Tag: films

Gregory Hoblit’s Frequency

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Looking for a smart, slick Sci-Fi thriller that has the emotional heartbeat to keep you caring right through the narrative? Check out Gregory Hoblit’s Frequency, a brilliant little high concept mind bender that’s aged so well they even recently rebooted it for TV, which I’m a little dubious about. Like it’s celestial Sci-Fi premise, the film is kind of a lightning in a bottle type flick where they captured the exact recipe of magic, character relationships and plot points that resulted in something really special, and I’m doubtful the new one could come close. Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviesel are awesome as father and son separated by both time, space and even death, until a miracle comes their way. Frank Sullivan (Quaid) is a firefighting, fiercely loving family man in the 70’s who is crazy about his wife (Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell) and young son. Flash forward thirty years or so, his son (Caviesel) is grown up and now a cop, haunted by the past, and his dad has died in the time since. One year there’s a particularly powerful set of Aurora causes by sunspots, right when Caviesel happens to be tinkering around with a HAM radio. It’s delightfully farfetched, but this cosmic occurrence allows him as a grown up to communicate through time thirty years previous, reconnect with Quaid and try to set his family on a less tragic course. The reason it works so well is the dynamic between the family; Quaid, Mitchell and their young son (Daniel Henson) are so thoroughly believable and adorable as a family that we stick by them with each beat and deeply care about their outcomes, which are constantly shifting every time the past is changed via the future, and vice versa. Quaid has two friends (Andre Braugher and Noah Emmerich) who revolve around the character development too and have their parts to play, as does Shawn Doyle as a menacing serial killer who crosses their paths. Quaid loves to pick out these high concept Sci-Fi scripts it seems, he’s been appearing in them throughout his whole career from InnerSpace to Enemy Mine to Dreamscape to Pandorum, the amount of interesting stuff in his filmography is inspiring and this is one of his best. This is a tale to get lost in and revel at the sheer escapism it throws your way, a clever twist on time traveling that puts it’s two charismatic protagonists at dual control panels and gives them the power over fathomless phenomena, connected by an astrological two way radio that knows no bounds of space or time. A classic for me.

-Nate Hill

Night Train To Venice: The actual worst film ever made

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

People often ask me what the worst film I’ve ever seen is, and for years I found the question difficult due to the sheer volume of trash and cinematic pond scum out there. Then I saw Night Train To Venice, and… yup, it’s officially *the* worst fucking movie I’ve ever seen. The cover is innocuous enough, boasting a slightly esoteric Euro-trash thriller starring everyone’s favourite aloof British hunk Hugh Grant and everyone’s favourite British arch villain Malcolm McDowell. Sounds vaguely promising, right? Oh boy. Ohhh boy. The thing starts off with Grant, some chick (Tahnee Welch) and a handful of other weirdos boarding a night train somewhere in Europe, and then… I can’t even describe how strange, stupid and incoherent it gets. There’s Nazi skinheads that put off a rapey vibe but it’s never clear why they’re on the train or where they came from. McDowell is credited as ‘Stranger’ and all he does is loom ominously, spout threatening dialogue with zero context and add to the din with his wasted charisma. There’s loose plot threads flung around like confetti but none are developed, or even addressed beyond wanton scenes of fuckery that have no place anywhere. It sucks because this isn’t even fun to watch in a burning car wreck type way like a lot of fun bad movies, it *actually hurts* to watch this unpleasant piece of shit trip over itself and parade across the screen like a gaggle of spastics set loose from the asylum. McDowell has more than a few shitty flicks in his war record but this really takes the goddamn cake. If I ever get to sit opposite Grant, however, I’m going to bring this one up with a straight face and then slap him across his before that cavernous dumbo grin even starts to take shape and the trademark awkward sheepish excuses start to trundle out of his mouth. As for the director and rest of crew, lord only knows what was going through their heads when they produced and assembled this piss poor, jumbled up dose of cinematic diarrhea. It doesn’t even make sense or stand as an example of what not to do in the celluloid zeitgeist, it’s so bad. It exists in a vacuum of space all its own that functions off the kind of zero point energy reserved for things so shamelessly awful that it actually takes cohesive effort to gain admission. Please, please avoid this thing, it’ll literally shorten your life span having to sit through it and you’ll lose more brain cells than you did last Friday night. Ugh.

