Tag: Eric Roberts

B Movie Glory: Christmas Rush

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I love a good low budget Die Hard clone, especially when it stars Eric Roberts and Dean Cain, B Grade poster kids for decades and lovin’ it. Christmas Rush is as scrappy as they come, a cop flick with Cain as the disgraced detective stripped of his badge on Christmas Eve. Roberts is Jimmy Scalzetti, reformed jewel thief who has come out of hiding for one last mall heist to pay for his dying kid’s operation. Cain happens to be be picking up his wife (Erika Eleniak) at the very same mall and… you can guess where it goes. The pair of them actually have decent hero/villain chemistry and charisma, Roberts makes for an engaging antagonist and always has fun, too. It’s a lazy throwaway piece at heart though, an exercise in background noise on 2am cable. There’s something fairly festive about seeing Dean and Eric chase each other around the mall in little go karts though, and almost serves as a silly deconstruction of the action/hostage shtick if it weren’t so brainless. Also titled blandly as ‘Breakaway’ on North American DVD, it’s much better with its original festive title. Christmas Rush indeed.

-Nate Hill

BRACE FOR IMPACT!: An Interview with Alexander Nevsky by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

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Moy Priyatel’ Superzvezdy (My Superstar Buddy) Alex Nevsky is back. Fresh off his Showdown in Manila, and now with his biggest production to date – MAXIMUM IMPACT.

Andrzej Bartkowiak (DOOM, EXIT WOUNDS) directs a Ross LaManna (the RUSH HOUR movies) script that is fast, fun, furious and keeps delivering all the way to the closing credits. It’s the story of the battle against terrorism being fought on all fronts. Alex and his Russian security team join forces with Kelly Hu, Tom Arnold and the US company men to track down and stop a major international incident from exploding. When Eric Roberts’ US Secretary of State’s rebellious daughter goes rogue to be with her Russian boyfriend, she is at first feared kidnapped by the surprisingly comedic duo of Matthias Hues and Mark Dacascos, a failed television who has become the bag man for William Baldwin’s Man in the Shadows (as he is credited). What ensues is a race, not only to save the girl, but to stop all hell from breaking loose.

The action is top shelf, which is to be expected from a seasoned pro like Bartkowiak – this blends in well with the pen of LaManna who brings his Tucker/Chan chops to the forefront and lets the laughs ring out with grand timing. The big surprise other than the funny frolicking shared by Hues and Dacascos, is Nevsky. Alex does hard-hitting, action hero stuff in his sleep – but as he exhibited in Showdown (teaming with Casper Van Dien) – he is developing all the time as a versatile performer, and now displaying comedic freedom which this writer can see him parading in the future with roles, not unlike his idol Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Kindergarten Cop/Twins type territory.

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This is a major step up for Nevsky and, although this is the kind of film Hollywood doesn’t make any more (that medium-range budget action movie),  it great to see that it can still be put together independently with top-of-the-line talent in a beautifully slick and professional package that – just as Showdown was a kind of 80’s action movie homage – so now Impact is a look back to the 90’s style action/comedy.

Aside from all that chatter, it is simply a fun movie which I was anticipating and was not at all disappointed with. Alex is a top bloke and I hope you’ll have a listen to our chat and check out MAXIMUM IMPACT when it hits Blu-ray soon…

 

B Movie Glory: Slow Burn

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Slow Burn is just that, one of those dreary, stylized neo noirs about a low rent private investigator (Eric Roberts) who is on a case but seems only half interested, probably because the plot meanders around making little sense or holding less interest than a ruptured hull does water. Roberts is always engaging so it’s not all bad, plus there’s some eclectic cast members supporting him and an appearance from young Johnny Depp in what was one of his first roles, probably filmed in between takes of A Nightmare On Elm Street. Roberts is hired by a kooky New York artist (the great Raymond J. Barry) to investigate Depp’s stern rich parents (Beverly D’Angelo and Dan Hedaya), who may have some vague familial ties or be involved in a decades old scandal. Or are they? Do we care? Does it matter? It certainly didn’t matter to any potential distributors, as there seems to be literally no North American DVD release, I had to watch one of those choppy ten part YouTube versions. It’s interesting to see Depp and Roberts together in a few quick scenes, they are two legends of cool and it’d be nice to see them in something else together again. Overall though this is a particularly slow burn, and not a very enthralling one at that.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: American Strays

