natewatchescoolmovies

Jeffrey Morris’s Oceanus: Act One

June 19, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Sometimes you stumble across a gem of a short film randomly, one that has big name actors, a well told story, atmosphere and great production value that just happens to be only 20 minutes or so long instead of a feature. Oceanus: Act One is something I’ve seen hovering on IMDb for awhile and I’ve always been curious, and finally a quick google search led me to a Vimeo link.. I’m glad it did. This is the story of a futuristic deep sea exploration crew with a gigantic research base near the bottom of the ocean, their purpose to study potential communication and interaction with different species of whales. When a cataclysmic seismic event disrupts the day to day mission of one scientist (Megan Dodds) alone in a small vessel, she’s thrown vastly off course and must locate her colleague and husband (Sharif Atkins) in another craft, while their commander (Bruce Davison) back down at base tries to bring them in and they are all guided by the AI computer system running their equipment, voiced coolly and evenly by the great Malcolm McDowell. Not only do they find themselves off course of the mission, but when they attempt to breach the surface to get their bearings, they discover something so alarming and terrible it raises the stakes just about as high as they can go, and they find themselves faced with only one option: return back to their base on the depths of the ocean floor with busted navigation equipment and patchy radio communications. With courage, ingenuity and a little surprise miraculous help from some aquatic friends they must journey downwards to the only home they have left. This is all edited together with beautiful CGI, vividly colourful visuals and detailed design of the ships and underwater base, a wonderfully atmospheric electronic score by Jeff Rona that echoes the best work of Cliff Martinez and a sense of urgency, suspense, immediacy and most importantly, genuine wonder, as any film about the depths of the ocean should have. This is titled ‘act one’ and I see on IMDb that a follow up film has been in development for sometime, here’s hoping it finds the money and talent to become a reality because this first act is a blessing in the marine SciFi sub-genre. Available to stream on Vimeo.

-Nate Hill

The SuperDeep

June 18, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The SuperDeep is a Russian SciFi horror flick that lives up to its title in the most literal of ways, considering it’s about a research term that descends down a borehole wayyyyy below the earth to investigate something that’s so far down there it’s closer to the core than it is to the surface. We meet microbiologist Anya (Milena Radulovic), who has a guilt ridden past but agrees to lead the group, which consists mostly of Russian military, on the condition that whatever they find down there, she gets academic credit for the discovery. What could go wrong? A lot, it seems, and when you’re in one of the most remote, unfamiliar frontiers in our realm, it’s tough to get help, find your footing in an otherworldly environment and simply survive. There seems to be some horrific microorganism that lives in the permafrost and has now thawed and gotten loose, a life form that uses fungal spores to spread into the air kind of like seed dispersal and as soon as a human breathes them in… well, it ain’t a pretty sight and the special effects team take FULL advantage of the opportunity for ooze, slime, goo and body horror of every orifice invading fashion. I had one complaint; the version I watched on Shudder only had dubs available, no subs, and baby I’m just not a fan of dubs, I wanna hear the actors talking in their real voices, I don’t care how exotic and impenetrable the language is. That aside, this is a wonderfully atmospheric piece with some truly standout moments of filmmaking and a beautifully eerie score that sets up atmospheric tension and world building terrifically. There’s a hair raising sequence where they free fall down into the earth for hundreds of miles in a few minutes time for a kind of prolonged ‘Hellavator’ experience that would have been a showstopper on the big screen. An almost black and white colour timed scene sees Anya fall through a fissure in the earth into utterly unknown territory in this kind of languid, near zero gravity airspace accompanied by a particularly surreal score cue for an almost indescribably artistic visual and auditory effect. The climax is haunting and disquieting where it could have been loud, gory and cacophonous, choosing awe and wonder over grisly spectacle. It’s a slower burn, a more relaxed take on classic stuff and obviously comparisons to John Carpenter’s The Thing will be drawn but this is its own beast, a neat infusion of mood piece, body horror, artistic expression and classic B movie aesthetics for quite the experience. Streaming now on Shudder.

