Tag: film review

Xavier Gens’ Cold Skin

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Xavier Gens’ Cold Skin is a tough one to pin down. A chilling, dark maritime horror yarn, a weird interspecies romantic triangle and a creature feature all in one, it starts off with a young man (David Oakes) and an older man (Ray Stevenson) alone on a rocky Antarctic island tending to a remote lighthouse (remind you of anything this year?). Stevenson is half mad, lives in a pulverized mess under a mountain of beard and perpetually looks like he just emerged from a week long bender, and we soon see why. Every night after darkness falls, weird sub-humanoid creatures scurry out of the ocean’s depths and lay siege to the rock, particularly the lighthouse where he lives and picks a them off ruthlessly one by one as they climb the exterior. Soon the young man is swept up in this feverish nocturnal routine until he begins to question the motives, history and morality of his colleague, or whoever this dude is. There’s also a female creature he names Aneris (Aura Garrido) who lives with them periodically and… uh…. does other stuff with them too.

I liked this film a lot because it doesn’t reveal everything, even up to the final few frames. Why does Aneris forsake her kin in the sea to live with this sorry drunken prick? Why do the creatures attack in the same way every night when they, presumably somewhat sentient, know full well that these dudes have a sizeably advantageous perch? These aren’t plot holes at all by the way because you get the gnawing sense that the answers are right there in the ether, just not spelled out by the narrative, a tactic that almost always pays off nicely. Stevenson plays against his square jawed, strong n’ silent type as essentially a raving lunatic who has gotten on the wrong side of this race of beings and will not be dissuaded that they are anything more than vicious beasts, even when it becomes apparent that this is probably not the case and he has been going about the situation all wrong. Gens doesn’t fuck around when it comes to horror (check out his absolutely savage Frontiers and The Divide) and as such this has a brutal, tragic edge to it but there’s lyrical beauty as well, especially in Garrido’s remarkably physical, disarmingly soulful performance as Aneris, who seems like a strange hybrid of human girl, fallen angel, space alien and mermaid. Also effective is a very cinematic musical score by Víctor Reyes that swells and falls, ebbs and flows throughout the story like sea does against this stark, forgotten corner of the world. This film is like a strange tale told to you in a sailor’s pub one night by a drunken old captain; it’s at once ridiculous and sensational but there’s some kind of sad, eerie truth to it that hangs over you like a cloud after that final wave crashes. A film well worth seeing.

-Nate Hill

Disney’s Flight Of The Navigator

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I feel like live action Disney stuff from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s is underrated. The animated ventures always get minted into classics and go platinum while awesome entries like Flight Of The Navigator get lost and relegated to hidden gem territory after awhile. This is a smart, funny, charming, invigorating and refreshingly eerie little SciFi that doesn’t talk down to its young audience or wade into sap.

In 1978 young David (Joey Cramer) disappears walking through the woods one night, and isn’t seen for eight years until he walks up to his house and finds different people living in it. Here the film impressed me by showing this whole sequence from his blind perspective, because for him only about four hours have passed and he can’t figure out why when the cops track down his parents, (Cliff De Young and Veronica Cartwright are very effective) they have aged so much. Their reunion is treated maturely and with impressively adequate emotion from Cramer, who ever so slightly reminds me of a young Henry Thomas, therefore cementing the Amblin vibes nicely. David has of course been abducted by aliens but that’s no spoiler as you can see by the chromed up spacecraft jetting around on the film’s poster. The resident extraterrestrial who took him now returns and the two embark on an initially disorganized and frequently hilarious ‘mission’ to find star charts downloaded to David’s brain, evade a pesky NASA bigwig (Howard Hesseman) and return David to his family.

