Author: natewatchescoolmovies

24 years old from Vancouver, Canada. Loved movies since I can remember. I do reviews on Instagram and Facebook as well, and after being harped at by my friends to start a blog as well... Here I am. I try to give obscure, overlooked films a day in court, ones I feel are hidden gems, that deserve to get some love.

Joshua Michael Stern’s Neverwas

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It always amazes me when a first time writer/director scores an all out, diamond encrusted A-list cast that would make the top dog filmmakers in Hollywood jealous, but it often results in a scantly marketed film that no one really ends up seeing but just happens to have a huge star studded ensemble in a quiet, curious independent piece that few are aware of. Such is the case in Joshua Michael Stern’s NeverWas, a beautiful modern fairytale that slipped under the radar back in the mid 2000’s but is ripe for rediscovery. Aaron Eckhart plays a rookie psychiatrist who expresses interest in working at a troubled mental health facility in rural BC, Canada, an institution where his mentally ill father (Nick Nolte) lived at years before. He was once a great children’s author who wrote about a magical kingdom called NeverWas and built a considerable legacy around his books, before becoming sadly unstable and being committed. Eckhart’s character wishes to find out wheat happened years before and treat some of these people now attending the facility, while the somewhat skeptical director (a sly William Hurt) doesn’t have high hopes for the program overall. Things get interesting when delusional patient Gabriel (Ian McKellen) starts mentioning NeverWas in his group sessions and believes it to be real, and Eckhart to be somehow connected to the legacy. What is he on about, why does he express a desire to break out and return to a place he calls his ‘kingdom’, and what’s his connection to the long gone father? McKellen is wonderful in the role, fiercely passionate and charismatic while showing heartbreaking undertones of some past trauma he can’t articulate yet needs to work through with this fantastical delusions. Nolte gives a mini powerhouse performance in just flashbacks alone and is incredibly affecting, while the late great Brittany Murphy is cast refreshingly against type as a local naturalist who expresses interest in this unusual situation. The cast is so blinged out that even the smallest roles have been given to someone super recognizable and so we get to see people like Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Michael Moriarty, Bill Bellamy and Vera Farmiga show up and not necessarily have much to do character wise other than simply bless the production with their attendance. The lush Canadian setting provides a gorgeous atmosphere for this strange, quaint and very personal story to unfold, anchored by McKellen in a superb, emotionally rich portrayal that he sticks with and lands with a final beat to the arc that cuts right to the essential. The film also managed to score Philip Glass for its original score (Candyman, Tales From The Loop, The Hours) a man whose unmistakable compositions always provide an auditory heart and propellant momentum, his work adding a lot to the overall experience here. The very definition of a hidden gem and well worth seeking out for the unbelievable cast and unique, touching story.

-Nate Hill

Amat Escalante’s The Untamed

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

So Shudder just added a Mexican horror film called The Untamed about an alien that literally has sex with people and you know what it’s actually pretty good. When I say that I don’t mean metaphorically, allegorically or any other vague or illusory way to present the concept, I just quite bluntly mean that a slimy tentacled alien emerges from a crashed meteor and has slimy alien intercourse with any female body that gets close to it. Now as stark and upfront as the premise is presented, it is also subtly used as metaphor for what’s going on in the lives of several troubled individuals in small town Mexico, the extraterrestrial itself viewed as an arbiter for sexual dysfunction, closet homosexuality in a conservative setting, clandestine adultery and other interpersonal shenanigans of the like. Nor does the film present its subject matter as anything close to schlock or exploitative in nature and at times doesn’t even feel like an abject horror film, but rather a tense, eerie, melodramatic tragedy that just happens to have an extended cameo by a sex monster from outer space. The effects on the creature itself are tangible, tactile and terrific, the performances from the human actors all most excellent and elicit sympathy, show complexity and emotional range while being sufficiently creepy when under the sultry influence of the alien’s potent, seductive and very weird pheromone like spell, almost like a cosmic drug trance that is translated excellently into the screen by these artists, none of whom I’ve seen in anything else before. Word of warning with this one though: it’s not a prudish North American studio film and as such doesn’t beat around the bush with explicit sexuality, which is totally normal and fine if it weren’t for the fact that said sexuality includes a multi-tentacled being from space and you see *everything* when this thing is copulating with women, which may be too much for some. It’s not done in a violent, perverse or shameful way and the scenes have a sort of almost bizarre tranquility to them, but it is a *very* disquieting form of intercourse to absorb and experience onscreen and some may be uncomfortable. Very unique and challenging film overall.

