Tag: movie

Roger Spottiswoode’s Terror Train

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I never realized just how many slasher flicks Jamie Lee Curtis did back in the late 70’s/early 80’s. Well, she only did four, but that’s still two more than I was recently aware of and I probably never would have stumbled upon Terror Train if Prime hadn’t put it top of the queue for awhile. It’s a decent enough horror exercise that is of course no match for Halloween, but has it’s moments. Curtis and a whole pack of rambunctious college partygoers are living it up aboard a train that’s barrelling though rural Quebec in the dead of night. Several of these people were involved in a very nasty prank a few years before and the person they preyed on has returned to prey on them, in the slow build, one by one, gruesome slaughter fashion we’re used to seeing in these types of flicks. It’s essentially your garden variety slasher flick set on a train and is entertaining enough, although never close to anything you might call scary. Curtis is good as the one in their group with the strongest moral compass, who realizes quick that their past isn’t done with them yet. Infamous magician David Copperfield shows up here playing, you guessed it, a magician who entertains these college kids when they’re not drinking or getting hacked to pieces. There’s a salty old train conductor (Ben Johnson) who begins to figure out something is wrong pretty quick, and I enjoyed his keen awareness because usually the slasher lore dictates that any staff or fringe players are clueless until the hammer eventually comes down on them. Pay close attention to certain scenes where the killer is hiding in very plain sight and see if you can tell who it is (it was fairly obvious to me), they picked a very weird, kinda ‘evil pixie’ looking individual whose creepy appearance goes a long way. It’s not a horror classic by any standards, but gets the job done for fans of the retro aesthetic, plus movies set on trains always have that going for them by default.

-Nate Hill

J.D. Dillard’s Sweetheart

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Blumhouse has been very inconsistent with their recent horror output (I’m looking at you, Fantasy Island) but I’m happy to report an absolute winner in J.D. Dillard’s Sweetheart, a terrific little monster movie that plays like LOST meets Cast Away by way of All Is Lost with a touch of Creature From The Black Lagoon, the black lagoon in this case being the blue waters of the South Pacific. For the record, I don’t mean to cheapen any original price of art by comparing it to other films that from which inspiration is drawn or call attention to the fact too much but I find that doing a quick mood board like that can be a handy way of drawing folks in to my review and, more importantly, the film itself. Anywho, this one sees a lone girl (Kiersey Clemons) wash up on the tropical shores of Fiji after some sort of shipwreck. She does her best to survive and gather food but when night falls she realizes she’s not alone, and there’s a weird ocean dwelling creature that snoops around after dark looking for prey. So begins a frenzied fight for survival and a battle for her life against this aquatic freak show that only gets more complicated when two former friends (Emory Cohen and Hanna Mangan Lawrence) arrive on a floaty raft. This is her story though and Kiersey gives a sensational performance full of life, organic vitality and genuine spirit even when there are long stretches with no dialogue. The creature is a hulking, slimy beast that just won’t relent, the special effects makeup used effectively to create a tactile, biologically believable… thing. Dillard makes his debut here and I commend him for incredibly strong work. There’s a brilliant and utterly terrifying scene involving an emergency flare lighting up the night horizon that nearly had my running out of the room, conceived and directed with great innovation. There’s a beautifully synthy score by Charles Scott IV that reminded me of Stranger Things, kicking into gear in all the right places to bring the action alive. It’s a terrific horror film with a fierce emotional core thanks to Kiersey’s performance, genuine thrills and a slick sense of wonder. I’ll end with a quote from our main character that stuck in my mind and proves that an 80 minute monster flick can have all the depth and introspect in script as any Hollywood drama: “For a lot of my life, I’ve struggled with being believed. The truth doesn’t always come with a receipt. Sometimes all we have is our word.” One of the year’s best films so far.

