natewatchescoolmovies

B Movie Glory: Hallowed Ground

October 16, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The killer scarecrow sub-genre of horror is always fun, it allows for creative costumes/makeup, thrilling suspense utilizing cornfields and nice folky Fall vibes, but unfortunately Hallowed Ground conjures up little in the way of any of that, at least anything effective anyways. It’s the sort of low budget background noise that plays on SyFy at 2am in the early 2000’s, which is neat nostalgia but the film itself just can’t really raise a pulse. Long ago pilgrim farmer Jonas (always nice to see Nick Chinlund) uses ties to the occult to make a deal with some kind of supernatural entity that involves human sacrifice in exchange for bountiful harvests each year. Hundreds of years later the descendants of Jonas and his kin still practice this gruesome ritual which now involves monstrous living scarecrows that hunt and kill people, and one out of towner (Jaimie Alexander) whose car has broken down finds herself right in the middle of this horrific situation. The chases, kills and suspense are murky, haphazard and drearily staged, the scarecrows look pretty decent in terms of special effects but we just don’t see enough of them. The cast is alright and we get to see a very young Chloe Moretz as one of the townsfolk, but nothing here really strikes a memorable chord, and it all feels like disposable B Grade cannon fodder for late night cable or obscure streaming queues that few venture into.

-Nate Hill

House II: The Second Story

October 15, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Before Indiana Jones ever messed around with a crystal skull, two hapless buddies did in House 2: The Second Story, an absolutely bizarre and totally awesome sequel that at times is so off the wall and strange I thought I had fallen asleep on the couch and drifted off into a particularly vivid R.E.M. sleep cycle. It’s funny they call these films “House”, because it is as baseline and normal a name for any horror film as you could get, a name that doesn’t barely suggest the kind of surreal, oddball, dreamy shenanigans that await in each entry in the trilogy, this one especially. It’s the best, and weirdest, of the three films and the story exists only loosely for a bunch of super random characters, special effects and cryptozoological beings to run around and have fun in. Best I could surmise it is two friends (Arye Gross & Jonathan Stark) are fixing up a creepy old house one of them has bough when a shiny, cursed Aztec skull they find tucked away unleashes all kinds of creatures and ghosts, starting with the resurrected spirit of one of their great grandpas, who just happens to be a crusty Old West gunslinger. He’s played by Royal Dano, an actor most probably couldn’t picture but he was an eccentric travelling judge in Twin Peaks so I immediately recognized his voice under all the decrepit makeup. His arrival is just the start of the party though, they spend some time chilling with him and soon they are battling pterodactyls, fighting tribal warriors who want their Crystal skull back I guess and running all about the house. The best, and strangest thing about the film is a small, lovable creature that shows up and can only be described as a dog crossed with a caterpillar, a practical effects creation whose friendly disposition and striking appearance I immediately fell in love with. He’s one of the coolest, most memorable FX creations I’ve seen in 80’s horror and really makes the story something special. The film really exists as playtime rather than a coherent story, and when you have production values, creativity and imagination that is this inspired, I have no problem with that. Wonderful stuff.

-Nate Hill

Where Eagles Dare

October 14, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Where Eagles Dare is an impressively mounted hybrid of war and spy thrillers with two rock solid tough guy turns from Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood as undercover operatives sent into enemy territory to infiltrate a castle home to German high command way up in the mountains. It’s a good time but I can’t help feeling like it was overlong, there are passages that feel stretched out, like an extended sequence in a village tavern where not much of anything goes on, and an Agatha Christie type “who’s who” paranoia routine where Burton double dupes the bad guys council multiple times, but it’s a talky, muddled up roundtable discussion that feels like it goes on forever. Where the film does excel is in its locations, action sequences and stunt work that are truly breathtaking. The opening credits follow a lone plane as it hovers high above snowy peaks, a beautiful red font announcing the cast and crew in ornate letters as Ron Goodwin’s catchy score fires up. In the third act there are hair raising fight scenes aboard a tiny, almost one person gondola as Eastwood desperately fights off enemy soldiers and throws them thousands of feet below to their deaths, which will terrify any viewers severely afraid of heights. It works well when it works, but I found my attention diverted in many instances and I feel like they could have cut at least forty minutes or so of pointless jargon and expository downtime to streamline this thing a little better. Still fun, though.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Zyzzyx Road