-Nate Hill

Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Carey Mulligan is a tornado of righteous fury and ruthless retribution in Emerald Fennel’s Promising Young Woman, an unconventional revenge thriller and icky glimpse into the world of men being horrible to women, and the often decades later snowball effect that can have on many lives. This is a crisply made, acid edged, cheerfully furious piece with a bubblegum pop-art visual and musical aesthetic that provides playful contrast to its very dark and fucked up subject matter and while I had a few major issues in the third act, I greatly enjoyed it overall. Mulligan is Cassie, a thirty year old girl working a humdrum barista job and living at home with her quaintly innocuous parents (Clancy Brown & Jennifer Coolidge). Many nights she gets all dolled up, hits the dive bars and takes guys home pretending to be too hammered to object to any advances, and then turns the tables on them in whip-smart fashion. Why does she do this? Well besides the surface level ‘teach shitheads a lesson’ aspect, there’s a much deeper and more personal reason for her actions that stems back to her days ten years earlier in med-school, where she has memories of a best friend who went through something terrible and isn’t around anymore. That’s all I’ll say about the languid and loose yet pointed and intricately structured narrative that is guarded about revealing backstory and let’s the expository nuggets land with devastating thunderclaps as they come. The soundtrack choices are all bangers that are fun yet have a menacing undercurrent, especially a choice like the unbearably eerie theme from the 1955 film Night Of The Hunter in which Robert Mitchum plays a terrifyingly misogynistic psycho disguised as a benign preacher. The supporting cast is meticulously peppered with an eclectic and multigenerational roster of names including Alison Brie, Adam Brody, that McLovin kid, Laverne Cox, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon and a very memorable Alfred Molina as a scumbag former defender attorney wracked with suicidal guilt. Mulligan herself seems to have been born for this role, or at least tailors her acting style quite a bit off her usual path to play Cass. She’s an actor who mostly finds herself in quiet, observant, introspectively wistful characterizations, full of long stares, sustained silences and expressions that constantly have you wondering what she’s thinking. Here she’s the antithesis of that, punishingly verbose, uncomfortably rambunctiousness and perpetually has her defences up like a cobra ready to strike. And strike she does, although I’m not sure I was quite okay with the script’s decision on her arc overall. Thats not to say I didn’t understand, appreciate and recognize the integral nature of such a turn of events and I can’t say much without spoiling it but I can say that as much as it’s a darkly poetic way for the film to go out, it didn’t quite run congruent with my aspirations for this horrific tale and left somewhat of a bad vibe in my soul. But I suppose in trying to make a story like this 100% effective and memorable, you’ve got to throw a few ‘shock and awe’ curveballs that shirk the usual limbo bar of predictable catharsis and aim to leave the viewer feeling pulverized, disoriented and unnerved to the maximum. In that aspiration, it has certainly succeeded. Great film, if one that left my mental/emotional equilibrium feeling considerably infringed upon. Mission accomplished, I suppose.

