Category: Film Review

Adam Wingard’s The Guest

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The world is currently obsessed, it seems, with 80’s throwback media, and as a die hard fan of the style, I say bring on as much of the delirious synth music, lurid body horror and deep cut, bleeding neon as possible. From Stranger Things and It Follows to The Void it’s been a heyday renaissance, and Adam Wingard’s The Guest is a bit more obscure but no less of a celebration of the genre. Working from a vague Terminator/bone smashing action vibe, it’s a neat reworking of the ‘invincible antihero thrown into quiet suburbia’ vibe, but that’s so specific that maybe it just invented a new sub-sub genre. Dan Stevens is a a steely eyed new talent who has shed his Downton Abbey pretty boy image like a snakeskin and emerged as a serpent of solid tough guy portrayals (check out his awesome bad/good guy work in A Walk Among The Tombstones), and he carries the whole flick here as the mysterious David, a strange and scary dude who shows up on the doorstep of an all American family, claiming to be the army buddy of their deceased son. There’s clearly more to the story, as the familiar formula sinks in and unwinds, but it’s terrific fun watching it all play out time and time again. He’s got a particular set of skills reminiscent of the super-soldiers of that era, impresses the family patriarch (Leland Orser) who shows simultaneous fascination and suspicion with this new dark stranger in their household. He also gets close with their daughter (It Follow’s Maika Monroe), until he’s heavily invested in her’s and the family’s life, but it’s also the one thing that’s putting them, and the whole damn neighbourhood, on a course for trouble. Death and danger seem to follow David, like when a shadowy Army spook (Lance Reddick subtly channels 80’s Danny Glover) shows up looking for answers, and despite his emerging best intentions for the family, at the end of the day he’s a volatile black ops asset that can barely control his own trajectory. It’s a slight film that breezes by and never hits too hard, but sits in the genre groove wonderfully, with all cast members giving good shout outs. Wingard made his debut years ago with an impressive little Troma-eque bizarro slasher flick called Home Sick, went on to collaborate on the famed VHS anthology series and has wowed yet again here, I hope he continues to be a wicked voice for horror. Composer Steve Moore lets the synths rip, roar and rumble for a score that’s right up my 80’s fanatic alley, and gilds the film neatly. Cool stuff.

-Nate Hill

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson is based on the violent true life exploits of Britain’s famed criminal Charles Bronson, jailed for decades on purpose and loving it. These type of films usually have a dutiful, glossy biopic mechanism to them, but Refn is ever the extreme stylistic boundary pusher and the way he directs seems as if we’re actually in the hectic subconscious of the protagonist as opposed to looking in from the outside. It’s hazy, hallucinatory, weird, unpredictable and soaked in the feverish neon that has become the Danish maverick’s calling card. Then there’s the performance by Tom Hardy, which defies both description and classification. He doesn’t so much act as he does exist, like an element or a primal instinct, playing Bronson filled to the brim with cheeky aggression, animalistic behaviour, a galaxy of idiosyncratic mannerisms and the likability to keep us entranced through what, upon reflection, is actually a really fucked up and disturbing story. Bronson, born Michael Petersen, was busted barely out of his teens for terrifically botching an attempted post office robbery, chucked in the pen where he’d have been out in four years or so with ‘good behaviour.’ Well. Let’s just say that the good behaviour part isn’t in either his nature or his plan. He loves conflict, fights the guards any chance he gets, incites riots and makes life hell for the British correctional force. That’s basically the film, but the straightforward story only exists to serve a surreal tapestry of episodic, atmospheric interludes where the plot isn’t so much unfolding in a literate manner as it is taking a backseat to Bronson’s unconventional, self aware telling of his own story. There’s editing and colour timing that’s so saturated, so bizarre and out there you feel like the whole thing exists as a dream, resplendent with oddball character interactions, delirious, thumping soundtrack choices and the kind of mood-scape that sucks you right the fuck in. Refn doesn’t try and provide any answers to the psychological nature of a guy like Charles either, and that’s a wise move. It’s interesting to look at the third act in which his behaviour seems to take a turn for the better with the arrival of a helpful shrink/mentor only to have him gleefully fake everyone out and start causing shit again. It’s seemingly arbitrary and his antics don’t hand a purpose, frankly outlined by Refn as storyteller, and not historian. It’s about Charles, and this is *his* story, told by this whipped up, warped version of himself that’s personified by Hardy in what can arguably be called the performance that put him on the map, and whatever your gut reaction to a piece of cinema this provocative and strange, there’s no debate over what a galvanizing, brilliantly concocted sensory experience it is.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Hobo With A Shotgun