October 14, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but occasionally it spills violently out onto the surrounding interstates, in this case obscure dust-bowl backroad Zyzzyx Road in this patchy, bizarre, uneven yet mildly entertaining low budget chiller that has nothing to boast except stars Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore and a tad of notoriety in being the only theatrically released film on record to land a staggering 30$ at the box office. It stars a dude called Leo Grillo as a philandering accountant who romances a young stripper (Heigl) and heads out into the desert to dump the body of her volatile boyfriend (Sizemore), who is in the trunk and they are both assuming is dead. Cue a bunch of stumbling around in terribly lit Mojave locales, messy, jittery editing and storytelling that almost, *almost* comes close to something of note but is just too cheap and shabby to hold interest. Heigl has quite a few buried curios in her early career before she sunk into the glossy, sanitized romcom groove and she does okay here. Grillo I’ve never heard of and isn’t much of an actor but a bit of light research tells me he’s an advocate for animal rights and has founded the largest rescue centre for stray dogs in North America so he gets a free pass in my book, keep up the good work sir. Sizemore is unusually calm and serene here in a role that could have easily allowed him to deliver one of his patented bananas, super wild takes. He’s good in anything no matter how lowbrow the material is, and as far as this one is concerned, well.. I’ve certainly seen him in many better films, but I’ve also seen him in some worse ones too. The film would have been better with more money because there is something to this script, a twisty psychological shocker with demon elements, mind bending qualities and some nice dark turns but they just didn’t have the budget or focus to make this thing feel like anything other than a dreary, dusty B flick, which it is to its bones.

-Nate Hill

Stephen Merchant’s Fighting With My Family

October 12, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve never been super into WWE wrestling, even as a kid the campy artifice didn’t fool me and I always found it silly, but trust a film like Stephen Merchent’s Fighting With My Family to illuminate warmly not only just how much the sport means to millions all over the world, but the level of commitment, athleticism and theatrical charisma is needed to be successful at it that I just never gave much thought to. It’s basically the story of real life underdog Saraya ‘Paige’ Knight, a girl from Norfolk, England, who got shot to stardom after a WWE talent scout came to her town and selected her for the big leagues. Here played by Florence Pugh, she comes from a family that lives, breathes and worships WWE like a religion, her parents (Nick Frost & Lena Headey, wonderful) raising her and her brother (Jack Lowden) with wrestling culture running through their veins. Her journey from small town England to snazzy training facilities stateside is one fraught with physical, personal and familial challenges as she struggles to forge her own identity under the ruthless tutelage of recruiter and trainer Vince Vaughn, who deals in tough love and tougher discipline principles. The film is fierce, funny and disarmingly emotionally mature, letting Pugh and all her cast mates find the riotous dark humour, cathartic interpersonal beats and genuine love for wrestling emanate from all angles. There is a cameo from Dwayne Johnson, naturally playing himself and getting to be as funny and as down to earth as he’s ever been in any film. Vaughn is next level good here, finding the tragic notes in his character, the mentorship and paternal caring for Saraya and absolutely nailing a monologue that gives us insight into his arc and the world they live in overall. This isn’t just a wrestling picture, it’s a careful and loving dissection of shifting family dynamics, a flat out hysterical comedy and a powerful story of one girl finding her voice and her path a thousand miles away from her home. Excellent film.