This film is a wondrous creation because of how laid back the action is. David teams up nicely with the alien, a rambunctious robotic arm named Max and voiced by Paul ‘Pee Wee Herman’ Reubens. Most of their time together isn’t spent lamenting the situation or blasting government troops with phaser beams but rather goofing off, rocking out to the earth music that Max takes to, hanging out with other alien specimens he has adopted in his voyages (cue the adorable 80’s practical effects) and zooming around the globe in their vehicle which provides some very good exterior FX too. A young Sarah Jessica Parker also shows up as a sweetheart of a NASA defector who watches out for David and eventually helps him escape. It’s a terrific film that doesn’t take itself too seriously yet doesn’t goof off too much and ruin setup and believability (I’m looking at you, Joe Dante’s misfire ‘Explorers’). It benefits greatly from Cramer who was a true find but doesn’t seem to have had much of a career following this. Greatly recommended.

-Nate Hill

Guy Maddin’s Keyhole

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

What comes to mind when you think about films set in a haunted house? I promise you that nothing in your set expectations or perceived notions of the genre can prepare you for Guy Maddin’s Keyhole. “I’m only a ghost, but a ghost isn’t nothing” observes ethereal 1930’s gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric). He isn’t kidding. From the moment he and his gang evade the coppers in a sketchy, raggedly edited shootout and find themselves ensconced in his eerie childhood home, it becomes clear that that this ain’t your average family reunion, character study, ghost story, noir homage or even experimental film.

Ulysses and his gang find themselves trapped in an ever changing tangle of hallways, rooms, alcoves and hazily lit interior enclaves, the probing beams of police searchlights casting an otherworldly glow on their ordeal. Upstairs the spirits of his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini), sons and spooky grandfather (Louis Negan) languish in eerie solitude and await his arrival. His goons mess about, try their hand at interior decorating and construct a weird homemade electric chair trap thing. A Doctor (Udo Kier, remarkably low key) arrives from outside the house to treat a mysterious drowned girl (Brook Palsson) who has come back to life and unsettlingly wanders about in a daze. This is of course the plot described literally, but such an endeavour is redundant here, as apparently is for Maddin territory in general from what I hear.

This is the first Maddin film I’ve seen, I’m embarrassed to say, but I am now completely in love with his artistic sensibilities and can’t wait to check out some more. Although surrealist art films are definitely my thing not all of them speak to me or reach out in a way I can process and absorb, but this one drew me right in the way David Lynch’s work does, an obvious comparison but a reasonable one to make. I always try and search out films that successfully replicate the atmosphere of being inside a dream, or what that subjectively means for me. I’ve always been fascinated by the subject of Dreams and artists struggle to bring them to life, no matter the medium. It’s not easy to do and simply can’t be approached from a traditional narrative or stylistic standpoint, but for Maddin it disarmingly seems like second nature, like he’s right at home in the surreal to a point where his characters don’t even bat an eyelash when shit gets weird, it’s just par for the course. Patric is chilling, hilarious, deadpan, gruff and bewildered as Ulysses, whose entire life seems to be contained in this manor, in no easily discernible order either mind you. Characters flit in and out of scenes with little to no introduction, phantoms loiter in hallways wailing to the ether, people’s identities shift mid scene and the dialogue seems to be untethered somewhere between logical scene construction and poetic meanderings. The sound design is full of hisses, hums, drones, cracks, whooshes and all manner of beautifully layered hullabaloo. Visually the film at first seems to bare its cards: rattling Tommy guns, angular French windows, antique interior design, buttoned down 30’s attire, the trappings of a classically inclined film noir. But once one settles into this world it feels anything but earthbound, there’s constant shift in perceptions, the walls seem to be stationary yet in motion, images are quickly intercut into scenes and the overall feeling is off kilter, eerie, bizarre and yes… exactly what it feels like to be deep within a dark, disorienting dream. It’s Ulysses’s dream though, told by Maddin in a fashion that has no interests in holding your hand, tucking you in, reading a bedtime story or explaining just what’s going on. It simply tosses you into this realm and invites you to observe, feel and intuit without logical deduction, and viewers will either be responsive or find it cold. I think it’s something of a masterpiece.

