Dreamland

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

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.

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.

This is probably the type of film you either love or hate. Maybe it's not a masterpiece, but well worthy a watch. The title sais it all. Dreamland. You don't know what to expect. Anything can and will happen. If you like the mystic atmosphere of Twin Peaks, you'll probably like this one.

Steven McHattie aces dual roles in this strange, sometimes drool comedic thriller. Sparse but methodical script, with a hauntingly beautiful score. Fans of H. P. Lovecraft, William S. Burroughs, David Lynch and Nicolas Winding Refn will certainly find some joy in this film.