-Nate Hill

William Malone’s FearDotCom

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve written about this film before a few years ago and absolutely trashed it, but after a revisit is realize that I was either too harsh or my tastes shifted, because FearDotCom, although a narrative catastrophe, is a stylistic and artistic wellspring of morbidly beautiful visual excess. It almost doesn’t even belong in a movie theatre or home screen but in some avant garde museum as an experimental piece of video. The plot, as far as I could swing it: Two detectives (Stephen Dorff and Natascha McElhone) in one of those constantly rainy, impossibly bleak inner cities investigate a string of murders tied to a strange website and carried out by a sadistic, monotone lunatic (Stephen Rea). Both the website and the murders are apparently linked to the ghost of a creepy little hemophiliac girl with a bouncy ball, but how or why remains a mystery because the film doesn’t feel the need to coherently explain any of its plot points. The cops, the killer, other various oddballs, the website, none of it is strung together with any kind of proper storytelling adhesive or logic and there’s simply no piecing it together in a way that makes sense. That leaves you to give up and let the film wash over you as a sort of sensory experience, an expressionist’s dream of eerie sound, striking viscera, abstract visuals and potent atmosphere. The film works on that level, if you can compromise story for ambience. This is one of those cities like in The Crow, Dark City or Seven where it’s always raining, always nighttime, all the light fixtures swing and strobe uneasily, every subway station is abandoned, smokestacks and power plant silos stand sentiment across the horizon and the residential buildings look like they’re limping along after a severe earthquake. It was filmed in Luxembourg and Montreal but is obstinately set in NYC which leads to hilarious contradictions in architectural landmarks. The ghostly images and horror elements look like they’re inspired by everything from Murnau to Merhige and are at times truly inspired. The cast, although hailing from various genre paths, all somehow seem suited to something this weird. Dorff comes from horror roots and has perfected this angry, brooding aura to a science, McElhone seems to handpick the strangest projects and is always an ethereal presence in whatever she shows up in, Irish character player Rea mostly stars in Neil Jordan stuff and is no stranger to the bizarre while genre legend Udo Kier shows up in the most random, wordless cameo of his career. The visual aspect is almost indescribable until you’re neck deep in it, picture the stark stylistic choices from The Matrix with some serious Silent Hill vibes and a very ‘Euro’ flavour to the whole thing. It’s interesting that an American studio horror flick about stuff like cops hunting a serial killer and some murder website ended up looking, feeling and sounding like something from a literal other dimension, and that kind of outcome can’t be written off as simply a bad film in every way but viewed as a messy yet provocative experimental curio. It’s just a shame the story got fatally shredded somewhere between conception and execution, or this could have been something really great. Oh and fun fact: the producers couldn’t secure the web domain name ‘fear.com’ because whoever owned it wouldn’t sell *for any price*, so in the film when we see the actual site it’s ‘feardotcom.com’ which is so hilarious to me and just adds to the overall weirdness even more.

-Nate Hill

Stephen King’s Desperation

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Stephen King’s Desperation is a decent enough TV-movie adaptation made perversely, hysterically memorable by one actor’s performance, which I’ll get to in a moment. It’s based on one of of two Nevada desert set books (the other being The Regulators) he wrote under his pseudonym ‘Richard Bachmann’ that exist in the same demonic dustbowl timeline and they are two of the best things he has written, just not quite as notorious as, you know, books that actually say ‘Stephen King’ on the cover. This is a grainy, leisurely paced but often quite brutal tale of various highway travellers terrorized, imprisoned and killed by a rogue sheriff who may be something more than human. They include an arrogant travel writer (Tom Skerritt), the cavalier roadie in his employ (Steven Weber), a spunky hitchhiker (Kelly Overton), a stranded couple (Henry Thomas and Annabeth Gish), a boozy old timer (Charles Durning) and others. The sheriff is played by Ron Perlman and he is the life of the fucking party here, a completely bonkers, unpredictably psychotic hoot who steals scenes and tramples over scenery like there’s no tomorrow. He’s got some truly perplexing one liners (“I love Lord Of The Rings!”) that make sense once you see that King himself wrote the screenplay for this and kept much of his trademark, pop culture laced bizarro dialogue intact. There’s spooky mythology at work here including haunted mining shafts, demon possession and legions of desert wildlife turning against our band of human survivors in the kind of well staged sequences that would have an army of animal wranglers working overtime. The film is about fifteen minutes too long and lags in places, and has the obvious look, budget and pacing of a very TV affair, but as a grisly little slice of oddball B movie fun, it works and there’s some inspired, Terry Gilliam style camera work that adds to the wonky vibe. It wouldn’t be half as fun without Ron Perlman though, who gives a deliciously deranged turn as one of the weirdest, wildest villains out there and deserves some sort of award, if not his own spinoff film. Good times.