-Nate Hill

Guy Ritchie’s Wrath Of Man

June 16, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Wow man, Guy Ritchie isn’t fucking around with this one. What I mean by that is, his body of work in film thus far is marked by rambunctious characters, robustly flavourful dialogue, cartoonish mayhem, jubilant humour and just an overall house party vibe. His new heist/revenge/horror film Wrath Of Man is a jarring, impressive and welcome change of pace that plunges headlong into an aesthetic wrought with darkness, grim portent, ominous atmospherics, ruthless violence and nary a trace of whimsy to be found; Playtime is over. Jason Statham is Ritchie’s perennial muse and his gives what might be a career best performance here or at least their finest collaboration, playing a mysterious individual named H who infiltrates a no nonsense armoured truck syndicate as one of their employees, silently and lethally carrying out some dark agenda that is revealed beat by beat, flashback by flashback, scene by meticulously edited scene in a carefully calibrated nesting doll of a narrative. His coworkers are a varied bunch of assholes, tough guys and eccentrics including the top dog and natural born leader Bullet (Holt McCallany) and a dysfunctional pretty boy played by Josh Hartnett, who I was very happy to see in something again and does great cast just about as against type as possible for him. The supporting cast extends into very solid work from Andy Garcia, Jeffrey Donovan, Laz Alonso, Eddie Marsan, Post Malone, a scene stealing Darrell D’Silva and a vicious standout turn from Scott Eastwood who is looking so much like his dad these days it’s getting scary. I don’t want to spoil too much in terms of narrative because this is one serpentine, labyrinthine piece to work through and although the overall story isn’t the most complex or revolutionary endeavour, it’s in execution, tone, atmosphere and mood that Ritchie and his team do something thoroughly extraordinary. Statham makes H a truly elemental force here, like Keyser Soze, Hannibal Lecter, Michael Myers or The Devil himself he just exudes this inky menace and doom soaked ethos that fills the screen in every frame. One of the film’s strongest features is its dark, grinding, methodically rhythmical score by Christopher Benstead, full of guttural, agonized strings and stabbed by jagged notes in between the chords, standing out in the vividly stylized and blessedly old fashioned opening credit sequence and accented by several key soundtrack picks including a haunting, ghostly rendition of Folsom Prison Blues playing alongside one of the most visceral sequences. The film works as an action heist flick as it has many propulsive, bloody shootouts and chases but what really makes it something special, and for me the best of the year so far, is the time it takes in between beats, the measured, steady and grisly slowed down sequences that immerse you in its world using score, trademark colourful Ritchie dialogue albeit of a dark variety this time, hellishly overbearing, dreamscape-esque atmosphere of danger, anger and slowly burgeoning, ultimately cataclysmic vengeance. Absolutely sensational film.

-Nate Hill

Guy Ritchie’s Wrath Of Man

June 16, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Larva

June 15, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I love a good, simple, blessedly cheesy SyFy creature feature flick, back when cable tv was around you could tune in any night of the week, settle in for the midnight hours and watch all kinds of monsters, ghouls, aliens and cryptid nightmares terrorize small towns. Whenever I get the chance these days I grab them on DVD where I can find them for sheer nostalgic value and Larva is a great example of that. Set in blessed small town Americana, we meet a farmer (the great William Forsythe) who is having trouble with his cows getting sick and dying of some mysterious and very deadly parasite. He contacts the environmental board who sends a representative (Vincent Ventresca) who discovers that the animals are falling prey to a brand new subspecies that is aggressive and altogether catastrophic to the region, especially when it starts infecting humans and we are treated to an impressive array of gut busting, chest bursting, skull exploding gore as these beasties grow from their larval state and bust loose from human hosts into these weird leathery winged, tooth ‘n fang adorned monsters that fly, crawl through tight spaces and kill with speed and ferocity. There’s a neat subplot about the dangers of outsourcing agricultural and livestock resources to big experimental corporations that don’t follow the rules until nature bites back which is a nice touch too. Forsythe is terrific as the stoic, capable farmer who keeps an arsenal of ‘just in case’ weaponry in his barn for occasions such as these and gets to blast many a monster to smithereens. The effects are terrific in the close quarters gore department and perfectly serviceable as far as visuals of the full grown creatures go and overall this is exactly the kind of good, splattery, brainless fun you’d expect from stuff like this. Good times.