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

When they announced Hobo With A Shotgun, it was a given that it would be a pretty fucked up flick once it hit screens. It’s based on the old 70’s grindhouse vibe and… the thing is called fucking hobo with a shotgun, so it’s got to test some boundaries, right? Well. It sure does. This makes Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s sister efforts at this brand of homage look like Blues Clues in comparison, it’s so messed up. The sheer level of sustained cartoon brutality and cheerful, reckless abandon displayed in violence and mayhem is really something to behold, if it doesn’t induce seizures before you have time to process it. Casting the Hobo was always gonna be a fun boardroom session, and I’d love to see the names thrown around (my initial pick was Gary Busey) before they settled on genre five-star veteran Rutger Hauer, a brilliant actor and a fine pick by anyone’s watch, but also a bit more of a laconic, paced dude than some of the more manic character actors they could have gone with (imagine Robin Williams in Death To Smoochy mode). The Hobo arrives in a hellish nightmare city (actually Halifax) and finds it overrun with crime, depravity and corruption of the highest order, so he embarks on a feverish crusade of street justice with the help of a trusty pump action shotgun and joined by a hooker with a heart of gold (Molly Dunsworth). The film is like skid row had a bad dream, a technicolor galaxy of graphic, relentless violence and terror, as crime boss Drake (Brian Downey) and his two bratty, psychotic jock kids (Gregory Smith and Nick Bateman) rule over everyone with a spiked iron fist and dispense literal genocide on civilians at will, until the Hobo steps in to add to the commotion, one shell at a time. The acting (besides Hauer, who plays it dangerously calm for the most part) is so far over the top it would make David Lynch and John Waters nervous, the villain actors reaching heights of mania and having conniptions until we’re expecting them to seize up themselves. The violence ranges from hands in a lawnmower, maiming via ice skates, a gnarly razor blade covered baseball bat, decapitating trip wires and so much more. It gets so far over the top that the human villains feel they’re not enough to match the madness and they summon literal demon biker robots from hell to take the Hobo out, which are a neat effect. If you can stomach an hour and a half of this kind of carnage and chaos, you’ll be in low rent genre heaven, but it’s quite an eyeball melting spectacle to sit though. In any case it should be seen just to see how far some filmmakers are willing to go to shock, awe and gross out an audience, while still retaining an artful flourish, distinctive style and immersive atmosphere.

-Nate Hill

Joe Dante’s Matinee

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Joe Dante’s Matinee is a fantastic love letter to golden age schlock cinema, a nostalgic look back at Cuban missile fever, a multiple angle coming of age story all framed by a playful lens and given life from John Goodman’s boisterous, passionate performance as Lawrence Woolsey, the kind of loving, hands on filmmaker you don’t see a lot of these days. Woolsey blows into a small coastal California town with big dreams and aspirations to release his cheesy horror flick ‘Mant’ (about a killer Man/ant hybrid, naturally) for all to see, but faces some obstacles right off the bat. The 1950’s nuclear scare casts a long and chaotic shadow over both the town and his production, as well as local protesters who label his art as junk and just don’t understand the medium. There’s a gaggle of preteens too, in the throes of growing up and chucked in the deep end when I comes to understanding the world around them, as well as adults. Former child star Lisa Jakub (Robin William’s daughter in Mrs. Doubtfire) is a standout as a particularly sassy, wise beyond her years girl who causes a fuss with the bomb drills and is the soul of the youngster element in the film. Goodman is superb, he has an amped up monologue about what it means to visit the cinema and escape that kind of encapsulates the beloved intangibles of the medium and why it has endured for so long. The film has a meandering and unfocused feel at first glance, but it’s a deliberate fly-on-the-wall peek at a very specific time and place, how Film relates to that place and the individuals who lived through it, and it achieves that goal wonderfully. A literal slice of life on film.