-Nate Hill

Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-Di Koko-Da

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Shudder is a great streaming service if you’re looking to get lost off the beaten path within the horror genre and come across some truly weird shit that you otherwise might not have the chance to see. Long lost keystones of 80’s schlock, obscure off kilter creature features and more recently some bizarre foreign arthouse experiments like Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-Di Koko-Da, a terrifyingly surreal plunge into grief, madness, waking nightmares and past trauma that manifests in some dark, fairy tale esque ways. When a vacationing Swedish couple loses their young daughter in an accident that’s.. odd to say the least, her death sets deep rooted trauma in both of them. Sometime after they decide to go on a camping trip to rekindle their marriage and attempt to heal from the loss.. and let’s just say it doesn’t go too well. No sooner have they pitched a tent and are trying to get some sleep, three mysterious and *very* strange individuals emerge out of the forest from nowhere, proceed to torment, harass and eventually murder them. There’s a scary little white suited ringmaster dude, a big giant oaf carrying a dead dog and an unnerving mute girl with hair that would make Lady Gaga cringe. This trio of freaks continues to find and terrorize them in one of those scintillating time loops where they find themselves on the road, in the tent, under attack and murdered again and again and again. Who are they? Why do they keep accosting them? Why do they look like rejects from a Rob Zombie film or a travelling gypsy circus? Well, there’s a reason for that that’s actually a lot simpler and more straightforward than how the material is presented, through this sort of nightmarish prism of music, sound, surreal forest visuals and disorienting stylistic flourishes. The film isn’t going to work for everyone, simply for how bleak, unrelenting and alien the atmosphere is, and how the resolution of this couple’s grief and trauma comes in a fashion that’s anything but easy to process and absorb, much like their issues in question. There’s a specific object in the film, a sort of totemic MacGuffin that holds the key to everything, the identity of these three nocturnal scoundrels, related directly to their daughter and the eerie, ethereal nursery rhyme that hovers in the film’s auditory psycho sphere as a constant reminder and gives the film its inane but inherently menacing gibberish title. A challenging, deeply unsettling yet greatly rewarding piece of tricky arthouse neo-surrealism.

-Nate Hill

McG’s The Babysitter: Killer Queen

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The first Babysitter on Netflix is one of my favourite 80’s nostalgia bath horror flicks out there, so naturally I was curious about the recent sequel, Babysitter: Killer Queen. The first film is a blast of retro pop culture referential bliss, cheerfully gruesome cartoon gore, vividly farcical archetypal characterizations, a beautifully bold colour palette and some punishingly funny dark humour. So how much of that does this sequel bring to the table? Well thankfully a lot, and ends being like… 70% as dope as the first with a ton of rambunctious energy and clever new ideas.. however, it implodes a bit in the third act with some inexplicably off kilter character/plot curveballs that just feel weird, which I’ll get to in a moment. It’s been a year or so since the events of the first films and young Cole (Judah Lewis) is still processing almost being murdered and sacrificed to Satan by his evil babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving) and her mad dog gang of psycho high schoolers. Life goes on and no one seems to believe him until it all happens again, his would be best friend Em (Emily Alyn Lind) turns out to be another devil worshipping bitch who goes nuts on him right as Bee’s followers all rise from the dead for one night’s last chance to finish what they started and dispatch Cole for good. He’s joined by the ‘new girl’ in his class, a spitfire problem kid named Phoebe (Jenna Ortega) and soon enough genuine sparks fly between them. The action is shifted from the pastel suburbia aesthetic and placed on a riverboat and the surrounding Arizona desert/lake atmosphere for a nice change. The gore is fast and furious, the dialogue whip smart and reliably hilarious and the soundtrack packed with joyous 80’s deep cuts of everything from Alannah Myles’ Black Velvet to Tangerine Dream’s Love On A Real Train. It’s a ton of fun, except… well the problem here is Samara Weaving, or a lack of her anyways. Her character is pretty much absent for most of the film, while her exuberant cronies do much of the chasing, terrorizing and wise cracking. When she does eventually show up in the eleventh hour, she seems distracted, listless, even a little pale and not up to the task, like she was somehow forced into this by a contractual obligation and kept her presence as scant as possible. Nowhere to be found is the spunky, sexy, full of charisma and deadly sex appeal we remember her having from the first film. Additionally, they’ve chosen a completely out of left field twist on her character that makes absolutely zero sense when you look at the first film and feels just, so shoehorned in for whatever behind the scenes reasons, most likely spearhead by Weaving’s own ideas about the whole thing. It’s shocking and a bit frustrating and kind of derails the entire franchise, if I’m being honest. Still though, the first two thirds of the film are cracking stuff and on the level of pedigree as the first film, I’m just not sold on the ending, and whoever’s plan it was to go that route with this Bee character.