-Nate Hill

David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ

October 12, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (such beautifully deliberate typos) blends the director’s trademark kinky, drippy body horror with a tactile, analog virtual reality aesthetic that is one of his most fun, freaky and mind warping SciFi horror outings I’ve seen. Jennifer Jason Leigh is an edgy, uncompromising, fearless actress who has made it her personal mission to work with some of the wildest, weirdest filmmakers out there including Tarantino, Paul Verhoeven, The Coens, The Safdies, Charlie Kaufman, Brad Anderson and of course David Lynch. Her collaboration with Cronenberg provides us with fascinating protagonist Allegra Keller, a futuristic video game designer who Leigh imbues with a wistful, detached-from-reality aura, a girl who got lost in the virtual world and is only half present in any given scene. Allegra is the target of corporate assassins out to plunder her tech, so she’s on the run with a low level marketing schmuck (Jude Law) from her firm, hiding out in a backwoods motel. Her only choice is to play her own game with this underling in order to find out if it’s damaged or not, and here the film veers into unsteady narrative territory as reality bends and all sense of linear cohesion is thrown to the wind for some truly trippy mind-games. They encounter other players personified by a rogues gallery of Cronenberg regulars like Sarah Polley, Ian Holm, Callum Keith Rennie, Don Mckellar, Christopher Eccleston and Willem Dafoe as a nasty, treacherous gas station attendant whose name is literally… Gas. The film is a sort of paranoid, uneasy game of virtual Russian roulette to see who’s who, who’s not who they say they are, what’s real, what’s not and who is going to end up dead or insane from playing this very dangerous game for too long, and goddamn is it ever fun until it’s last, ruthless, kick in the nuts final beat before the credits. Leigh is wonderful and adds a deliriously sexual connotation to the already very sexual, body penetrating nature of the tech used for gameplay, she puts her sly, playful yet shady smile to great effect and it’s one of the best actor/director collabs with Conenberg I’ve seen since Jeff Goldblum for The Fly. The special effects are excellent too, all kinds of gorgeously grotesque organ mimicking tubes, fleshy portals and genitalia reminiscent weaponry that will have all the parents in the audience getting uncomfortable. It’s a great picture, the mix of virtual paranoia, worlds within games within worlds and freaky, glistening practical viscera is a delicious flavour and one of my favourite cinematic recipes yet from our Canadian master of the macabre. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Night Of The Demons

October 11, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Night Of The Demons is a ton of cheesy 80’s fun, maybe a bit more loopy and silly than I was expecting it to be at times but still a blast of hectic screeching monsters and gooey practical effects. It’s story is so simplistic and it’s characters such overblown archetypes of their time it almost feels like the “movie within a movie” that characters in an 80’s horror that took themselves a bit more seriously would be watching at some point, for meta flair. Various dudes, chicks, jocks, nerds and one jersey boy sounding guy all head to a spooky abandoned house to party for the night where, naturally, they fall prey to unseen spirits that possess their bodies (mainly the girls) and stir up one noisy, gory night from hell. The special effects, demon transformations and evil performances from possessed cast members are all dialed up, theatrical and super super hyperactive, which at worst can be aggravating and at best makes for a pleasantly shrill Evil Dead vibe. There’s one sequence that’s a real charmer where two girls rob a convenience store blind, one of them hiking up her dress to nonchalantly flash the clerks some panty, the other sneakily loading up a bag with their booze, snacks and smokes for the night. Now *thats* how you party prep, folks. It’s a good time, and like I said it got a bit mindless in the noise and characterization department, but it’s still a solidly bonkers 80’s horror effort.

-Nate Hill

Lauren Fash’s Through The Glass Darkly

October 10, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

A mother’s search for her missing daughter takes a turn for the surreal in Lauren Fash’s Through The Glass Darkly, a thriller that I really admired for its willingness to be different and get downright strange in tone, style and narrative twists. It stars Robyn Lively, an actress I only know as the hilariously sultry mayor’s gold digging wife on Twin Peaks and at this point I didn’t think I’d ever seen her surface in anything again, but she has and is seriously excellent here in a role that demands heavy dramatic skill and some trickier aspects that I won’t spoil but she handles wonderfully. She plays a mother whose daughter vanished some years before and spends her days wandering a rundown Georgia county looking for her. The disappearance haunts both her and her now ex girlfriend (Bethany Ann Lind) and no one, from law enforcement to locals, seems to want to help her or even hear about the incident, in fact many apparently blame her for it. Only one reporter (Shanola Hampton, Shameless) who is compassionate enough and cares about the truth helps her in an investigation that covers everything from the hazy memories of the past to a corrupt conspiracy involving the county’s richest and most rotten family. I don’t want to say much because there is one mid film twist I promise you won’t see coming, and adds a fascinating layer of psychological depth to the story. This isn’t exactly a horror film although there are some quite dark elements, it’s more along the lines of True Detective with a splash of Winter’s Bone. There’s a deep sadness to it as well that got to me, and any film that uses the song On The Nature Of Daylight by Max Richter to accent a particularly emotional passage of story should come with an automatic disclaimer to “bring a box of Kleenex.” Spooky atmosphere also plays a part and there are some beautifully lit nighttime shots of rivers, eerie empty streets and the memory flashbacks have a genuinely worn, moth-winged burnish to them. It’s a nice, melancholic, terrifically directed and acted thriller with a truly unconventional feel to it and a very strong performance from the lovely Lively, who is a world away from her bubbly, flirtatious Twin Peaks nymphet. Good stuff.