-Nate Hill

Red Sparrow

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I really didn’t want Red Sparrow to be the dud everyone says it is, but.. yeah it is. I mean, I’ve got love right off the bat for a hard R rated spy flick released by major studios, and this one earns it’s R rating so much so that it’s nasty business to sit through. I just wish it had the aptitude to be more than a cold, unremitting series of events that go far beyond unfortunate. More than anything I’m just proud of Jennifer Lawrence for taking on such a dangerous, vulnerable role, she’s a natural born star and any project she’s attached to is lucky to have her. She just had the shitty luck of her immense talent being drowned in a sea of sadism and ultimate boringness here, which is a shame. Playing a Russian ballet dancer who’s career is cut short by an injury, her shady pervert uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts) recruits her for Sparrow School, a twisted spy academy that focuses on sex as a weapon, where she undergoes rigid, perverse training under the stern watch of Matron (Charlotte Rampling, terrifying). This is all run by the government in secret, and soon she becomes involved in a confusing cloak and dagger operation involving American agent Nate (Joel Edgerton), which frequently sees her in degrading, sexually violent situations that seem a bit excessive after a while. I’ll always champion R rated films and there’s some wicked bloody action here involving her training, but the lurid psychosexual stuff is kind of sickening and seems tacked on like a pornographic sheen. The cast is alarmingly first rate, with work from Joely Richardson, Ciaran Hinds, a bored looking Jeremy Irons and a drunken cameo from Mary Louise Parker. No one seems to really fit into the story though and the film struggles to hold our attention beyond just being in shock and actually giving a shit about the story, which is grey and lifeless. It also can’t decide on it’s setting either; everything about the film screams 70’s/80’s Cold War era, until Rampling’s character refers to the West as fixated on shopping and “social media”, which sounds suspiciously like a line that was added in reshoots to try and update a preexisting setting, the worst kind of continuity error because it’s deliberate. There’s literally not a single cell phone visible at any time!! Cmon guys, get your shit straight. It’s sad because there’s a lot of sumptuous atmosphere here that goes to waste, as does a magisterial score by James Newton Howard. The biggest crime here though is how great Jennifer Lawrence is in the role, and how royally the film just lets her down. She’s resilient, tough and smart running down a gauntlet of predators, assassins and danger, but none of that is as good as it sounds, and she deserves better.

-Nate Hill

Lee Tamahori’s Next

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Lee Tamahori’s Next is an ironically titled piece of garbage, because in working my way through Nicolas Cage’s minefield of a post-90’s career, all I wanted to do was yell “next!” and shut this one off. Next in line is actually Ghost Rider, which is like going from the frying pan into the fire, but you can’t win em’ all I suppose. I’m all for a trashy Cage flick now and again, even enjoying some of his more lambasted outings but this one really takes the cake. Adorned in a greasy mop-mullet, he plays a low rent Vegas magician here who actually does possess a bit of the ol’ clairvoyance, which comes in handy when Ice Queen FBI Agent Julianne Moore wants to recruit him for the bureau’s x files department to stop terrorism before it even happens, particularly an attack on Vegas expected soon. It’s a thin setup and he spends most of his time hitting on truck-stop waitress Jessica Biel, who is at least half his age. That’s another thing with the latter half of his career, this old grandpa Cage keeps getting casted with these babes who are young enough to be his daughter, and man it feels weeeiirrddd. (Two films starring as Eva Mandes’s boyfriend! Two!). I know the guy’s a superstar but believability is strained when you realize none of these chicks would actually do that if these flicks were real life. Anywho, the terrorist plot here is a lazily written thing, the baddie literally called Mr. Smith, played by Thomas Kretschmann, too great of an actor to always be stuck in these half ass styrofoam villain roles. Cage uses a mode of telepathic foresight to investigate, a gimmick that plays around with time and reality but lacks any modicum of coherence and just becomes super duper confusing to the plot. This one is all glitter and razzle dazzle up front, but there’s nothing under the hood to back up the hollow roar of it’s somewhat promising premise that gets trod upon by sloppy filmmaking and an overall sense of tackiness. Next!