-Nate Hill

Joel Schumacher’s Trespass

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Joel Schumacher used to be a household name amongst Hollywood directors, and then kind of sailed off the face of the map (Coppola seems to have done the same). He was one of the most prolific filmmakers of the 80’s and 90’s and then it cooled off in recent years, but he still churns out a flick or three now and again, one of which is the high gloss home invasion thriller Trespass. It’s in the vein of Cimino’s Desperate Hours, not just for having an almost identical premise but also for the fact that it’s not a great movie, but one that services the genre nicely, gives the crowd just what they’d expect from this fare and even throws in a few earned surprises. Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman play a wealthy couple who live in a fortress of a house that comes under siege from three rabid criminals who are after… something. Is it the alleged diamonds in Cage’s impenetrable safe? Is it the money he claims is all gone or stuck into his lavish home? Or is something darker at stake here? The guessing game that ensues is pretty well done, with perspective flashbacks and red herrings used nicely. The burglars are played by a quartet of the excellent Ben Mendelsohn who give yet another sketchy, terrifying villain portrait, fondly remembered TV actress Jordana Spiro, The always reliable Dash Mihok and Cam Gigandet, who sadly keeps getting casted in stuff way beyond his talent level. His psycho/pretty boy role here is one of the most demanding parts in the script and the guy just doesn’t have anything under the hood except for his looks (see Pandorum for another painful case of him ruining a well written role). Kidman is wistful and scared, doing the same thing she did in Dead Calm without the cold resilience, while Cage does crazy to a T, no surprise there. I heard that midway through filming he suddenly wanted to switch to one of the villain roles, and didn’t get his way. I laughed upon hearing him bellow out ‘shit-hole’ in that maniacally screechy, petulant way of his and I pictured him having a tantrum at the producers for not giving in. This is a humdrum flick that isn’t built to last or make huge impressions, but it serves as an energetic, well mounted domestic siege thriller with enough violence and commotion to keep eyelids from dropping.

-Nate Hill

Dirty Harry: The Dead Pool

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The Dead Pool is a a slick entry in the Dirty Harry franchise, also capping off the series as the fifth and last one. Clint Eastwood had come a long way since he first stepped into the shoes of no nonsense, persistently violent San Francisco super cop Harry Callahan to do battle with the Zodiac Killer, and in this one things get a little bit more meta and witty than they ever have in the canon, but none less violent or tough. After the murder of a junkie rockstar played by none other than a young Jim Carrey, San Francisco is on high alert after the discovery of an underground game called the dead pool, where people bet on celebrities to die (I myself have never engaged in such behaviour). The chief suspect is an asshole horror film director played by Liam Neeson, sporting a greasy ponytail to match his greasy attitude, but each clue seems to lead nowhere, and Harry keeps getting attacked by unseen assassins from both the mob and the killer’s arena. The fun in these flicks is observing his zero tolerance policy for bureaucracy, red tape or rules and the flagrant defiance in the face of any social niceties, not to mention his enthusiasm for cheerfully excessive force, behaviour that has made him such a beloved character. The 44. Magnum gets a ton of exercise here and before the opening credits are nearly up he’s already blasted holes in like six people. My favourite scene has to be the unique car chase action sequence in which the killer employs a tiny, bizarrely fast remote control car rigged with a bomb and chases Harry all up and down the famous hills of San Francisco, it’s absolutely hysterical and looks as if a family of Borrowers decided that they needed to wiped out Clint Eastwood and are hunting the poor guy down. Eastwood is a little older and a bit more grizzled here, and his hair has the refreshing metamorphosis aesthetic of the late 80’s emerging from the dust of 70’s poof/mullet nightmares (also observable with Nick Nolte between 48Hrs and Another 48Hrs), which adds to the character. Good stuff.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Hard Cash

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Hard Cash, aka Run For The Money in some regions, is a silly piece of junk, with its low budget passport grasped firmly in hand. Every actor doing the hammy shtick, every pulp B movie cliche present and accounted for. Christian Slater seems to have peppered his career with a bunch of such flicks, and he’s front and centre here as the Robin Hood-esque leader of a buncha’ thieves. He’s a bit of a legend, and goes for one job too many, a job that lands corrupt, scheming FBI Agent Val Kilmer straight in his lap when he lifts some marked bills. Kilmer wants it only to take them down, but a giant piece of the loot for himself and basically is just a greedy bastard, while Slater wants to break even and get away with his crew. It’s okay-ish stuff, decidedly low brow but that’s the arena. Kilmer is actually really fun in a candid, often improvised take, and his description of himself when he gets to little sleep is priceless. The cast is fairly strong, with work from Bokeem Woodbine, Sara Downing, Vincent Laresca, Balthazar Getty, Daryl Hannah, William Forsythe as a nastily racist fence and the late Verne ‘Mini Me’ Troyer as Slater’s most valuable lil’ asset as he can fit in tight spaces the rest of the crew can’t. It’s breezy trash, decent enough for what it is.