-Nate Hill

David Von Ancken’s Seraphim Falls

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Liam Neeson ruthlessly pursuing Pierce Brosnan across an unforgiving post civil war US landscape, from snowy peaks to vast plains to acrid deserts and all the midlands in between. David Von Ancken’s Seraphim Falls is a stunning, folklore inspired tale of revenge, burning guilt, wayward ambitions and the joyless act of the hunt, portrayed not as thrill here but more as grim duty.

Brosnan is Gideon, an ex General now on the run from Carver (Neeson), another high ranking soldier who harbours deep hatred and rage against him for reasons the film wisely keeps to its chest until the last few minutes. This allows us to form our own picture of each man that is cultivated by each passing deed, and the labels of bad and good, hero and villain need not apply, which is how stories should be told anyways. They both appear to be good men in some instances, and both hardened killers in others. The film starts off in the snowy northern mountains, moves below to hills, valleys and ranches, continues on to the river lands and finally winds up in a scorching desert where the final revelations are laid bare and each man must make a choice. Von Ancken gives this story an almost biblical tone, from the Dante-esque journey from one specific natural setting to the next to the appearance of several key characters that seem to have supernatural undercurrents including a lone First Nations man (Wes Studi) who mysteriously guards a watering hole to a strange medicine lady (Anjelica Huston) who appears in the desert as if a phantom.

Neeson and Brosnan are phenomenal here. Liam lets the sickness of revenge spill out in his behaviour, that of a man with tunnel vision and no hesitations on letting anyone in his way become collateral damage. Pierce is haunting as a man running from both his adversary and his past, scenes where he hides out in a farmhouse and interacts with a young boy are subtly heartbreaking when you finally see the big picture later on. He’s grizzled to hell too, and there’s nothing like watching him patch up a bullet wound on his own, frontier style. Von Ancken carefully chooses his cast with wonderful character actors and familiar faces like the awesome Michael Wincott as Neeson’s roughneck hired bounty hunter, Xander Berkeley, Ed Lauter, Kevin J. O’Connor, Angie Harmon, Jimmi Simpson, James Jordan and more. I’d like to think that this exists in the same western universe as Von Ancken’s AMC drama Hell On Wheels because Tom Noonan briefly shows up here as pretty much the same Minister character he went on to excellently portray in the show, which I thought was a nice touch. This is a mean, callous, relentlessly and graphically violent piece of filmmaking that throws nods to Eastwood films of the same ilk while subtly doing its own kind of mythic, folklore thing that thrums along under the main story arc for you to pick up on, if you’re tuned into it’s ever so slightly esoteric frequency. Great, underrated film.

-Nate Hill

Mike Nichols’ Regarding Henry

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I really love it when actors step outside their comfort zone and try something that they’re not traditionally known for, it’s a difficult and courageous thing to do. Harrison Ford is a square jawed, attractive, alpha type dude, from Han Solo to Rick Deckerd to Indiana Jones. Seeing him become utterly vulnerable for a film like Mike Nichols’ Regarding Henry is something wonderful and let’s you observe a quieter, gentler side of this iconic actor.

Ford is Henry here, a brash, egotistical slick lawyer who cons innocent clients out of their settlements to line the pockets of his firm, cheats on his wife (Annette Bening) and when asked to apologize to his daughter (Kamien Allen, sad eyed and soulful) for an outburst, manipulates the conversation to further blame her. One night he pops over to the convenience store and interrupts a robbery, after which the twitchy burglar (a very young John Leguizamo) shoots him twice. The wounds leave him fighting for his life and with permanent brain damage, re-learning how to speak, walk, eat and piece together his fragmented memories with the help of a kindly physical therapist (the great Bill Nunn in possibly his greatest performance).

