Tag: movie reviews

Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


No one does the breezy, goodnatured crime drama like Steven Soderbergh, and after rewatching his 1998 romantic caper Out Of Sight, I’ve realized it’s my favourite of his films by a mile. The easygoing love story between George Clooney’s hapless career criminal Jack Foley and Jennifer Lopez’s feisty federal Marshall Karen Sisco is a pairing for the ages, and the two not only smoulder up the screen with their obvious presence, but have effortless chemistry in spades and know how to sell the romance until you feel that tug on the ol’ heartstrings when the stakes are raised. It doesn’t hurt that cinematographer Elliott Davis beautifully frames each encounter with them, the best being a gorgeous airport dinner where the two croon out Elmore Leonard’s savoury, measured dialogue against a snow laden Tarmac outside, the perfect romantic ambience. Foley is a trouble magnet, embroiled in scheme after scheme with his older, wiser partner Buddy (Ving Rhames). After their dipshit pal Glen (a stoned Steve Zahn) gets them mixed up in a plot to rob a pompous Wall Street millionaire (Albert Brooks) via some truly nasty jailbird thugs from their collective past (Don Cheadle provides the film’s only true dose of menace amongst the charm), all hell breaks loose and against odds, Jack and Karen find themselves falling in love. Elmore Leonard’s scripts always seem to find their way to great directors (Barry Sonnenfield made magic with Get Shorty), richly varied casts (Jackie Brown is an ensemble for the time capsule) and end up as films that are simply timeless. Dennis Farina mellows out as Karen’s concerned ex-cop father, Luis Guzman does his grimy cholo rat shtick, and watch for Catherine Keener, Nancy Allen, Isiaah Washington, Paul Calderon, Viola Davis, an uncredited Michael Keaton playing none other than his Jackie Brown character (an Elmore Leonard cinematic universe!) and a surprise cameo right at the end that I won’t spoil except to say it sets up any potential sequels nicely. The whole deal rests on Lopez and Clooney’s shoulders though, and they’re nothing short of mesmerizing. It’s a rag tale romance, classy but down to earth, two beautiful souls from very opposite sides of the tracks who generate sparks and circle each other like cosmic magnets. Stuck together in the trunk of a speeding car, they discuss life, love and films, reminding us that no romance is alike to another and the best way to start off something like that is perhaps on the wrong foot and in the least imagined circumstances possible. Like any love story it knows that a pinch of sadness is necessary to balance the bittersweet recipe and tweak our emotions just right. A career best for George, Jennifer and Steven and a film worthy of classic status. 

-Nate Hill

Disney’s The Journey Of Natty Gann

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


It’s neat to think that Disney would take a chance on something as grim and risky as The Journey Of Natty Gann, but they green-lit it and allowed a wonderful story to come alive. Set during the Great Depression and focusing on themes of abandonment and loss, it’s hardly the studio’s milieu, but they’ve proudly stamped their seal on it and I consider it to be one of the best amongst their live action output to date. Starring a terrific Meredith Salenger, it tells the tale of a young girl who’s separated from her father (Ray Wise, brilliant as ever) after he takes off to a logging job elsewhere in the country. Faced with life as an orphan or worse, Natty makes an epic trek across the dilapidated, economically gutted states to find him. It’s got all the trappings of a syrupy, run of the mill Disney outing: dog/wolf cross sidekick etc, but it really manages to find the danger, fear and loneliness she faces in a country that has gone to all hell everywhere she looks, and let the pathos come naturally out of how she fights her way through each new situation. John Cusack is great as a train hopping rambler who joins her here and there, his mopey doglike visage fitting right into the 30’s hobo shtick uncannily well. Salenger is a strong and fierce leading lady, the strife she sees around her echoed in her haunted face, emblazoned also with hope for the future. Filmed entirely in my home province of British Columbia, the film is beyond gorgeous to look at, the sooty grime of a looming industrial wave accented by the burnished greens and crystal waters of the region. This is sort of a forgotten Disney film, it wouldn’t be right up there on someone’s collection shelf or sitting near the front of the rental queue online, but it’s more than worth checking out, and considered a classic by me. 