-Nate Hill

Netflix’s Marianne

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It’s always great to find horror content that is *actually* scary, like ‘scare a desensitized adult with decades of genre nerding out’ scary. France’s Netflix original series Marianne is most definitely scary as fuck, one of the qualities that makes it stand out amidst the multitudinous ranks of horror material streaming out there. What it also has is strong, emotionally rich storytelling, a unique and sometimes disorienting but organic way of presenting its story, characters with depth, compassion and complexity and a kind of meta storyline that feels like a tale within a tale at times, like King’s In The Mouth Of Madness or the like. Emma (Victoire DuBois) is a famous horror novelist whose work has taken her from the sleepy seaside town of Elden to big city Paris for book tours, autograph seminars and overall big-shot writer lifestyle. Her many books tell the ongoing story of nasty pagan witch Marianne, a monstrous force of evil who, it turns out, isn’t just a creation out of Emma’s imagination but is a very real entity from her childhood and that of all her friends back home she’s become so estranged from. This leads her on a journey back to Elden to reconnect with her friends, discover just how real (and how fucking terrifying) Marianne is, what she’s been up to and what can be done to end her reign of unholy terror over the town and everyone in her life. The story starts off jaggedly and it can be tricky to get a sense of (gotta keep up with those snappy subtitles) at first but once she’s settled back into Elden the magic really happens. Emma is a confident, assured and independent woman who has the rug of her cavalier personality yanked from under her when it becomes clear what a force to be reckoned with Marianne is, and Dubois’s performance is one of emotional resilience, startling vulnerability and aching sex appeal. Marianne herself takes several different forms, each more hair raising than the last and is really a fascinating character once the mythology fully unfolds. I won’t beat around the bush: this is one fucking scary ass show, and I *dare* you not to be totally freaked out by the makeup effects (those bulging eyes), shocked by the relentless, very efficient jump scares and just immersed in the overall atmosphere. There’s also a deep emotional core emanating from out of all the horror, as we see Emma’s varying relationships to her many childhood friends, how each bond is tested by time and the evil surrounding them. The town of Elden (actually the port of Doëlen) feels real and mysterious, complete with its own spooky lighthouse, as every small coastal town in a horror film should. The story is one full of mystery, pathos, hurt, horror, super high stakes (Marianne is one ruthless being with absolutely no regard for compassion or mercy) and just… everything about it *works.* Could not recommend this highly enough.

-Nate Hill

Joe Carnahan’s Boss Level

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

If I was mayor of FilmTown, I’d make the day a new Joe Carnahan film came out a national holiday. The guy is such a great storyteller and to me, each of his movies over the years is a solid gold classic, from the gritty Narc to the cult status Smokin Aces to the emotional masterpiece The Grey to the criminally overlooked Stretch. His new film Boss Level just dropped on Hulu and various other platforms for rental and let me tell you, it’s my favourite thing I’ve seen in awhile and most definitely of 2021 so far. The infusion of action and SciFi has always been a great love of mine and when done with wit, intelligence, inspiration and badassery it can be a truly special sub-genre. Frank Grillo stars as ex special forces soldier Roy Pulver, who finds himself in a curious metaphysical time loop on the day of his death: he wakes up, is immediately confronted with a host of eccentric and quite lethal contract killers, some of whom he is able to kill, and others not so much. The day is often a variation on the same template, but one thing remains unchanged: at some point, in some way, he always ends up dead. Who placed him in this purgatorial halo of mayhem? Does it have something to do with his ex girlfriend (Naomi Watts) who works at a mysterious physics research lab owned by a Machiavellian despot (Mel Gibson) hellbent on some nefarious agenda? Well of course it does but the fun is in seeing how, and how with each new day, or each new crack at the level as this thing is a terrific mirror board for video game concepts, he learns a little more, and gets a little closer to figuring out what’s happened, who has it in for him and why. Grillo is a great choice for an action hero because not only is he physically adept and imposing, he also has acting talent and charisma for days and just feels like someone you want to be around. He narrates the film in hilarious, touching and sardonic voiceover and makes Roy a terrific character creation. Gibson is in scenery chewing Bond villain mode, munching on a giant cigar and commanding hordes of minions like some dark god, while Watts is terrific as ever. Keep an eye out for Will Sasso, Michelle Yeoh, Annabelle Wallis, Quinton Rampage Jackson and Ken Jeong as a lippy bartender. This is a wonderful motion picture with balls to the wall ruthless gory action, absolutely hilarious and colourful dialogue (Carnahan has a way with words like no other), a SciFi concept that is just this side of silly yet still tantalizes the brain (the Osiris Spindle is such a cool idea) and feels intricate and trippy enough to keep us guessing and immerse us in the world. You know what really hit it home for me though? Roy is a real character with an arc who not only has to fix the dilemmas imposed upon him by an external antagonist, but fix his own heart and mend his own wayward tendencies, particularly in the relationship with his son (Rio Grillo, Frank’s real life kid) who he’s never seemed to find the time for, until now when all he has is one day, but a day that scintillates into eternity. There is real pathos in this story and for a 90 minute action film with this much destruction, mayhem, crazy characters, conceptual exposition and layered plotting it’s rare to find an emotional core emanating from it as well, but this one really has it all. Kinda like Source Code meets Groundhog Day with splashes of Bond and this exhilarating undercurrent of video game thematics, and also fiercely and singularly its own thing. Best film of the year so far.

