Tag: cinema

B Movie Glory: Devil’s Pond

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Be careful who you marry because they could end up being like the dude in Devil’s Pond, a so-so two person horror flick that sees a newlywed couple (Tara Reid & Kip Pardue) embark on their honeymoon to a remote cabin on an island in the middle of a lake, only for her to discover that her charming new husband is in fact a possessive, volatile nut job who has no plans on letting her leave this island… ever. Now, you would think there’d be signs of this guy being a loonie early on or at least something to suggest to her that he might not be a trustworthy spouse, but experience, my own and that of others around me, has taught that you can think you know someone pretty damn well only to have them pull the rout out with no warning bells and turn out to be an absolute monster. It’s a tricky situation because the island is smack-dab in the kiddie of this giant Montana lake, it’s boat accessible only and hubbie keeps the keys to his truck, parked over on the lake’s edge, on his person at all times. This leaves her to play a dangerous, breathless, brutally violent game of survival and wage a battle of wills with him so she can escape, always trying to elude his psychological torment and scary outbursts, overcome her intimidating fear of water/swimming and get out of this nightmare. The performances are good, Pardue does a serviceable lunatic routine pretty well, but Reid surprised me with a disarmingly well calibrated turn. I’m used to her in disposable teen comedies and whatnot, where she’s usually the ditzy chick and the only thing I ever consistently rewatch with her is The Big Lebowski where she’s basically the original ditzy chick prototype. She actually comes across as likeable, desperate and earned my sympathy here with emotional beats that felt authentic and a well rounded character, so good on her. The film overall is nothing special, just your run of the mill psycho husband thriller with a nice spin provided by the uniquely situated location. Just good enough to be solidly entertaining, if not much more.

-Nate Hill

Castille Landon’s Fear Of Rain

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Schizophrenia is a delicate subject to tackle in cinema; if you get too sensationalistic and thriller oriented you lose the honesty of the affliction, but if you get too bleak and oppressive with realism you’ll chase your audience away. I’m pleased to report that Castile Landon’s Fear Of Rain is a beautiful, haunting, truthful and compassionate portrait of the illness that incorporates a fragile character study, emotionally affecting family dynamics and an almost unbearably suspenseful thriller narrative for not only one of the most powerful films this year, but one of the most intelligent and thoughtful depictions of this unfortunate condition in cinema thus far. Madison Iseman is Rain, a teenage girl who has been struggling with schizophrenia her entire life. It affects her high school life, day to day routine and relationship with her loving parents (Katherine Heigl & Harry Connick Jr) who do everything they can to help her. She wants to get better but feels frustrated by the fact that the meds she takes dull her creative edge, as she’s an enormously talented painter. Things get impossibly complicated when she meets and makes friends with a boy (Israel Broussard) from out of town who she isn’t even sure is real and starts to suspect her neighbour/high school teacher (Eugenie Bondurant) of kidnapping and holding a little girl captive in her house. Are all these things realities of her life or densely spun facets of her own delusional mind spilling out into her outward mental state? The film could have easily gone for cheap thrills, cloying teen romance and a sanitized, glossed over depiction of schizophrenia but there’s a brutal honesty and careful balancing act between all these elements that feels genuine. Iseman is raw and potent, finding the desperate notes, the inevitable clarity and the instances where Rain skirts the dangerous line of hopelessness and losing her mind forever. Heigl and Connick Jr are excellent as the parents, finding all the right beats individually and as a unit. Director Landon seamlessly weaves the thriller aspects into the psychological themes for a story that has twists that feel earned, performances that feel human, a third act that will toss your nerves into a bundle and some visually striking, almost fairytale-like cinematography that gets downright dreamy to illustrate Rain’s kaleidoscopic mental state and draw you into her journey. Great film, and important because it goes a long way in educating and erasing stigmas around schizophrenia.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Be Afraid

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Be Afraid is a big, bold title for a horror film and despite it being a relatively low budget effort that skirts the boundaries of outright B grade quality, there were a few moments that did come very close to being truly, impressively scary. The story sees the residents of a sleepy rural county in Pennsylvania preyed upon by some sort of either supernatural or extraterrestrial beings that dwell in a cave deep in the woods. The county doctor (Brian Krause, Charmed, Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers) does his best to uncover what’s going on while dealing with family issues, an uncooperative sheriff (Louis Herthum), ghosts from the past and the fact that both his young son and he himself are having terrifying nocturnal visions of these strange humanoid horrors walking right into their bedrooms and standing over them. Now, the film never outright tells you what these things are but the ringleader of them appears to wear a top hat which in my book rules out aliens and feels more akin to something earthly, elemental and folk-horror oriented but it’s really anyones guess. The film almost has a Signs vibe, what with all the rural farms and quaint, small town feel pervaded upon by threatening figures on the edge of the landscape. There are nice forest shots and they seem to have filmed this in Fall, so the seasonal vibes are there as well. I can’t quite call it a great film because it just feels like a DTV outing half the time, but on those terms it’s certainly not a bad one at all, one that genuinely tries to do something cool with capable actors, tangible atmosphere and discernible style to it. Originally titled “Within The Dark”, it can be found streaming on Prime at least here in Canada anyways, and is a nice lazy afternoon watch for spooky season.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Hallowed Ground

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

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

B Movie Glory: Zyzzyx Road

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

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

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

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

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