-Nate Hill

Werner Herzog’s My Son My Son What Have Ye Done

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


Werner Herzog’s My Son My Son What Have Ye Done, although not quite congruent with what you’d call my cup of tea, is an impressively bizarre little foray into… well, something. Michael Shannon plays a disturbed stage actor who, in an offscreen fit of violence, slays his mother (the great Grace Zabriskie) with a sword. Now, whether by mental illness, strange Peruvian spirits that piggy-backed on his psyche after a trip down there or reasons unknown, he slowly unravels throughout the rather short yet obstinately molasses paced film, until the final act solidifies his exodus into the realm of total bonkers lunacy. Shannon is an expert at all things in the circle of mental unrest in his work, and even when playing innocuous supporting characters or stalwart leads, there’s always a glint of menace in the whites of his eyes. It’s an impenetrable character study though, giving us not much to go on other than obtuse clues and the weird, wacky troupe of people in his life, portrayed by an appropriately zany bunch of cult actors. He has an uncle (Brad Dourif, a Herzog regular) with an ostrich farm and some, shall we say, interesting views on life. His quiet girlfriend (Chloe Sevigny) looks on in unsettlement, and his mellowed out drama instructor (Udo Kier) tries to make heads or tails of everyone else’s strange behaviour. You know you’re in the twilight zone when Udo Kier is the most well adjusted character in your film, but such is the territory. As Shannon descends into whatever internal eye of the storm privy only to him, he takes his mother and her two friends hostage, and the obligatory salty detective (Willem Dafoe) and his rookie partner (Michael Pena) show up to add to the clutter. David Lynch has an executive producer credit on this, and although the extent of his involvement is hazy to me, simply having his moniker post-title in the credits adds a whole dimension of bizarro to go along with Herzog’s already apparent eccentricities. It’s well filmed, acted and looks terrific onscreen, and I’m all for ambiguous, round the bush storytelling as a rule, but this just wasn’t a dose that sat well with me or tuned into my frequency as a viewer. Worth it in spades for that cast though, and their individual, episodic shenanigans. 

-Nate Hill

Sebastian Silva’s Magic Magic

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


Sebastián Silva’s Magic Magic is a terminally bizarre little experimental film that simultaneously fascinates and prompts the viewer to wonder why it was ever made in the first place. Starring a posse of young, uber famous Hollywood talent that usually draw crowds in numbers, Magic somehow managed to slip under the limbo bar and avoid everyone’s radar undetected, no doubt a result of any marketing being smothered by a studio who wouldn’t have been able to sell the thing as it was presented to them. Jarring, aloof, persistently weird and frankly all over the place, it’s worth a look just for the sheer novelty, I suppose. A trip to Chile turns into some kind of nightmare for a group of youngsters played by Juno Temple, Catalina Sandino Morena, Emily Browning and an apparently mentally challenged Michael Cera, when one of them starts to display unpredictably odd behaviour, feverish delusions and violent outbursts that would give Father Lancaster Merrin the willies. Temple, an actress who admirably always takes risks, goes full on whackadoo here as the disturbed girl, plagued by restless mental instability caused by who knows what, subjecting her friends to her unsettling monkeyshines. Cera’s performance is so odd and tonally oblong it’s like he’s in a school play and his lines have been dubbed over by someone who’s first language is not English, I honestly don’t know what he was going for, while Browning does her pale and sultry thing dimly in the background. Is Juno just off her rocker? Are there invisible spirits at work that have latched onto her? Did the filmmakers even know when they made this? My guess is no, and sometimes that can work, but you have to present a final product that at least flows through it’s ambiguous arc naturally, and this one just feels off where it should draw us in. Neat camera work, Temple is engaging as she always is and makes a vivid, if ultimately perplexing impression, but overall it’s an unlit tunnel of a film that we emerge from and go “huh?”, and not in a good way.