This is the ultimate case of ‘my dad went out for a pack of smokes and never came back’ because in a sense he doesn’t. For his daughter the cruel, unsympathetic father she watched him become is now gone forever and in his place a man she doesn’t recognize but now relates to, cares for and in return gets love she never experienced before instead. Henry has all the faculties of a child or adolescent at first, forced to forge a new moral compass and and patch over the damage that he and his amoral boss (Donald Moffat, smarmy as ever) have wrought. Ford makes low key yet deeply affecting work of Henry, his eyes have a meditative observance and his voice a shaky, emotive timbre, qualities I find to be often wasted on hero roles without a ton of depth (see The Age Of Adaline for another terrific example of him being used properly). He actually gets to play a human here, one who goes through one of the most taxing experiences anyone could live through, and the colours Ford paints this performance with are something to see. This film gets ragged on and sure it can come across as a bit gloss, a bit ‘Heartstring Hollywood.’ That may be so in instances but at the core it really cares, truly examines this man and what makes him who he is, then slaps him with a factory reset and reimagines who he is all over again, and how he must reconcile with what came before. Great film in my opinion.

-Nate Hill

Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I read a thing recently that Stephen King’s The Shining and Doctor Sleep, although two sides of the same coin, are very much in different places thematically. The Shining deals with isolation, confinement and madness whereas Doctor Sleep explores escape, pursuit and redemption. This could be the reason that I loved Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep a lot more than I did Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which felt so much richer, wider in scope, ambition and rewarding in story. The Shining is a cold, hard and admittedly brilliant horror film but going from that aesthetic to Doctor Sleep is like holding your breath until you almost faint and then letting out one monumental exhale that feels a lot better than what came before. Sleep is the exhale, a flowing, horrific, cathartic and gorgeous dark jewel of a horror film that stands as loving homage to Kubrick’s film but just does so much more on a wider canvas.

Flanagan spends the first half of this story establishing setting, characters and history in economic yet leisurely fashion, as this runs for a delicious two and a half hours. Dan Torrence (Roger Dale Floyd) and his mom Wendy (Alex Essoe, not quite a dead ringer for Shelley Duvall but she finds her own essence and I liked her work) survived their nightmarish stay at the haunted Overlook Hotel and did their best to carry on with life. Fast forward all the way to 2011 and Dan is now a haggard looking and near homeless Ewan McGregor, bus hopping his way across the states and arriving in a small county to find help from AA and work at a hospice for dying elderly folks. Elsewhere, a roving band of vampiric creatures calling themselves The True Knot search for kids like Dan who possess the ‘Shine’, and consume it for sustenance. Also out there is young Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a girl with maybe the biggest reservoir of Shine within her and the power to defeat the Knot and their evil leader Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson). This power struggle of course eventually leads them back to where Dan’s story originally began, the now derelict and rotting Overlook, fast asleep and waiting.

I loved this film. It’s so much more comprehensive and on fire than The Shining’s chilly aura gave us. Characters are sharply drawn, performances are wonderfully shaped and there are so many ideas, references and nods to the King Dark Tower multiverse that positively gave me chills. Ferguson is a tornado of pure malice as Rose The Hat, embodying shades of Stevie Nicks and playing this evil supernatural gypsy bitch to the absolute height of performance. Curran is a brilliant find as Abra, she radiates the resilience of this kid while clearly showing the fear, uncertainty and vulnerability of someone with such powers. McGregor is gruff and haunted as Dan, a casting choice that seems simultaneously out of left field and fitting like a glove. There are other familiar faces across this landscape including Cliff Curtis, Bruce Greenwood, Henry Thomas, Robert Longstreet, Zahn McLarnon and Carel Stryucken who we fondly remember as The Fireman from Twin Peaks and The Moonlight Man from Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game. Room’s Jacob Tremblay also shows up as an unfortunate young victim of The Knot who gets slaughtered in a sequence of raw evil that will send a shiver down spines en masse. At the heart of this story is compassion though; Dan, with the help of an adorable cat, eases numerous elderly folks across the threshold of death with kindness and these scenes affect overall and add warmth to his character, while hitting me on a deeply personal level given my experiences with such things this past year. He’s forced to go back and confront the evil that he prayed he’d never see again and it’s a strong ray of redemption, for him and his now dead father who fell victim to such horrors. There is a lot at work here, it blows this world right open and finds connective tissue to King’s universe where Kubrick kept things close to the chest and contained. One of the best horror films, King adaptations and pieces of storytelling I’ve seen in some time.