-Nate Hill

Antoine Fuqua’s Shooter

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve always loved the absolute hell out of Antoine Fuqua’s Shooter, a mean, violent, very broad and totally enjoyable action flick with a western flavour woven in and some jaw dropping set pieces along the way. The story is like, beyond over the top, Mark Wahlberg is a near invincible force of nature, the villains are so intense they feel like they’ve walked out of a Walter Hill flick and the overall tone is just this side of tongue in cheek territory while still feeling like a legitimate thriller. Marky Mark plays an ex marine sniping guru who lives alone in the Canadian wilderness with his doggo until he’s lured back to Vancouver by his conniving former boss (Danny Glover) for a high profile political assassination. Basically blackmailed into it, he finds himself set up by his own people to take the fall for the job, betrayed, left for dead, the works. Also, as we observed in John Wick, don’t kill the dog of someone who can take out literal armies of goons and will come gunning for you and everyone in your employ. On the run he’s assisted by a rookie cop (Michael Pena) who intuits his innocence and the girlfriend (a smokin hot Kate Mara) of a former army buddy who he seeks shelter with. The villains here are truly spectacular and I must spend a portion of my review on them: Glover is so arch and evil he literally gets to say “I win, you lose” *twice* and he somehow pulls off a ridiculous line like that just because he’s Danny Glover and he’s smirking like he knows damn well what kind of script he’s waded into. His top lieutenant is a despicable, sadistic piece of work played by the great Elias Koteas in high style, all leering stubble, violent urges towards Mara and creepy charisma in spades. They all work for the the most evil US Senator in the country, a tubby, southern fried, amoral, genocidal maniac Colonel Sanders wannabe played by Ned Beatty, who doesn’t just chew the scenery, but strangles it with his bare hands while he’s at it. The cast is off the hook and also includes Tate Donovan, Mackenzie Grey, Rhona Mitra, Lane Garrison, Rade Serbedzija and a cameo from The Band’s Levon Helm. They just don’t make actioners like this anymore and even for 2007 this felt like a dying breed. Classic, melodramatic, hyper violent, neo-western revenge stuff that was huge in the 80’s and 90’s and I miss greatly. There’s a brilliant exchange of dialogue where Beatty and Glover marvel in desperation at Wahlberg’s refusal to back down or stop hunting them. “I don’t think you understand,” he growls at them: “You killed my dog.” It’s a great line sold 100% by Wahlberg and the film is full of spot on moments like that as well as visually breathtaking action sequences (that mountaintop standoff tho), a playful yet deadly tone and villains that would be at home in the Looney Toons. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Nikole Beckwith’s Stockholm Pennsylvania