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s a turn of phrase that I like to avoid in where a writer compares any eclectic crime film they can find to the work of Quentin Tarantino by labelling it a ‘Tarantino knockoff’, or any variation in vocabulary. I renounce this lazy, unimaginative jab as it’s based in the worst form of criticism, that of negative comparison and ignorance of a film’s original qualities. However, in the case of American Strays, even I have to concede that it’s a blatant, unapologetic ripoff of QT’s style that makes no efforts to mask the plagiarism or do it’s own thing. He should sue. Not to mention the fact that on it’s own terms it’s just a horrible, boring, awkward fuckin piece of shit movie. It’s set up in the same anthology sequence except none of them are even connected, let alone make sense. Two nimrod hit men (James Russo and Joe Viterelli) drive through the desert engaging in strained extended dialogue that’s neither funny nor stimulating. A psychotic vacuum salesman (the great John Savage) goes door to door harassing people until he meets his match in a femme fatale housewife (Jennifer Tilly). A stressed out family man (Eric Roberts, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else) drives his dysfunctional brood through the desert. Elsewhere, Luke Perry plays a depressed, suicidal weirdo who sits around in a shack with a guy he’s paid to literally beat the shit out of him. The worst is a cutesy pie, insufferable Bonnie and Clyde style couple that are so obviously emulating Clarence and Alabama from Tarantino’s True Romance that you begin to wonder if they gave up and just set the script on autopilot like one of those knowingly ridiculous knockoffs you see on Netflix that are simply there to decoy you out into clicking a title that looks *almost* like what you want to watch (TransMorphers, anyone?). None of these vignettes are remotely engaging, it’s like a parade of shitty, awkward, misguided SNL skits from a dimension where humour and wit don’t exist. Every actor just looks tired, every line lands with a hollow thud. Just. Don’t. Bother.

B Movie Glory: Heaven’s Fire

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s an expression around the campfire of film criticism called ‘Die Hard clone’, a residual effect of how influential that movie was on the action genre. Although that term certainly applies to the terminally goofy Heaven’s Fire (that title tho), I resist the impulse to always trace films back to their inspiration as a negative connotation, and view every story as it’s own encapsulated adventure. Now that aside, this one is pretty shitty on it’s own terms, as you can probably tell by the almost deliberately shabby DVD art. It’s worth it for two reasons only, if you’re a fan of either: Eric Roberts and Jurgen Prochnow, two charismatic genre players who are always so much fun to see, even in Fisher Price knockoff crap like this. Prochnow, for like the tenth time in his career so far, plays a terrorist who seizes a high rise building, planning to hold the city ransom or blow it up. Roberts, that charming bastard, plays an off duty treasury agent who happens to be on a tour through the facility with his family and gets caught in the middle. You can guess where it goes. Gunfire, cringy one liners, standoff’s, inept hostage negotiations, all the tropes are present and accounted for. The script is so bad it almost seems like an SNL parody concocted by fifth grade guest writers, you almost can’t even hate the film because it reaches levels of absurdity that are, dare I say, *adorably* terrible. Eric and Jurgen ham it up in their own special way and if you enjoy their work (I’m something of a fanatic) it’s worth tracking down just to see the two legends side by side. Oh and like so many two bit flicks of this nature, Vancouver is the home-base for filming, which is always a plus no matter how shitty your movie is, because I get to take in the scenery and spot landmarks I pass by every day. Silly, silly stuff, and I’m pretty sure it’s rated PG13 too as there’s no swearing and all the violence is Grade school play level.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: The Grave