-Nate Hill

Atomic Blonde 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


Atomic Blonde is the annual adrenaline shot the action genre gets every year, if we’re lucky. Amidst carbon copy superhero extravaganzas, increasingly ridiculous Fast/Furious hemorrhages and head scratching animation ventures, the multiplex is a frustrating realm these days, but sometimes we are blessed with a good old fashioned hard-R action blitzkrieg that turns out to be a pure banger, lighting up the summer movie roster like neon fireworks. Blonde rides the wake that John Wick left behind, a refreshing, stylistic, no-holds-barred form of action storytelling that cheerfully pisses in the face of all things glossy and PG-13. Set in a frenzied Berlin days before the wall comes down and the Cold War freezes over, Charlize Theron is a breathtakingly sexy super spy with a very particular set of skills and a borderline nihilistic approach to espionage, as well as a massive bone to pick with certain factions of the enemy, who stay fairly hidden until the wicked chess game of a plot rounds it’s final curves. Tasked by a sneaky British intelligence honcho (Toby Jones) and a mysterious CIA Agent (John Goodman, excellent as always) she’s caught between all kinds of warring assets including the KGB, roaming German euro trash punks and a British rogue agent (James Macavoy) playing all sides at once. The plot serves action, to be sure, but it still takes itself seriously amidst all the punches, flying kicks, icepicks to the jugular and careening vehicular destruction. Theron is a primal piston of wanton violence and slinky sexual virility, throwing herself headlong into every action sequence with the kind of reckless abandon that makes you believe those bruises for real (apparently she busted a few ribs for real filming this, the absolute champ). The highlight is a bone shattering one take wonder of a staircase fight, a hapless Eddie Marsan bandaging a bullet wound with swaths of duck tape while Theron furiously dispatches several enemies using any means within arms reach, a spectacle that leads to glorious cringes once the hits get hard and critical and sharp objects start getting close to eyeballs and major organs. The soundtrack must be noted too, the filmmakers employing nostalgic melodies straight out of the 80’s to evoke time and place nicely, with everything from Nina’s 99 Luftballoons to The Clash’s London Calling and Queen’s Under Pressure coming into play. There’s also pretty much the hottest movie sex scene I’ve seen in years, as Theron and a bombshell of a French agent (Sofia Boutella) get slippery under the sheets in a neon soaked Berlin hotel room. This is an action film made by folks who are head over heels in love with the genre, and the passion shows. We never feel cheated, chaperoned or short changed, every ounce of this piece charged up to please the crowd and keep pulses thundering. 

-Nate Hill

Xavier Gen’s Hitman 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


How to put this: if none of the classic video games featuring Agent 47 were ever made, and Xavier Gen’s Hitman was a standalone film, it wouldn’t be a half bad little B-movie type actioner, with a few gnarly set pieces and a level of acceptable energy kept up throughout. As a film version of these beloved games, however, it just just crashes and burns. Here’s why: the games were very specific, stealthy and designed to be atmospheric, slow burning tactical missions carefully built upon each other like a precarious house of cards, each mission more complex, difficult and risky than the last. The film? A standard Hollywood-ized action narrative that blatantly ignores every structural piece and character quality of the games. When will they learn? What’s more is, the film would have been unique, something memorable, had they followed the blueprint which the games pioneered, but they always just insist on cheapening the formula with boring old movie tropes instead of revering an already charted course which made the source material popular enough to get a film version green-lit in the first place. Ironic. Anywho, this ones your standard globetrotting cheeseball outing, with a bald Timothy Olyphant doing his best yet coming nowhere close to being a solid 47, stuck in a mucky plot involving corrupt Eastern Europeans, double crossing fellow agents and pursued by a hyped up Dougray Scott as some Interpol bigwig and Robert Knepper as a shady Russian (dat accent tho) secret police dude. 47 is betrayed by his own organization and tossed to the dogs, forced to go rogue and, in the film’s most grave plotting misstep, saddled with babysitting duty to a Slavic damsel in distress (Olga Kurylenko). They seriously just gotta hurl a Bond babe into every flick that remotely resembles a 007 venture, don’t they, which is a major offence when you look at what a ruthlessly mythic, near inhuman creature 47 is in the games, and what a manipulatable chump he becomes when pinned under the yoke of this painfully silly script. The 46 I know would just as soon as bury a bullet in this chick’s head as let her tag along and become a liability, let alone start to develop (cringe) human emotions. Such are the dollar signs in the eyes of studio execs though, and any hope of a faithful adaptation suffers as a result. The few sequences that work, including a hotel escape and a subway car Mano á mano between 47 and his genetically altered fellow killers, just don’t feel remotely inspired by, or in the spirit of the video games. The film has a few muted notes of originality, but any action piece that feels the need to pilfer John Powell’s Bourne Identity score instead of hiring a composer to whip up something fresh just can’t be taken seriously. Big ol’ meh from me, think I’ll rent out a PS2 from the pawn shop and settle in with Hitman: Blood Money again, because this shit doesn’t cut it. 