-Nate Hill

Tom Holland’s Fright Night

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It took me a while to finally get around to seeing 1985’s vampire classic Fright Night and I’m glad I did because this is one gorgeous, blissfully 80’s soaked aesthetic pieces of shock pop art and I fell in love with every disco fever, harlequin romance tinged, Hammer Horror inspired, gothic erotica, glistening prosthetic effects laced second of it. I think I was apprehensive because I sat through that godawful 2011 Colin Farrell remake a while back and needed to cleanse my palette of such nonsense before doubling back and going for the real thing. This is a spectacular horror film built around a ‘vampire next door’ motif in which a high strung teenager (William Ragsdale) suspects his suave new neighbour (Chris Sarandon) of being a bloodsucking monster. He’s right, of course, but no one believes him and he finds himself in a furious fight for survival, to protect his mom and girlfriend and ward off this cunning, charismatic and very evil dude. He’s also aided by a hammy Van Helsing type out of work actor played by the incomparable Roddy McDowell in a performances great spirit, gusto and theatricality. The only acting that doesn’t feel quite right is Stephen Geoffreys as the main character’s twitchy, borderline spectrum friend who I guess is supposed to just be an oddball but every choice from him feels tone deaf and awkward. Chris Sarandon is so damn good as Jerry the vampire he deserves his own spinoff franchise though, what a mesmerizing villain. He’s a super good looking dude and a terrific actor who has kind of been ‘here and there’ for decades (he was a cop in the first Chucky film and Humperdinck in Princess Bride) but I’ve always felt he’s been underused and deserved a way more prolific career. Anyways he knocks it out of the park here and has immense presence, making Jerry the kind of laidback, sardonic, low key menacing alpha male villain that just steals the damn show. The film looks, sounds and feels incredible in every way. The special effects are gruesome, tactile and worthy of the 80’s horror time capsule, I truly miss the days of slimy practical effects every time I catch up with an oldie like this. The score by Brad Fiedel is so airy, synth-soaked, ambient and uneasy in all the right places. Director Tom Holland and cinematographer Jan Kiesser have a ball photographing this thing and make the aesthetic this sort of ‘pastel suburbia’ vibe with window curtains billowing sensually in the summer wind, blood spilling elegantly when necks are bitten, sneaky flourishes of kinky voyeurism and savage vampire makeup brimming with fangs, blood and the most exaggerated, hellish contact lenses a production budget could ever hope to get. This is just so much fun, one of the sexiest, schlockiest, most deliciously tongue in cheek and opulent vamp flicks to come out of that glorious decade of horror that shall never be topped.

-Nate Hill

John Hyams’ Alone

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It’s tough to find thrillers that are actually consistently suspenseful throughout, that go above and beyond in their job of, you know, thrilling the audience. John Hyams’ Alone is like an hour and a half panic attack put to film, a sleek, ruthless, transparently simple yet magnificently executed genre exercise in terror, isolation and pursuit that entertains so well it’s made it onto my top ten of the year (so far). The story couldn’t be more distilled into tunnel vision high concept fashion: a lone girl (Jules Willcox) packs up her modest belongings into a U-Haul trailer, says goodbye to Portland, the tragedy she lived through there and heads out onto the highways of Oregon, through the lush Autumn Pacific Northwest to bury her trauma, forget the past and start a new life elsewhere. After a scary traffic incident with a mysterious black Jeep, she finds herself stalked and eventually kidnapped by its driver, a creepy loner played by the imposing Mark Menchaca. She’s imprisoned in his remote cabin, fights her way to escape and so begins a breakneck, cutthroat cat and mouse game for survival across the rough but beautiful boreal rainforest, chased doggedly through the brush by this unhinged yet calculating and quite clever maniac. This film impressed me a lot because at no point did I I award any scene with the oft used utterance of “Yeah right” as something implausible or farfetched happened. Everything here, although heightened and extreme as any thriller of its type, feels like it actually could happen for real. Our heroine is brave, resourceful, logical in her strategies and commands our sympathy and support. Our villain is tactical, psychologically manipulative, terrifyingly predatory and straight evil right to the bone. Director John Hyams is the son of Peter Hyams, who made quite a few awesome films back in the day and it seems the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, at least here. His shot composition is gorgeous, full of austere, somehow peaceful overhead shots of the trees, opaquely suggesting the drama unfolding beneath their foliage while maintaining a beautiful yet eerie elemental atmosphere. The film is split up into chapters given titles like ‘The Road’, ‘The River’, ‘The Rain’, a welcome lyrical touch. There’s an absolutely wonderful sound design transition in which a rapidly beating heart morphs into the percussive rhythm of a helicopter propellor that is just so inspired and worth the price of admission alone. I think what I loved most about this fantastic film was the deeply affecting themes humming along harmonious in the background; there’s a reason it’s called ‘Alone’, and it’s not because she was driving those highways by herself when the killer picked her. This woman has been through hell before our story finds her, and in a way her horrific ordeal with this adversary serves as a form of redemption, a coming to terms with past trauma. Now, in a lesser film this would have perhaps been too obvious and heavy handed, but those themes are so expertly integrated and the film overall so well crafted, so brisk yet full of depth if you take the time to look, so thrilling and full of life, atmosphere and excitement, it comes out a winner all across the board. A must watch.