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Dust off the cobwebs in a corner the forgotten ruins of VHS land and you’ll find charmers like The Grave, a enjoyable, forgettable little haunt that stars 90’s indie beauty queen Gabrielle Anwar, her kooky real life husband Craig Sheffer, Breakfast Club alumni Anthony Michael Hall and B movie sultan Eric Roberts, if you’re quick enough to spot his cameo. It’s one among an infinity of B movies from back in the day that starred earnest character actors involved in lurid criminal escapades and sensual deception, each plot only slightly altered from the last. This one see a troupe of escaped convicts (Sheffer, Hall, Donal Logue and others) running around out west in search of a treasure chest full of loot that’s supposedly buried next to it’s millionaire owner. This setup leads way to betrayals, double crosses, Coen-esque hayseed black comedy and all sorts of shenanigans. Anwar plays the scheming ex girlfriend of one of them who gets in the way of all involved like any self respecting femme fatale should. Curiously, Eric Roberts has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and only shows up for like a minute long cameo as a country bumpkin who gives hitchhiking Anwar a ride when her rig breaks down, talks her ear off for a spill and then heads off never to be seen again. Huh. Must have owed the director a favour from the last B flick he headlined. Anyways it’s a fun one on low key, inconsequential terms.

-Nate Hill

Jonas Ackerlund’s Spun

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Jonas Ackerland’s Spun is a film you’ll be onboard with in seconds, or jumping ship before the credits even start. It’s unpleasant, epileptic, downbeat, hyperactive, fucked up, strung out, cartoonish, nonsensical, unstructured, and is a complete masterpiece for those willing to lend an empathetic ear towards lost souls mired in the doldrums we call drug addiction. Set on a particularly sweaty day in the suburbs of L.A., all the film really does is try to keep up with a sorry bunch of meth-heads as they meander through a hazy existence filled with confusion, mania and that ever present need to score. Jason Schwartzman’s Ross is the default protagonist, and he moves from locale to locale, encountering the denizens of each dwelling in all their warped glory. John Leguizamo’s trademark brand of crazy is right at home as Spider, a maniacal dealer who can’t sit still for a nanosecond, along with his haggard looking girlfriend Cookie (Mena Suvari). Brittany Murphy is excellent as wayward Nikki, who leads Ross to her cook boyfriend, a strange fellow credited as literally The Cook, played in a brilliantly dark pitched, sad turn by Mickey Rourke. There’s others flitting about as well, including Patrick Fugit’s nutball Frisbee, a couple of frenzied narcs played by Alexis Arquette and Peter Stormare, plus cameos from a grab bag of figures like Debbie ‘Blondie’ Harry as a fearsome diesel dyke, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford as a porn shop clerk, Ron Jeremy, Larry Drake, Josh Peck and a surprise Eric Roberts who gets a reunion of sorts with former costar Rourke. Director Ackerland, also a music video whiz, employs every stylistic trick and balls out editing fuckery to his film, until we have some wild inkling of what it must be like for these deranged urban pixies and their ADHD addled misadventures. It isn’t all comedic though; Once in a while the crazy curtain lifts and we see the deep set sadness that lives in these characters, a melancholy self loathing in which the actors find truth amongst the raging din, especially Murphy and Rourke, who provide the best work of the film. Mickey has a final act monologue that encapsulates the weary trajectories inhabited by these folks. Much of the film is stylized sound and fury though, a cavalcade of noise, vulgarity, offbeat altercations and loosely strung together events that have no meaning to anyone outside this asylum’s inner circle of addicts. One of a kind experience, and the most blatantly honest film I’ve seen on the subject of drugs.

-Nate Hill

Just wild about Larry: An Interview with Steve Mitchell by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews
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Steve Mitchell has been on quite a ride. Having begun in the world of comics, he has the distinction of inking the very first book by a guy you might have heard of . . . Frank Miller. But being in New York with all his friends heading west, Steve, after forging an impressive beginning to his career, took a phone call one night from his another friend and filmmaker Jim Wynorski. Jim wanted an opinion on an idea that, if he could make it work, they might be able to get the picture made. From that conversation a film would be born. It was the cult classic Chopping Mall.

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So like Horatio Alger before him, he went west and continued writing for both the worlds of film and television. The fateful moment would come one day while looking over the credits of the legendary maverick auteur, Larry Cohen, on IMDB.  Astounded by the length and breadth of Cohen’s career, Steve saw an opportunity to possibly make a documentary that would chronicle the life and exploits of the successful filmmaker.

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After receiving a blessing from the man (Larry) himself, Steve set about the mammoth undertaking of  not only pulling together the interviews with Cohen’s many collaborators, all of the footage of his many works , but also the financing to bring these and the countless other elements together to form KING COHEN: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen.