-Nate Hill

House 3: The Horror Show

June 14, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

After checking out the first House flick and digging it I skipped right ahead to the third one, given the subheading ‘The Horror Show.’ I did this because it was more readily available to me than than the second and because they’re anthology anyways but mainly because it stars Lance Henriksen, who I’m a huge fan of. This one has a super bad reputation for some reason and I see from some reviews (Ebert, notably) that they had no idea this was even connected to the House franchise and thought it was an attempt at a standalone horror flick. This is understandable as it has almost zero connective tissue to at least the first film, which is odd they’ve used the House name but no matter, it’s still a perfectly entertaining, impressively gruesome cop versus slasher outing. Henriksen is Detective Lucas McCarthy, a tough cop and gentle family man who has successfully tracked and apprehended ‘Meat Cleaver’ Max (the great Brion James), a profoundly vicious mass murderer whose weapon of choice is, you guessed it, a giant meat cleaver. When they try to fry the fucker in the electric chair it literally goes haywire and somehow Max’s ghost is able to escape via electric currents and continue to kill as well as make life hard for Lucas and his family as he lurks about their home turning inanimate objects very animate. What to do? Lucas must think outside the box of his usual cop skill set towards more metaphysical methods before Max literally kills everyone. Henriksen is terrific and gives the role a genuinely haunted aura and PTSD afflicted frenzy that is very effective and believable. James is a mad dog monster as Max, imbuing him with a devilish trademark laugh and chewing scenery like there’s no tomorrow. There’s some very unnerving prosthetic effects, a standout moment sees a turkey dinner some nauseatingly to life in front of Lucas, provoking a hilariously deadpan reaction from the man. While I don’t see quite what this has to do with the House franchise in essence and could have easily just been it’s own unrelated thing, I really enjoyed it for it’s energy, the brutal cat and mouse game between Henriksen and James who are both at the top of their acting game here and the inspired, deranged special effects. Good times.

-Nate Hill

Steve Miner’s House

June 12, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s a lot going on here for a film with the simple and straightforward title ‘House,’ and not all of adds up for a coherent or clear minded horror flick but it’s still a lot of warped, gooey fun with some great 80’s practical effects, a decidedly anthology vibe despite, well, not being anthology at all really and the same kind of mischievous, rambunctious, irreverent tone to the horror that one might find in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films. It’s also directed by Steve Miner who has deep horror roots, having helmed the very first Friday The 13th long ago so the force is solidly strong with this one, in terms of horror speak. William Katt plays a writer who moves into a creaky old house with his family and before they even have a chance to unpack their shit his kid goes missing, like literally before you even get properly introduced to the characters, it’s wild and hilarious. As the ominous yet silly tone is set we also meet all kinds of other ghosts and ghoulies including some spectacularly gruesome monsters that live in the closet, a fat bottomed zombie girl who keeps showing up to torment him (this is where the film feels most like Evil Dead), some pesky sentient gardening tools that follow him around, George Wendt as his sorta friendly sorta nosy neighbour who keeps bringing him beer in offers that he rudely snubs and the mummified remains of an old Nam war buddy (Richard Moll) who come back to haunt and remind him of some psychological incident regarding the war that can’t be put to rest. There is a LOT going on and unfortunately the film can’t make proper sense of it or make it all feel like it’s coherently connected beyond a kind of scattered episodic feel, hence my references to anthology films above. However, what it lacks in clear vision it makes up for in cheer lunatic energy and boisterous charm, each oozy new set piece and special effect clearly showing a level of artistry, creation and off the wall deadpan humour that is impressive and fun, the acting from everyone, Wendt in particular, is very good and it all feels like everyone was having a good time.