-Nate Hill

Con Air

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Con Air, man. Is there a better movie about inmates who take over an airplane and hold the guards hostage? It’s actually the only movie about that, but in all seriousness it’s one hell of a blast of summer action movie fireworks, and it holds up like a fucking diamond to this day. It’s ridiculous and it full well knows it, but producers Jerry Bruckheimer and notorious pyrotechnics enthusiast Don Simpson start at outlandish and only ascend from there, until there’s so many explosions, crashes, bangs, tough guy banter, graphic violence and commotion that it reaches a fever pitch and you kind of just surrender to the onslaught and get lost in hyperkinetic bliss for two glorious hours. One of the biggest assets the film has is the script by cunning linguist Scott Rosenberg (Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead), who gives every character at least a handful of one liners and keeps the dialogue fresh, cynical and never short on laughs. Nicolas Cage and his tangled, flowing mane of hair play Cameron Poe, a good ol’ Alabama boy just off of a jail stint for accidentally killing a redneck asshole (Kevin ‘Waingro’ Gage) who verbally assaulted his beautiful wife (Monica Potter). Here’s the setup: he’s paroled and stuck on a giant aircraft thats sole purpose is to transport convicts around the country. Now the department of corrections being the geniuses that they are (John Cusack is the head genius in this case), they decide to populate this particular flight with literally the worst group of psychotic, ill adjusted, murdering dissidents that ‘Murcia has to offer, because staggering them over a few flights or peppering just a few monsters in with the regular convicts every third or fourth flight just makes too much sense, or, as we the audience must remember and revere, there would be no bombastically entertaining hook for a story like this. Of course the plane gets taken over, the inmates run a very big flying asylum and many people die in many different ways, while Cage sticks around to play hero, protect his cell mate friend (Mykelti Williamson) and take out as many of these bastards as he can, often with his bare hands. Talk about eclectic, layered casts; everyone is in this flick, starting with scary John Malkovich as Cyrus ‘The Virus’ Grissom, a career criminal who claims he’s killed more people than cancer. Yeah. Ving Rhames is a hulking lunatic called Diamond Dog, vicious Nick Chinlund scores points as mass murderer Billy Bedlam, Danny Trejo is a heinous piece of work called Johnny 23 on account of his numerous rape charges, and there’s all manner of creeps, scoundrels and scumbags including Dave Chappelle, M.C. Gainey, Juan Fernandez, Emilio Riviera, Doug Hutchison and more. Colm Meaney, Don S. Davis, Rachel Ticotin and Powers Boothe make impressions as well, but it’s Steve Buscemi who takes the cake as a Hannibal Lecter-esque nutjob named Garland Greene, who’s so dangerous that corrections officers will literally only touch him with ten foot poles. It’s an action movie that dares to get really down n’ dirty, and probably wouldn’t get made today, or at least not without a few tweaks to its very profane, deliberately messed up script. I wouldn’t have the thing any other way though, not only is it mean and nasty, it’s got all the bells and whistles of a summer blockbuster, plus the Lerner Airfield sequence and the Vegas strip landing set piece are two of the most monumentally raucous action undertakings I’ve ever seen, not to mention the subsequent fire truck chase that destroys half the city and makes gruesome use of a pile driver. This film is as far over the top as the altitude that the plane flies at, and then some.