This truly insightful and utterly entertaining look at the, thus far continuing, career of Cohen is the passion project of a man with whom I share a kinship. Not only for the stories behind the men who make the movies, but also how the films we know and love were pieced together with money, dreams, light, shadow and the technical tools which help capture and refine the many wondrous adventures we as cinema goers have been relishing since our very first experiences.

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KING COHEN is a great film made by a really great guy, and it is my hope, as it is Steve’s hope, that you enjoy the story of Larry Cohen, but also come away from watching the film wishing to then seek out and discover the movies contained within that you may have only experienced for the first time as part of the documentary. The films of the filmmaker that inspired Steve’s film in the first place. (that’s a lot films)

Enjoy…

It’s good to be the King: An interview with Larry Cohen by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

There is a quote attributed to Robert Rodriguez (another independent maverick filmmaker) that states:

“If you are doing it because you love it you can succeed because you will work harder than anyone else around you, take on challenges no one else would dare take, and come up with methods no one else would discover, especially when their prime drive is fame and fortune. All that will follow later if you really love what you do. Because the work will speak for itself.”

It is the always interesting, ever-changing, always inventive, ever professional life and work of Larry Cohen that really personifies the above quotation. King Cohen has been out there in one form or another in an impressive career spanning multiple decades. He has been the director of cult classics; he has been the writer of hot scripts that have incited Hollywood bidding wars. His work has been remade, imitated, venerated.

These are the hallmarks of a man and his movies whose personal voice rings out loud and clear, high above the commercial ocean of mainstream cinema that carries, beneath its shiny surface, schools of biodegradable blockbusters that are usually forgotten about only moments after having left the cinema.

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This is not true of the films of Larry Cohen. For his work is the stuff (pardon the pun) that came before, the stuff the imitators latch on to, the stuff from which remakes and re-imaginations are conceived. This is the fate of the masters. The innovators come and bring forth art through trial and error. They are followed by the masters who take the lessons learned from the innovators and make them, shape them by sheer force of will. But, then there comes the imitators who stand on the shoulders of these giants and take home the glory.

Still, when there is an artist that is in equal parts innovator and master; this causes the imitators to stand baffled.

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Rather than accepting my humble oration, I urge you to seek out Steve Mitchell’s most excellent documentary KING COHEN. Watch it, marvel, rejoice, and remember that there are great filmmakers out there. They may not be coming soon to a theatre near you, but they did once, and their work still stands, silently, waiting to be discovered.

Until you get to see KING COHEN please, feel free to bask in my little chat with the king himself, Larry Cohen, a gentleman of many parts, many stories and of course . . . many movies.

Ladies and Gentlemen . . . Larry Cohen.

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A chat with filmmaker Jack Perez: An interview by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

 

Excited to bring you my latest interview, with filmmaker Jack Perez. Jack is responsible for one of the coolest, most unique indie films of the 1990’s, La Cucaracha. Starring genre icons Eric Roberts and Joaquim De Almeida and featuring an early career turn from Michael Pena, it’s a film like no other, a severely underrated south of the border morality play with shades of everything from Peckinpah to Walter Hill, a style all its own and a script that is genuinely one of a kind. The film has just been remastered for streaming release on Amazon prime, and I have included a link to the new trailer here, it’s  not a film to be missed. Enjoy! 

Nate: What led you to filmmaking? Was it something you always knew you wanted to do, or did you fall into it?
Jack: I got into it very young, one of those Super 8 kids who borrowed the family camera and drafted my sister into doing homemade monster movies. My father was a movie nut, and our primary mode of communication was watching old films together, so that’s what started it.  
Nate: Who are some filmmakers that you would say influenced your work, or you are a huge fan of and have looked up to?
Jack: Peckinpah definitely, probably above all others. His work was personal and mythical and expressionistic and truthful. And totally alive! Scorsese, of course – his mastery of the medium also melded with a powerful personal vision. Robert Aldrich, who did such a great range of work: VERA CRUZ and THE DIRTY DOZEN and KISS ME DEADLY. Altman and Polanski. Hitchcock and Hawks. Wyler and Wilder. Again, my father is the one who first introduced me to the classics, so by the time I went to film school I was pretty well saturated and ready to look at European cinema and cool experimental work (like Maya Deren!).
Nate: If you could have the rights to any novel/graphic novel series to undertake as your dream project, what would it be?