-Nate Hill

Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

If you’ve never seen Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero, drop whatever plans you have this evening and get on it. This is a curious one to review because no description could adequately impart its exact timbre. A hangout film, a low key culture clash dramedy, but more than anything specific or definable it’s just about a few Americans, a few Scots and one hard drinking Russian chilling out together in a small coastal village somewhere in Scotland.

Director Forsyth doesn’t so much construct a thought out script to screen here as he does take an anthropologist’s eye in telling the tale of an American oil conglomerate who sends their top fixer (Peter Riegart) to a small beach community in Scotland with hopes of buying up much of the coastline for an incoming refinery project. This would of course make the townspeople very rich, yet on the other hand take away their homes that have been in the family for generations and leave the natural environment bleeding. This isn’t so much an ‘us vs. them’ thing or any kind of struggle in any way though. Riegart (who is a fascinating dude and who I can only recall in two other projects, the cop opposite Jim Carrey in The Mask and a tiny cameo in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic) and his aloof assistant (Peter Capaldi) simply blend into the local scenery, chill out and get to know these folk on a naturalistic, believable scale of behaviour. Making friends with the local innkeeper (Dennis Lawson) who doubles as the town accountant and pretty much mayor too, singing songs, talking philosophy to the stars and basically unwinding. The oil company’s CEO (Burt Lancaster) has hilariously little interest in developing a refinery and would much rather sit on the beach with a telescope observing the heavens.

Films this subtly pleasant grow on you and are honestly a balm for the soul, an oasis for perception to vacation in for an hour or so when things can get rough, which for the past year has basically been the story of my life. Forsyth sees these people as not just characters in a script, there to serve story, but just that: people, human beings. Riegart’s oil man is nothing like the brash, cocky big city slicker that some filmmakers would have turned him into. He’s gentle, open to new experiences and ultimately in awe of the way of life he finds in this community. The townsfolk aren’t hostile, protective or scornful of him again like some films would paint them, they’re quaint, wrapped up in their elegiac daily rumination and see him simply as another dude they can have a pint with at the end of the day. I love and admire artists who have what they takes to make a film stocked with actual people instead of cardboard characters, and you don’t see that all the time. A wonderfully eccentric microcosm of two factions of society and not so much how they clash, but more how they cordially find themselves in the same place by circumstance and simply make the most out of it. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Actor’s Spotlight: Nate’s Top Ten Dennis Farina Performances

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Who knew that a Chicago ex-cop would go on to become one of the most recognizable and talented presences in Hollywood? Michael Mann did when he cast buddy Dennis Farina in Thief way back in the day, after which the actor went on to give us an absolutely captivating, scene stealing body of work in cinema and a career particularly in crime and comedy genres that is now legend. He could be funny as all hell and then turn downright dangerous at the drop of a hat, your affable best friend or grim worst enemy in any given scene and often simultaneously. Dennis is no longer with us but his epic career lives on every day, and here are my personal top ten characters he crafted!

10. Maurice Cantavale in Randall Miller’s Bottle Shock

If you haven’t seen this lovely little film then get on that right away, because it’s an absolute charmer through and through. So basically Alan Rickman is a British wine connoisseur who travels across the pond to Napa valley for a competition to enter his wines. Farina is his neighbour, a travel guide entrepreneur who accompanies him for camaraderie, companionship and moral support. He’s a lovable teddy bear here who has adorable chemistry with Rickman and adds to an already terrific ensemble cast.