-Nate Hill

HBO’s Mare Of Easttown

June 10, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

HBO has another unbelievable strong drama on their hands in Craig Zobel’s Mare Of Easttown, a season of television so good, so emotionally winding and narratively compelling on all fronts that I’m still processing it weeks later and just haven’t felt qualified or equipped to write a review on. It’s one of those shows that I’ll gladly take another season of but if not that’s cool too because the story here is so wonderfully encapsulated into one single season that it feels appropriately bookended and self contained in one sensational eight episode run. Kate Winslet has to be one of the greatest of her generation as an artist and she simply outdoes herself here in a stunning turn as Mare, a long suffering police detective in a troubled working class borough of Pennsylvania who has just about enough distressing things in both her personal and professional life as one human being can take. She’s trying to solve the murder of a local girl who turns up dead in a river one morning and also can’t let go of the cold case where another girl went missing a year ago.. are they connected? Meanwhile she’s trying to cope with trauma she hasn’t even properly processed yet in her family, manage a stormy relationship with her mother (Jean Smart, superb as ever), raise her wonderful teenage daughter (Angourie Rice, brilliant) right as the three of them struggle to look after her grandson. I won’t go too much into the interpersonal relationships because they’re so intricate, unorthodox and painfully realistic you just have to explore them for yourselves and despite being intimidatingly complicated as a narrative web, the show somehow manages to juggle them all concisely so that you have a clear, mosaic like sprawl of who relates to who and very well developed characters who are acted flawlessly all across the board by a beautiful cast in a sort of ‘rust belt gothic true Detective deep drama’ recipe. The story is damn near perfect, juggling the procedural and personal aspects intuitively and seamlessly for an experience that feels raw, down to earth and relatable. I will warn you that this one one bleak, depressing and emotionally pulverizing experience, one that isn’t afraid to fully show, in complicated and upsetting minutia, how human beings suffer, hurt each other, make horrible mistakes, are dealt unfair and rough hands in life and how they attempt, bit by bit, to work through their pain, struggle forward and move on through the difficult times towards something hopefully better. It’s dark, it’s relentless, it’s an emotional gauntlet to walk through but it’s not without it’s catharsis, lessons learned and just enough light at the end of the tunnel. Pretty much perfect as far as I’m concerned.

-Nate Hill

HBO’s Friends: The Reunion

June 9, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

As someone who watched Friends casually, in the background, when it was on cable in my kid and teenage years, tuned in absentmindedly but never became and active, engaged fan of the series, I have to say that Friends: The Reunion is kind of brilliant and can be greatly enjoyed by someone who isn’t quite a hardcore disciple of the show itself. Friends is a lynchpin sitcom that meant and still means a lot to a lot of people who fell in love with these characters, watched every week and got swept up in the cultural phenomenon of a sitcom that became a way of life. So, what made this such a hit for someone like me who isn’t a super fan? It’s the way they go about this reunion, that being the key word. This isn’t a reboot, continuing season, cap-off feature film, animated series or otherwise fictional addition to the canon, it’s simply a loving documentation of these six actors having a catch-up, an emotional, totally unscripted trip down memory lane on detailed recreations of the sets they lived, worked and made core memories of for decades and I think the format here is kind of a stroke of genius, really, and that employed just right for any show’s reunion will be a showstopper. Jennifer Aniston, Matt Leblanc, Courtney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and eternally lovely Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe was always my personal favourite character) have come such a long way since Friends, their lives are very different now but watching them get together in the same sacred space where they changed the history of television feels like they never left their evening cable slot and really just brought me back to former times in my life when I’d get home and watch Friends, That 70’s Show and others all in a giddy lineup. This reunion spends a reverent opening segment just letting these actors play, rediscover their characters and touchstone areas of the set that hold significance to them while clips from the show are spliced in in parallel fashion. There’s also a more formal, organized part where they sit and discuss various things by that iconic fountain and yes this sequence is hosted by that James Corden dude and yes he’s annoying as ever but oh well. There are some shocking celebrity cameos that no doubt come from a place of love as they’re mostly people who would have themselves grown up with the show but I much preferred video testimonials from fans all over the world who give their thoughts and feelings on why the show was so important and what it means to them personally. Say what you want about Friends, I know it’s become one of those things that it’s just cool to hate on (never a good look, honey) but there’s no denying the fact that it pioneered a subculture of television and pop culture, and did a lot of good for a lot of people who may not have had much else in their lives to hang onto at the time. This reunion is a loving testament to that, a life affirming, blessedly nostalgic and just plain happy look back for six actors whose careers were defined by it.

-Nate Hill