Jack: I don’t know if it could be done, or even should be done (probably not), but Dan Clowe’s LIKE A VELVET GLOVE CAST IN IRON. Overwhelmingly striking.
Nate: La Cucaracha: How did the idea come about, and did the end result look anything like what you first started out with on paper?
Jack: My writing partner, Jim McManus, and I were very much into Peckinpah at the time, and the whole idea of gringos getting into trouble south of border was very much on our minds. BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA was a huge influence, but we were also enamored with THE WAGES OF FEAR and TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and RIDE THE PINK HORSE. The south-of-the-border noir is kind of a mini-genre unto itself and we wanted to use that as a backdrop for a new kind of story. Something more character-driven and personal. Actually, Jim’s original concept – the one that set the whole thing in motion – was that the Walter Poole character would literally roll into town in his wheelchair at the climax, guns blazing ala Rooster Cogburn, and go down in a hail of bullets. An nifty idea. Of course, by the time we actually got to the end of the screenplay that ultimately resulted, that kind of hyperbolic nihilistic ending didn’t fit anymore.  Also I had intended to shoot it on location in Mexico and use the actual landscape and real people as part of the film’s fabric. But budgetary considerations brought us to the backlot of Universal, and the result was a Mexico much more mythical than intended (which I have to say, I kind of preferred in the end because it allowed for a more expressionistic look overall).
Nate: Working with Eric Roberts: you can honestly claim that you have directed him in what is, for me at least, in the top three greatest performances he’s ever given. How was the working relationship? What is he like? Do you guys keep in contact?
Jack: It was great working with Eric, and we’ve remained close over the years – him and his wife, Eliza. Eric works a lot, but I think he came to see LA CUCARACHA as an opportunity to really create a character, and show dimensions and vulnerabilities that he sometimes doesn’t get a chance to play. He knew I was deadly serious about making this picture the best it could be and, to his credit, attacked the role accordingly. He was a joy and a lot of fun to hang out with. Great sense of humor and loves animals (as I do).
Nate: Working with Joaquim De Almeida: a criminally underrated actor who rarely gets to show his true range and versatility. How was it working with him, especially in his intense and emotional scene near the end of the film? You can also claim to have seen probably the best and most truthful work he has ever done. 
Jack: I totally agree. A great actor – like Eric – sometimes limited to roles that don’t show what he’s truly capable of. Here, he went for it as well. In fact on the day we shot the Sunday Schoolroom scene, where he tests Walter’s character and actually steps on his head – he had a huge, complex 2-page monologue that, when he finished – the crew literally jumped to its feet and broke out in applause. Ive never seen that happen on any set. He was also a real gentleman, bright, warm and thoughtful. And unafraid. The scene at the end that you mentioned required him to be emotionally naked, and he went there.
Nate: How did the remastered version of La Cucaracha come about? To be honest it’s nice to see it now widely available, I searched for it for nearly five years before finally finding a second hand DVD, being blown away and wondering why it wasn’t on every shelf of every store out there.. Did Amazon approach you for this?
Jack: I pushed for it. I too was bummed it was sorta out of circulation. Certainly not in HD or in the proper aspect ratio (the DVD release cropped the the original 1.85 image). So I approached Renascent Films, who had acquired the streaming rights, and asked if they would pursue it. Thankfully they agreed and I set about tracking down the 35mm negative, which was no longer in the original lab and wound up – through a corporate buyout – in the vaults of Technicolor. We did the telecine there and I’m happy with the results and genuinely excited it’s out there on Amazon Prime.
Nate: What’s life like for you these days? Any upcoming projects, film or otherwise, that you are excited for and would like to speak about?
Jack: I’m always going after the next project. The more personal the better. Though to make ends meet or just for the quick junkie filmmaking fix, I’ll do a TV project or a genre pic for hire. But the real joy is doing work that is personally necessary, ideally in an environment where not too many people fuck with you. That limits you to the world of independent financing. Anyway, we’re close to raising the bucks for a female-driven action-thriller I wrote called SHOTGUN WEDDING. I’ve wanted to do it for years and am I’m psyched for that!
Nate: Thank you so much for you r time, Jack, it’s been an honour and I’m very much looking forward to seeing La Cucaracha once again remastered!