9. Henry DeSalvo in Barry Sonnenfield’s Big Trouble

In an ensemble cast that’s just about as packed as one 90 minute comedy can handle, he stands out as a super cranky hitman called into Miami to kill a asshole corrupt business exec (Stanley Tucci). He finds every obstacle possible thrown in his path though from rambunctious football fans (“we got gator fans!”) to overzealous security guards and everything else the city has to offer. His mounting exasperation and deadpan frustration is one of the highlights of this hilarious, underrated screwball comedy.

8. Lt. Mike Torello in Michael Mann’s Crime Story

Here he gets to channel his real life roots in playing a tough Chicago police detective trying to prevent an up and coming wiseguy (Ray Luca) from ascending to power in the city’s dangerous criminal underworld. A companion piece of sorts to Mann’s more popular Miami Vice, this is a fantastically produced crime epic that’s packed with guest stars, many of which went on to A-list fame. Dennis is grounded, angry, violent when he needs to be but imbues the character with compassionate hues as well, it’s a beautiful lead role in a career that’s mostly stocked with supporting turns.

7. Joe May in Joe Maggio’s The Last Rites Of Joe May

Another lead role yay! This is a fantastic little seen indie drama about ex Chicago hustler Joe May who is released from prison in his twilight years and discovers the streets, along with his capabilities, aren’t what they used to be. Farina sadly passed away a few years after this was released and as such it kind of stands as a swan song of sorts. It’s about age, the passage of time and ultimately redemption in the face of one’s own mortality, and he nails every aspect of theme/character flawlessly, and should have been nominated for all the awards.

6. Dick Muller in Jon Bokenkamp’s Preston Tylk aka Bad Seed

This little seen indie drama sees widower Luke Wilson in a disquieting game of cat and mouse with his deceased wife’s lover (Norman Reedus), both blaming each other for her untimely death. Dennis is the world weary private investigator Wilson hires to help him through the whole mess and it’s in their dynamic that a touching interaction is formed. This is a depressing, sad story that can only end messily overall but he finds the humour, pathos and uplifting notes to his performance and it’s one of my favourite of the lesser known ones.

5. Jimmy Serrano in Martin Brest’s Midnight Run

This guy is a piece of work, but a hilarious one. The grumpiest Chicago mobster you could ever find, he’s a violent, corrupt, short tempered prick who spends most of his scenes threatening his poor lawyer (Phillip Baker Hall) with extreme bodily harm and trying to track down Robert De Niro’s elusive bounty hunter with whom he has a decades old grudge with. It’s a flashy, really funny and engaging bad guy turn that manages to scare and I still laughs in equal measures.

4. Gus Demitriou in HBO’s Luck

This was a sadly short lived but magnificent series set in and around an LA horse racetrack and focusing on all sorts of individuals whose lives revolve around it. Dustin Hoffman is Chester, a parolee who walks a fine line between businessman and mobster, while Farina’s Gus is his driver, assistant, sounding board, business partner and overall good friend. The dynamic between these two is communicated brilliantly by the two actors and we get a real sense of Gus’s moral standpoint, goals and outlook on life.

3. Jack Crawford in Michael Mann’s Manhunter

A few guys have played the FBI’s head of behavioural science and while Scott Glenn’s turn will always be my favourite, Dennis made a fascinating version. In a career filled with intense and exuberant work he made his Crawford into an understated guy who works well with William Petersen’s equally inward Will Graham.

2. Ray ‘Bones’ Barboni in Barry Sonnenfield’s Get Shorty

One pissed off Miami gangster who is none too happy to get called to LA on business, he gets the film’s best line when he begrudgingly proclaims to a taxi driver: “They say the fucking smog is the fucking reason you have such beautiful fucking sunsets.” Dennis was a staple in film adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s work and this is one of the pithiest, funniest in both his and the author’s rogues gallery.

1. Cousin Avi in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch

In an ensemble cast full of eclectic underground whackadoos, he *really* steals the show as a supremely sassy NYC gangster reluctantly dragged to London (which he hates) to track down a stolen diamond. Dennis’s energetic Chicago twang and Ritchie’s stylized flair for dialogue make this character sing, he gets many of the film’s funniest bits and is clearly having a ton of fun.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!