-Nate Hill

Russell Mulcahy’s Ricochet

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Russell Mulcahy’s Ricochet is a fucking balls out, crazy ass flick. I thought I’d get s routinely hard boiled Denzel cop flick a lá Out Of Time or The Mighty Quinn, but this thing is more aligned to the nasty grindhouse flicks from the 70’s, starting with its terrifying villain played by John Lithgow. Lithgow has always had a flair for playing heinous creeps in everything from Cliffhanger to Raising Cain to Showtime’s Dexter. His character here though would intimidate all of those dudes put together he’s such a monster. Cornered by rookie cop Nick Styles (Washington) at an amusement park, hitman Blake (Lithgow) is captured and put away for life. Styles goes on to become Assistant D.A. Years later Blake hatches an ultra violent plan to bust out of prison that includes killing Jesse Ventura, maiming guards with various power tools, inciting a riot, hijacking an ambulance and shooting the old dude that brings the book trolley around to the inmates. If that sounds bad, you wouldn’t believe the lengths of evil stored in his plan for revenge against Denzel, he’s just a sadist and then some, Lithgow really has fun with the role and it’s the twisted core that powers the film through its dark beats. This thing reaches Abel Ferrara levels of grit and urban mayhem, and maybe even exceeds them. Styles finds himself at a loss when he’s framed for murder by the guy, and turns to his old pal Odessa for help, a gnarly street thug played by Ice T, customary verbal attitude fully intact. One could say that Mulcahy has made a pretty great career out of making lurid, bear exploitation style films. This is definitely the benchmark of how down n’ dirty he’s gotten with a project though, it’s deliciously wicked, cheerfully in bad taste and mean to the bone, and I loved it for that.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Hoboken Hollow

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Hoboken Hollow is a sallow, unpleasant, off putting Texas Chainsaw clone that captures none of the schlocky charm that something like this should have. It’s brutal, gross, peppered with famous genre faces who don’t do much of anything, and drawn out scenes of lame, tension free horror violence that has no impact beyond being solely icky. The true story it’s ‘based on’ is probably a lot less lurid and exploitive than what happens on screen here, but that’s the horror genre for you. Supposedly based on a hellish slave camp in Texas from back in the 79’s, it abandons dutiful facts for a dingy parade of torture porn and boring cliches, starting with a tormented war veteran (Jason Connery) drifting through the backroads of Texas who happens upon this weirdo ranch and wishes he hadn’t. It’s an inbred Pickton-esque shithole run by dementia ridden Lin Shaye and psycho hick C. Thomas Howell, an actor who’s fallen a long way since his The Hitcher and The Outsiders 80’s heyday. Dennis Hopper wanders around as a clueless local Sheriff, Michael Madsen slums it as a real estate tycoon who wants to buy the ranch but shows little actual interest in what’s going on on the property, and I’ll be honest this was so dull that all I remember are vague details and famous faces embarrassing themselves for a paycheque. That includes Robert Carradine, who I don’t even remember but apparently is in it thanks to IMDB. Avoid it like the plague.

-Nate Hill

Deadpool 2

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Deadpool 2 does what any great sequel should do: blasts the first one out of the water. Well, kind of. In terms of quality and fun, it’s *as* brilliant as the first and manages to capture that scrappy, irreverent charisma once again. Where it excels over the first is what’s built onto that blueprint and improved upon, namely a way better villain than that Jason Statham knockoff they had the first time around. Although not as developed as he could be, Josh Brolin’s Cable is a formidable, aesthetically slick presence that calls to mind Arnie’s T-101 subtly, while giving the actor room to bounce and banter with Wade Wilson. As for the Merc? He’s funnier, sadder and more larger than life in this one, his rampantly raunchy sense of humour made even more so by intense personal tragedy. One of the key assets of this story is an ironic romantic heart amidst the glib antics, and that wisely gets played up here; Wade is a badly hurt guy in more ways than just physical, and as Cable dryly points out, he uses humour to mask inner pain (reminds me of me). That’s the core of what makes him so relatable and engaging, and by now Reynolds is so good at playing this role he should get a fifty picture deal. The plot here is admittedly thin, but in such a ramshackle narrative packed with supporting characters and gags both visual and otherwise, that’s understandable. The best running joke involves Wade & Co. recruiting a short lived mutant team that includes Bill ‘Pennywise’ Skarsgard, Terry Crews and a cameo so quick and hilarious I won’t spoil the fun, but keep your eyes peeled for The Vanisher’s split second closeup. They don’t last long though and not since MacGruber have I witnessed wanton, hysterical negligence and ineptitude in friendly fire casualties. Deadpool stands out because it broke the mold of nearly all superhero films to come before; its R rating allows it t have the kind of unbridled fun that the genre should have sparked from day one. The first film pioneered a very specific brand of mischief and debauchery.. this one takes the concept and runs with it and the results are pure summer movie bliss.