-Nate Hill

Jim Cummings’s The Wolf Of Snow Hollow

October 9, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s one moment in The Wolf Of Snow Hollow where a character suggests that everyone in the room pause for a moment of silence and it made me chuckle because I didn’t believe anyone in that room, let alone any character in this film, to be capable of a moment of silence, since most of them spend their scenes yelling, shouting, arguing and making noise at a thoroughly exhausting, mile-a-minute pace. Writer director star Jim Cummings has attempted to make an oblong Christmas themed werewolf comedy fused together with a hectic, dysfunctional family drama and the result, although competently made, is a bit unwieldy and all over the place for me. In a snowy Utah mountain town that could almost be called sleepy if everyone weren’t so over caffeinated, some sort of huge wolf like beast has been attacking people and leaving a trail of corpses. It falls on the impossibly stressed out county sheriff (Cummings) who has large boots to fill as he prepares to take over the job permanently from his semi-retired father (the late great Robert Forster in his final film appearance). He’s also navigating a shaky relationship with his ex wife and daughter, plus regular AA meetings, some truly incompetent deputies and a coroner who is borderline insubordinate in the investigation. There’s just too much going on and it started to give my brain the zoomies to be honest. The werewolf is cool enough, it’s attacks vicious and well staged but the final resolution and explanation for the creature felt a tad… underwhelming. It’s definitely worth a look to see Forster on his game one last time, and there are some genuinely hilarious moments written, acted and directed by triple threat Cummings, who no doubt has talent. I just feel like a snowy werewolf family comedy set around Christmas is such a goldmine of a genre concept, this should have been an instant classic and for me, felt only alright.

-Nate Hill

Santiago Menghini’s No One Gets Out Alive

October 8, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

No One Gets Out Alive is a hell of a title for a horror movie and the movie therein better live up to it, which in this case it sure damn does. This is a sensational film, one that has ghosts, body horror, Aztec lore, demonology, leering psychopaths, social commentary and some of the most chilling, effective scares I’ve seen of late. The story tells of young Mexican girl Ambar (Christina Rodlo) living illegally in the US and working for cash at a depressing sweatshop, trying to save up for a forged American visa. She rents a room in a spooky old converted mansion ran by weary, creepy Red, played by Mark Menchaca who seems to be carving out a nice little niche for himself these days in playing memorable horror antagonists. Something is very, very wrong in this house and no sooner has she unpacked her bags she’s seeing phantasms behind every corner, hearing weird noises all over the place and having terrifying waking nightmares. Is it haunted? Or something far worse? The film takes the already unfortunate and desperate situation of a woman of colour living alone and off the record in the USA, the danger of deportation always an element, and then whisks her right out of the frying pan into the fires of a dangerous supernatural predicament and the result is, intense to say the least. I won’t spoil what’s really going on in the house but I will say that the film offers up one of the most visually staggering, indescribably bizarre, nightmarishly breathtaking movie monsters I’ve ever seen in horror. Seriously, if you think that weird deer demigod thing in The Ritual was odd, just wait til you see this one, it’s truly imaginative nightmare fuel and took me right off guard. Director Santiago Menghini has his feature debut here and it’s one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. Spatially aware camera movements, optical tricks and careful layers of light, darkness and colour make this an unnerving haunted house to get lost in. The gore is truly shocking, the characters are well drawn and realistic and like I said, that monster is simply one for the books, in this case the Guinness Book of Coolest Horror Movie Monsters Ever. Great film.

-Nate Hill