-Nate Hill

Indie Gems: William Fichtner’s Cold Brook

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Oh hey another top ten of the year film for me. I love a good passion project, especially when the two artistic forces behind it are a couple beloved character actors who have spent much of their career in Hollywood playing villains, criminals, weirdos, bikers, aliens and all kinds of heavy stuff. William Fichtner’s Cold Brook sees the consistently brilliant actor team up with equally fantastic buddy Kim Coates for a charming, wonderfully simplistic tale of two small town dudes who make an incredible discovery.

Fichtner and Coates are Ted and Hilde, two lifelong pals who work as maintenance men for the college museum in their sleepy upstate NY town of Cold Brook. They each have a loving wife (played by Robin ‘Calamity Jane’ Weigart and Mary Lynn ‘Chloe O Brien’ Rajskub), kids and pretty much as cozy a life as anyone can hope for, complete with the kind of bromance that makes it obvious these two actors are tight in real life. Then one day a mysterious and deeply confused stranger (Harold Perrineau) shows up in the museum exhibit after hours and seems to follow them around after that like he has some purpose that even he doesn’t understand, and only our two boys can see him. It’s up to them to find out why this restless spirit has chosen them, what he wants and how to put him to rest while juggling the curious eyes of their wives, bosses and one campus security guard (Brad Henke) who takes his job just a bit too seriously.

This is low key, whimsical indie fare through and through and I downright fell in love. I’ve been following William and Kim’s career since I was a kid, they are two endlessly talented scene stealers and I can’t tell you how lovely and cathartic it was to see them just play a couple bros living and loving the small town life. They both shine brightly in their work here and Fichtner shows a steady hand in writing and direction here too, telling a story that clearly means a lot to him in broad, loving strokes. Perrineau is really effective as Gil the wandering spirit, seeming somehow perpetually lost but also pointedly soulful in each appearance. If you’re at all a fan of these two artists then I’d very strongly recommend this as you get to see them do the kind of work that Big Hollywood just doesn’t usually ever hire them for, something very personal to each and something that allows them the kind of freedom in expression that we as artists always dream of. Even if you’re not a huge fan it’s a beautiful little indie to watch on a cold rainy morning to warm the heart. Brilliant film.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Savage Dawn

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It’s time for some schlocky 80’s biker trash. Savage Dawn is a cheap, sleazy, exceedingly noisy, obnoxious piece of dustbowl highway exploitation and I love every minute of it. Lance Henriksen is stoic ex green beret Stryker who drifts past a small town to visit his old army buddy (George Kennedy). Also blowing through the area is a pack of evil, vicious bikers led by sadistic Pigiron (William Forsythe, living up to that name and then some). Stryker just wants to chill out and have beers with his ol’ bud but Pigiron & Co. have other plans and the film is basically a loose, untethered series of ultra-violent run-ins with the gang, while other weirdo backwoods locals run in and out of the scenes all silly billy. Henriksen is the only actor here to play it remotely seriously, keeping that stone faced glare stolidly in place and dishing out beatdowns left and right. Forsythe is downright maniacal here, doing one of the best versions of his ‘psycho snarling hick shtick’ and chewing scenery like an evil tornado of redneck rambunctiousness. This was the first time these two tussled in a biker picture and would reunite again for Stone Cold in the 90’s, but that’s another story. The late Richard Lynch shows up as a feeble, horn-dog local preacher who gets in the way and the great Karen Black has a memorable turn as the loopy local slut. This ain’t nothing but bottom of the barrel street grease, there’s no way around it. But the actors sell it and there’s enough of them letting off steam to make this enjoyable, albeit fairly WTF in places. Gotta keep in mind that gnarly little nuggets like this were commonplace back then and sometimes I miss em.

-Nate Hill