-Nate Hill

Clint Eastwood’s The Gauntlet

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I love scrappy little cop flicks like Clint Eastwood’s The Gauntlet, a short, trashy exercise in exploitation that’s not only a departure from the heady, cerebral detective flicks he does but also miles off of the focused, gritty machismo of the Dirty Harry films. This is a low rent B movie and is proud of it, which is a rare commodity in Eastwood land. Boasting a terminally silly plot, lovably incapable protagonist and more bullets fired than all three Matrix movies stacked together, it’s a great way to spend a Saturday night when you have a hankering for old school action. Eastwood is Ben Shockley here, a disheveled mess of a Phoenix cop, heavily on the sauce and in no mood for the mission his uptight commissioner (William Prince, needing a moustache to twirl in his portrait of unapologetic evil) dispatches him on. He’s to escort a troublesome hooker (Sondra Locke) from Vegas back to Arizona where she will testify at a high profile mob trial. Of course every bent cop and his mother is on their trail, they can’t trust anyone in law enforcement and they’re on their own, forced to run a gauntlet of gunfire and corruption to bring her in. There’s three very odd, very hilarious set pieces that involve gunmen just fucking unloading clip after clip after clip in a way that the you might see on the Looney Toons, until the house they’re firing at *literally* falls apart. That’s the sort of slapdash style the film has, but it works in its dense specificity. Eastwood and Locke have chemistry, and it’s always cool to see the chicks in his action films have their own personality and impact on plot, not just part of the scenery or eye candy. Prince is so nefarious as the Commissioner that one wonders how a man like that ascended the ranks to that position, but in a film where’s he’s allowed to shut down a city block and order the *entire* Phoenix police force to empty boxes of bullets into an oncoming bus that Eastwood rolls up in, it isn’t that much of a stretch to believe. It’s just that kind of film, and I dug it a lot. Oh and look at that epic one sheet of a poster, whoever designed that should get a few medals. Great flick.

-Nate Hill

Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve seen Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven so many times I couldn’t count on the hands I have, or all twenty two of those attached to the gaggle of slick, fast talking lounge rats who pull of the most laidback, easygoing casino heist in Vegas history. Most heist flicks have a breathless cadence and at least one high powered action sequence. Not this baby. It’s like the weekend R&R of robbery films, the classy brunch of crime stories. Hell, even Heat, as hypnotic and subdued as it was, had gunplay here and there. It’s in that refusal to get its hands dirty, the insistence on a relaxed, pleasant vibe that has made it the classic it is today. George Clooney and Brad Pitt are iconic now as ex jailbird Danny Ocean and fast food enthusiast Rusty, two seasoned pros who plan to take down tycoon Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia, looking and sounding more constipated than a police commissioner at a 420 rally) and his three giant casinos. To do this, they round up the most eclectic bunch of scoundrels this side of the wild bunch, including fussy, flamboyant businessmen Elliot Gould, slick card shark Bernie Mac (“might as well call it white jack!”), twitchy techie Eddie Jamison, dysfunctional petty thief Matt Damon, eternally squabbling wheelmen brothers Casey Affleck and Scott Caan, acrobatic guru Shaobo Qin, rowdy safecracker Don Cheadle (with a piss poor attempt at a cockney accent, I might add) and grizzled grifter Carl Reiner. Oh, and a sultry Julia Roberts as Danny’s ex wife, because no caper flick would be complete without the high stakes and charm of a woman involved. What a pack. The logistics and steps of their plan have a labyrinthine feel to them, especially the sheepish twist that seems just easy enough to work and just far-fetched enough to earn friendly chuckles. Soderbergh did his own cinematography for this, which explains why the vision here is so singular and unforgettable; he shoots Vegas like a subdued nocturnal dreamscape full of fountain soaked vistas, dazzling light displays and ornate casino floors, and directs his actors with all the lithe, cordial and cucumber cool personas of the born n’ bred Vegas characters you can spot whilst on vacation there. Ebert wrote of this, “Serious pianists sometimes pound out a little honky-tonk, just for fun.. this is a standard genre picture, and Soderbergh, who usually aims higher, does it as sort of a lark.” Oh, Roger. This is my main pet peeve with film criticism and analysis: the distinct differentiation between ‘genre fare’ and ‘high art’, a snooty attitude that devalues both forms and axes a rift into a medium that at the end of the day, is all storytelling. Some of Soderbergh’s best films (this, Out Of Sight and last year’s Logan Lucky) are exercises in storytelling without the burden of subtext or lofty behind the scenes ambition, and are somewhat the better for it. Rant over. In any case, this is style, charm, wit and lovable caper shenanigans done just about as best as they could, and remains one of my favourite films of this century so far.

-Nate Hill