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I struggled with Nikole Beckwith’s Stockholm Pennsylvania on several levels, despite it having a wicked strong cast and premise so full of potential I almost want to write my own version that does it more justice than this incredibly frustrating film. Saoirse Ronan gives a typically superb performance as Leia, a young woman who was kidnapped when she was very young by doomsday obsessed, ill adjusted Benjamin (Jason Isaacs) and raised in his captivity and care for over a decade. When she’s eventually found and freed, she returns to a life she barely has memory of, to two parents (Cynthia Nixon and David Warshofsky) who feel like strangers to her. Her life with Benjamin was never filled with abuse or horror or anything like that, beyond kidnapping her and filling her mind with all sorts of end of the world, anti-humanity nonsense he actually cared for her as his own kid and treated her decently, all things considered. So there’s this alienation from the real world, this wall of separation from parents who desperately try and reconnect with her and this strange bond with her captor who is still out there in jail, thinking of her. How does the script take this situation and evolve it into something challenging, believable and emotionally resonant? Well, it doesn’t really. Ronan, Isaacs and Warshofsky are terrific but Nixon gives this shrill, unpleasant and altogether inexplicable portrait of tyrannical maternal instinct gone wrong that curdles into her own version of holding Leia captive when she can’t reconcile that her daughter just isn’t the same person she used to be. I’m not sure what Beckwith was going for or drawing on with this original script, it seems as if she is deliberately trying to tell a knowingly obtuse, in-your-face uncomfortable story and the result is a maddening experience, or at least was for me. It’s a shame because the idea, setup and execution of the first act is really good and drew me in and then it just goes off the deep end appears to lose itself in histrionic, grim, unnecessary Mommie Dearest nonsense that feels like it walked in from a much lesser film, and as such it drags the whole experience down and you just feel emotionally depleted afterwards, with no reward, pathos, thought provocation or narrative satisfaction. An interesting experiment that needlessly nosedives and betrays both the audience and its characters to masochistic doom and gloom that doesn’t feel warranted.

-Nate Hill

Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer is a tantalizing political l thriller with one powerhouse performance from Pierce Brosnan as the UK’s shadiest former politician, a galaxy of terrific supporting talent, some truly inspired bits of brilliantly orchestrated suspense, and Ewan McGregor too. He plays the titular ghost writer, a handpicked scribe first hired to unofficially pen the memoirs of Brosnan’s fiery former Prime Minister, an endeavour that turns into much more of an… involved position than anyone ever planned on. The moment he arrives at the man’s lavish Cape Cod private island residence, a nasty scandal springs forth in the media that forces him into hiding and causes McGregor to suspiciously question his past, both personal and professional. McGregor serves as kind of an audience proxy and gives a solid if unremarkable turn, but Brosnan removes the muffler and fires on all cylinders for a charismatic, cunning barnstormer of a performance, especially in the last act where his life and reputation are thoroughly unravelled. The supporting cast is wonderful, with Olivia Williams being the standout as Brosnan’s long suffering wife who teeters on the brink between loyalty and exasperation. Jon Bernthal is McGregor’s agent, Timothy Hutton and a startlingly bald Jim Belushi are bigwig fixers for Brosnan and there’s nice work from Kim Cattrall, Robert Pugh, a fossilized Eli Wallach and a subtle Tom Wilkinson as a mysterious lynchpin character. The film has a luxurious, over two hour runtime which allows you properly sink into the serpentine narrative full of murky political espionage, dirty secrets, sins of the past, clandestine shifts in power and some truly impressive Hitchcockian twists of fate. Much of the action is set on Brosnan’s beautiful Cape Cod island home, which is actually filmed in Germany and Denmark because, as we know, Polanski can’t go stateside but it looks and feels right just the same and provides a chilly, mist shrouded coastal atmosphere that suits the mysterious nature of this story unfolding. The ending is a kick right in the balls in several different ways and each character reaches the end of their arc with a ruthless, grim yet very appropriate sense of dark, poetic and karmic justice. Excellent film.

-Nate Hill