-Nate Hill

Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


“I knew this girl, and she was a fighter. However far you think she ran, I can promise you she ran farther…”
I couldn’t find an exact verbatim quote, but that’s the kind of affecting, succinctly written dialogue to be found in Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River, a deeply moving knockout of a film. The third in a so far brilliant stateside saga dubbed the ‘frontier trilogy’ (following Sicario and Hell Or Highwater), River is the beast of the bunch, a surprisingly emotional, fully engaging murder mystery set in yet another harsh, weather beaten vista where life struggles to survive, namely a desolate Indian reservation in the heart of Wyoming. We open with life in jeopardy right out of the gate: as Nick Cave’s haunting original score howls across the snowy plain, a terrified young girl flees through the landscape, alone and injured. She doesn’t make it through the night. This sparks an investigation from the scant law enforcement the area has to offer (Graham Greene is wonderfully world weary as the tribal Sheriff), a rookie FBI Agent (Elizabeth Olsen) and a veteran game tracker (Jeremy Renner in hands down the best work he’s ever done) who’s rocked by his own personal tragedy. Their task is anything but easy, stalled on all sides by criminal activity, uncooperative suspects and that ever present, ruthless winter climate. The mystery, although not quite as elaborate as one might imagine going in, is an unfortunate and infuriating situation that fires up the blood, as well as Renner’s dogged hunting instinct and need for retribution, an act he solemnly promises to the girl’s broken father, played by Gil Birmingham in the kind of show stopping, heartbreaking performance that pretty much demands a best supporting nod. Renner is just… so good, and it’s jarring to see him out of that glossy Hawkeye getup and in a role with some real heft, but he carries himself with grave charisma, especially in a monologue that will have eyes, ears and hearts rooted to the screen. This is Sheridan’s first time in the director’s chair and the guy proves he’s just as uncannily gifted as he is with writing, especially when it comes to action, his rendition of the classic Mexican standoff/shootout is queasily suspenseful and the best sequence of it’s kind that I’ve seen in years. He’s also got a knack for finding just the right musical talent for his pictures as well. Sicario saw Jóhann Jóhannsson whip up an audible nightmare of a score, and Hell Or Highwater also had the benefit of Cave and Warren Ellis, whose compositions here echo out through the desolation like laments for those lost, dead and buried under the snow. Tightly paced, emotionally rich, suffocating in it’s scenes of tension, cathartically invigorating when it needs to be, all of the best things a story should be are on display here. If Sheridan’s output continues to ascend the way we’ve seen so far, he’ll singlehandedly save ol’ Hollywood. 

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory- Mirror Wars: Reflection One 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


Mirror Wars: Reflection One is a miserably bad, slipshod Russian produced Top Gun/Bourne Identity clone that seems to exist only so three genre heavyweights can collect a nice little paycheque. The fellows in question are Malcom McDowell, Armand Assante and Rutger Hauer, and the trio grimace their way through grade school dialogue plus a nonexistent, comatose plot line, surrounded by Russian no name ‘actors’ who do anything but perform decently. Everyone here is some sort of clandestine spy or cloak n’ dagger federal heavy, all out to get a cutting edge self flying aviation AI program implemented in fighter jets, or at least that’s what I got out of it. McDowell is a sinister nutjob who plans to steal it or something, with surprising stunt agility for a dude his age. Assante is some bumbling, overzealous law enforcement pazzi who traipses all over Eastern Europe doing not much of anything, while Hauer is a mystery man literally credited as ‘Mysterious Man’, some all powerful spook who pulls the strings on everyone. The main flub here is dubbing, as in whoever they brought in to lay English voices over those of the Russian actors, because they sound like deaf people with mouths full of maple syrup, and that’s no exaggeration. At least hire a few competent VO artists to lay in some English bars so the pitiful few people who actually give this thing the time of day (myself included, sadly) can understand the badly written dialogue. But no. Aside from the three legged table of wasted talent that Hauer, Assante and an especially gamy McDowell provide, this ones for the dogs. 