-Nate Hill

Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Roger Ebert made it clear that Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie doesn’t even make it into his most hated canon of flicks (a hard enclosure to gain access to as the guy was a pretty fair critic right to the end). A small part of me sees the exasperation in a guy who took his cinema seriously. But most of me, especially the parts that enjoy humour so off the wall and bizarre that I’d be labelled just as far on the spectrum as the two demented wunderkinds behind this ninety minute freak show, loves it. You have to be a special kind of deranged to enjoy Tim and Eric’s brand of humour; the words abstract, surreal and extremely bizarre come to mind, but that doesn’t begin to cover the maniacal parade they’ve whipped up here. One thing does fascinate me though: since the very beginning when they first got their show rolling (Great Job!), they have been a magnet for some of the most prominent and prolific talent in Hollywood’s comedy arena, scoring cameos from the likes of Will Ferrell, Jeff Goldblum, John C. Reilly and more. That tells me that a lot more folks than you might think have an innate affinity for this extreme brand of shock humour and madness than would care to admit, and that when it comes down to it, humans organically produce their own humour in this weird, abstract fashion that’s much more natural than most scripted, constructed comedy we see in film. The humour here is so far into the stratosphere of weirdness that it understandably made a lot of folks uncomfortable, but that just makes the whole thing funnier. The ‘plot’ is just a series of running gags loosely connected by Tim & Eric owing a billion dollars to the Schlaaaaang Corporation (run by William Atherton and Robert Loggia in one of his last movie roles). They skip town and decide to take up Will Ferrell on his offer to be caretakers of a giant dilapidated shopping mall, after a few back to back viewings of Top Gun. The mall is host to a whole array of weirdos and insane people including slightly retarded Taquito (John C. Reilly), snarky sword salesman Allen Bishopman (Will Forte), a man who sells used toilet paper, Bob Ross, a bunch of hobos, oh and a wolf too, among others. Don’t expect it to make much sense, that’s not the Tim and Eric way. Just expect to be shocked, disgusted, disoriented, appalled, and if you’re tuned into the right frequency, to laugh your ass off. Their outright deliberation in pushing boundaries of taste and coherency no doubt had people running from the theatre and demanding money back in droves, but as Mia Wallace iconically put it, don’t be a 🔲. The real endurance test is when Ray Wise (Twin Peak’s Leland Palmer) shows up as a nutso self help guru whose brand of treatment (Shrim!) really goes to some gag-worthy places. Other notable cameos include Jeff Goldblum as (wait for it) ‘Chef Goldblum’, Johnny Depp, Zach Galifianakis, Mark Cuban and Bob Odenkirk. It’s a weird world, and in a genre that routinely isn’t weird enough, plays it safe and sticks to the often bland script, we need guys like Tim and Eric to shake shit up, open their bag of tricks and assault audiences with their very specific, certifiable brand of comedy. Buckle up.

