its inhabitants, the way everything plays out, feels really rather poetic, almost like a theatre play adapted into a screenplay. Shakespearean - is a word that kept coming to me. The rather bare story bones are thoroughly covered with philosophical pandering, lots of interpret-it-yourself notes. It'd seem that Bruce McDonald and the screenwriters have set out to exercise in existentialism, approaching it through the scope of surrealism, dry satire and perhaps trying to mix some David Lynch in the middle, while also forcing hand at making a violent killer/crime underworld thriller. In the end, "Dreamland" also feels like it couldn't decide on one main thing, so it went a little with all of it, which makes the movie feel too episodic and weakly weaved together, which consequently makes the pacing suffer, which is, in my opinion, its biggest flaw. The next would be its contents, so weird and arguably insubstantial, the kind of stuff that really gets split when it comes to subjectivism, taste, preferences and individual philosophies.

"Dreamland" looks and feels as indie as it gets, certainly a B budget movie, but pretty good one at that. The cast is superb, Stephen McHattie alone provides, and I had no idea he's playing a dual role. An underappreciated and amazing actor, I really recommend checking out some of his work. Given the fact that one of the characters is a trompetist, it comes as no surprise that the original score is solid and fitting, reminding slightly of the kind you'd hear in "Sin City". And cinematography's great, dynamic, with some low budget solutions here and there, and no worries on violence and FX, there's a fair amount of it.

"Dreamland" is a movie that generally will probably be received rather poorly, but it has a lot of oddities going for it, which is something I'm always on the lookout for, and there really are not nearly enough movies led by Stephen McHattie. This one deserves a 6/10 from me, and I recommend it to everyone who enjoys the many shades of weird.

Venerable Canuck director Bruce McDonald returns to the big screen with a strange, all you can watch cinema buffet of cult-aspiring dishes best presented as a main course. As a series of small, TV sized bites, this might work, but it becomes quite a muddle as a single entity.

The good: Stephen McHattie. Not surprisingly, McHattie shines in a dual role tour de force of endless crackly Clint Eastwood close ups, and tough guy bad assery.

The bad: Dual roles are never a good idea. It is disruptive, and proves way too clever for it's own good.

More bad: Juliette Lewis, who can be fabulously sensational, is fabulously awful, giddily embracing a despicable role in a volcanic spew of boorish overacting.

There's more. The list is long. Too long. We have Henry Rollins raging. We have a child sex ring. We have a silly vampire. We have a mess.

Brimming with taboo subjects, theatrical violence, absurdist sequences, nightclub lighting, an endless stream of odd characters, "Dreamland" is a prickly stab at "Twin Peaks" cultdom. McHattie almost pulls it off, with a performance for the ages that includes a bizarro Chet Baker impersonation. But it's not enough. What McDonald is trying to achieve here is anyone's guess, so here goes. How about an insider's heroin trip? Let's go with that.

• hipCRANK

Director Bruce McDonald must've known this movie sucks. He saturated the whole thing with a persistent, almost unlistenable score, not allowing the viewer any break from the dissonance. But I guess that's the point. Make the viewer feel uncomfortable. Not sure why but I guess that's what goes for art these days.

You have some really good actors here and a director who really did shine with Pontypool. Now that doesn't mean that the movie is going to be liked by a lot of people ... but it has some quirky moments and weird things going for it, that some will cherish.

That being said there is violence, there are flaws and other things. This is not something that will make people too excited, but it certainly different than any blockbuster you will see. Still cliches and other things get in the way and even with great actors at hand, not everything is gold that shines