David Cronenberg’s Spider 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


David Cronenberg’s Spider is a prickly, unsettling plunge into the frays of mental illness with all the subtleties of a bad dream whose source is hard to pin down. As a disoriented, emotionally shellshocked Ralph Fiennes shambles into a residency at a halfway house in London, he’s reminded of the past, and begins to brush away layers of cobwebs that hide more than a few nasty secrets from his upbringing. Raised by his wayward father (Gabriel Byrne) and haughty mother (Miranda Richardson, also showing up in a dual role), Spider, as she nicknamed him, began to lose his grip on reality at a very young age, resulting in an eerie tragedy. Or did it? That’s the key to Cronenberg’s vision here, the kind of blood chilling uncertainty that one sees a mentally ill person struggle through. Spider’s grip on the past, and his own present coherency is as tenuous as the lingering webs that gild both his memory, as well as the shrouded nooks and crannies of the desolate borough of London he aimlessly shuffles through, the empty rooms and lived-in corridors of his childhood home practically mirroring those of his mind. Fiennes is scarily good in the role, abandoning any researched mimicry to full on effortlessly sink into the psyche of this poor disturbed man, organic and believable. Byrne is solemn and somber as ever, just as complicated as his progeny yet burdened with the also torturous yoke of sanity, while Richardson is electric in both her roles. Stage stalwart John Neville babbles his way through a turn as a fellow resident of the halfway house, while Lynn Redgrave plays it’s stern matron. Dank, destitute and lost is the tone they’ve gone for here, with no Hollywood safety net to rescue both viewer and protagonist from the scintillating curves of a narrative that has no light at the end of it’s tunnel, a brave choice by Cronenberg, and stunning work from everyone who brings the tale to life, such as it is. Be ready to put on a Disney flick after sitting through the nail biting gloom of this one. 

-Nate Hill

M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


As much as M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs is a brilliantly structured ScFi suspense yarn that’ll give your ticker a run for it’s money, it’s just as effective as a touching exploration of faith and hopelessness, the warring notions that there is either someone or something out there looking out for us, or more distressingly, there is not. One need only watch Mel Gibson’s staggeringly well pitched performance as a man bereft of belief in anything beyond the tangible to feel as alienated as he and his beloved relatives do when a sneaky, marauding band of extraterrestrials take up residence on their remote farm, leaving vast crop circles all about the place. As a dimly paced, impossibly eerie invasion narrative grips us from the forefront, we’re also somewhat primally aware of the story of a once steadfast man, already ruined by personal tragedy, come apart at the seams and start to lose his last vestige of belief in anything beyond our world. Gibson’s wide eyed desperation is almost scarier than the otherworldly beings themselves, which is saying a lot considering these are some of the most unnerving alien critters ever seen on film. A farm is the perfect oasis of desolation to set these events in, and the nocturnal romps through the corn in search of these beasties will make your heart skip a few hundred beats in apprehension. Gibson abides there with his ex baseball pro bro (Joaquin Phoenix) and two adorably deadpan children (Rory Culkin and a very young Abigail Breslin). There’s a deep sense of coziness that is violently uprooted when these unwanted guests show up, an idyllic tranquility tainted by an unknown element most foul, raising the stakes nicely, leading up to the claustrophobic finale. The proceedings almost have a dream logic to them, as if this whole deal is happening on a plane removed several degrees from ours. Characters interact in peculiar, staccato fashion, certain elements here and there don’t sound or feel like they’re… “real”, for lack of a term that doesn’t exist. Whether by choice or happy accident, Shyamalan unsettles us far beyond being spooked solely by the aliens, who aren’t seen in full till way later in the film anyhow. There’s just a hollowness to Gibson’s plight, a restless gnawing anxiety fighting at the whites of his eyes as he struggles to find the light that has left his path. The ending is a perfectly etched out cap to his arc that sideswipes you with emotional heft you never knew the film had in it, and a thoughtful, planned out story beat that takes some contemplation to fully absorb. On the surface, Shyamalan’s work here is a restless sea, but there be dragons roiling underneath, internal demons that extend farther than the excellent science fiction storyline and touch upon ideas much more disturbing: the endless fear of what comes after death, and who is really out there watching us, besides cornfield dwelling lizard-men. Great stuff. 

-Nate Hill