-Nate Hill

Hoping for resurrection: Michael Mann’s The Keep

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It’s a shame that Michael Mann feels the way he does about The Keep, and although I can’t really blame him after the Leatherface worthy hack job the studio inflicted on his original three plus hour cut, it’s a heartbreak and a half that we may never see a director’s version because what is left is still one of the most haunting, beautifully done Lovecraftian horror fever dreams one can find in VHS-land. Based on a brilliant novel by F. Paul Wilson, Mann employs a legion of smoke machines, a troupe of eclectic character actors all cast against type and giving marvellous work, and a drop dead gorgeous original score from Tangerine Dream that remains in my top OST’s to this day. Somewhere deep in the Romanian mountains, a squadron of German soldiers led by weary Captain Woerman (Jurgen Pröchnow) comes a across a tiny hidden village that harbours a dark secret: just beyond the township is a looming, mysterious structure built to keep something locked inside, and has lain dormant for centuries. Their gravest mistake is setting up camp in this unholy basilica, for soon they’ve awoken whatever resides within, and it really wants out. Cue the arrival of sadistic SS officer Kaempffer (a very young Gabriel Byrne) and his Nazi bastard crew, as well as a professor of ancient languages (Ian Mckellan) with his daughter (the late Alberta Watson). Elsewhere in Europe, otherworldly stranger Glaecken (the great Scott Glenn) is stirred by the happenings at the Keep and treks across the war torn continent towards an unknown end. What follows is an entrancing supernatural fusion mixup of old school prosthetic effects, genocide metaphors, lovingly creaky production design and synth music that will scorch your soul. Glenn plays the shadowy warrior better than ever here, with a paranormal gleam in his eyes and the stone-faced, gravel voiced resolve to see his strange quest through to a brutal conclusion. McKellen emotes fiercely both in and out of some well done old age makeup, sometimes almost unrecognizable but always spirited and present. Pröchnow rarely gets non villain roles with depth but this might be his best ever, early in his career too. He turns the Captain into a sorrowful picture of regret and compassion that one doesn’t often see in Hollywood based German army roles from WWII. Watson is a doe eyed beauty whose loss of innocence and discovery of love is portrayed wonderfully by the actress, who sadly passed away long before her time. Byrne is evil incarnate, with a startling cropped haircut that would be right at home in this day and age it seems. Mann favourite Robert Prosky also shows up as a local priest with knowledge of The Keep. Somewhere out there in someone’s garage there lies a full cut of this film, just waiting for an extended Blu Ray transfer, complete with tweaks on sound design (its fuzzy commotion at times), special features and the redemptive treatment that a sterling genre addition like this deserves. There’s so much quality to be found in it, from the alluring atmosphere that’s so thick it finds its way into your dreams after, to the aforementioned Tangerine Dream soundtrack that haunts the film’s visual landscape like an auditory phantasm to the silver and purple hued neon production design, resplendent in its tactile, tangible glory, it stands as a flawed classic with the potential to be so much more, if Mann mans up and makes the effort to give one of his very best efforts that care and time it deserves to rise from the void and soar again. If only. Oh and one more thing: there’s one more scene before the credits that isn’t in the actual cut, but go find it on YouTube because it’s really worth it and adds a lot to the story.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Baja

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Baja is one of those dusty, hazy B movies that seems to serve no other purpose other than to fill the 90 minute cable slot between 2am and 3:30 on TBS Superstation (yes I still remember that). But these flicks have their niche in the cinematic zeitgeist, and there’s a spot in my insanely busy schedule for each and every one, when time allows. This one is a lonely little piece of hard boiled desert pulp starring Molly Ringwald and Lance Henriksen, concerning drug deals gone wrong, betrayal, a hitman, a crime boss (Corbin Bernsen, whatever happened to him?) who chases his meds with hard-bar, lots of sand and washed out sun-bleach colour, some Cessna action and a hazy vibe that’s best attained by skulling a few brews before you settle in. Ringwald and Donal Logue play a couple trying to broker a deal out there near the Salton Sea, a deal that goes horribly wrong and ends up with eccentric contract killer Burns (Henriksen) being dispatched to find and kill them, or something vague like that. He spends less time actually being proactive though and instead wanders around, gets drunk, bitches about his wife, searches for hookers and basically does everything but the job he was hired to do. It’s hilarious watching Lance chew scenery and have a sand blast with his performance, seemingly a dude that wandered in dazed and heavily confused from a Coen Brothers flick. It all just kind of meanders past without a lot of fanfare until the final few frames when Henriksen hires a drunken bush pilot (Jack Conley) and flies off in his rickety plane out of the film, leaving us in the dust trying to decipher what is a fairly convoluted, strange little story. It’s fun for what it is though, has gorgeous scenery of rural California and Lance’s central performance is fun. Good luck ever finding it though, I snagged a battered old VHS tape in some forgotten store on Vancouver Island years ago.

-Nate Hill