-Nate Hill

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The Rainmaker is one of those journeyman courtroom dramas that’s isn’t all flash, sizzle and spectacle. There are those things periodically and in the obligatory final flourish but this is more a piece that shows the dutiful, unsung labour that goes into putting a deposition together, the many hours of stress involved in taking on a class action lawsuit and for once, a quality I admired, focuses more so on the victims who are suing rather than the lawyers themselves in terms of character. Based on a John Grisham novel and directed by a fellow you may have heard of called Francis Ford Coppola, it stars Matt Damon in a humble, restrained turn as rookie lawyer Rudy Baylor, riding on the coattails of amoral hustler guru Bruiser Stone (Mickey Rourke) and backed up by perennial sidekick Deck Shiffler (Danny Devito). Stone’s firm (if you can call it that) is an unabashed ambulance chasing racket until Rudy stumbles into some genuine high stakes cases that matter, namely a lawsuit against an insurance giant for denying treatment to a boy (Johnny Whitworth) dying of leukaemia. This puts Rudy and Deck up against a top dollar team of legal talent led by preening shark Jon Voight, the kind of soulless muckraker who gets ruffled at the very mention of the fact he’s sold out to the wrong side. Also along for the ride is battered housewife Claire Danes, whom Rudy takes a liking to and wishes to protect against her monster of a husband. It’s a fairly sprawling tale with an impressive amount of characters all juggled handsomely, not to mention a dense narrative that is somehow delivered to us breezily and coherently. But character is key here and ultimately wins the day; DeVito is terrific as the chow mein guzzling little curmudgeon who initially comes across as a sleaze but quietly, ever so subtly peels back a hidden and unobtrusive later of compassion as the story draws you, and him in. Rourke is priceless, chain-smoking, chewing dialogue and literally walking out of the film a third of the way through to some tropical beach where he delivers key information over the phone before returning to his all your can drink margaritas. Voight is cold, steely and blusters without getting hammy, something he’s always somehow been able to tightrope pretty damn well. Danny Glover is great as a sneakily idealistic judge, Dean Stockwell as a short lived and quite cantankerous one and watch for vivid supporting turns from Mary Kay Place, Teresa Wright, Red West, Randy Travis, Roy Scheider as the leathery, evil insurance CEO and a scene owning Virginia Madsen as a terrified whistleblower. I greatly enjoyed this because although it’s a big budget, star studded Hollywood courtroom drama, it takes its time, is leisurely paced, lived in, meticulous about character development, sincerely cares and has compassion for the humans who are scared and hurting within its narrative and tells several interwoven stories, all well worth your time and attention. Great film!

-Nate Hill

Antonio Campos’s The Devil All The Time

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I can say without doubt or hesitation that The Devil All The Time is the ‘feel bad’ movie of the year, and I mean that in a good way. This isn’t a film that seeks to find the silver lining, heart of gold of light at the end of the tunnel as far as atrocious human behaviour, sickening acts of violence and degradation and overall depravity go, this is a film that displays such things without much in the way of message, theme, agenda or apology. It’s just a film about terrible people doing terrible things, plain as pasta. If you can reconcile that early on in and stomach your way through the rest, there’s a whole lot to appreciate here, namely a spectacularly star studded cast all giving superb work in a gorgeously produced piece of Southern Gothic, nihilistic, psychosexual, blood spattered, sleazed up, unpretentious hayseed pulp fiction that has no patience for the squeamish, the self righteous or those who just tuned in to see Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson and won’t know what hit them. The film is a sprawling backwater canvas that spans decades and sees a whole host of unsavoury denizens interweave devilish deeds, violent acts, religious mania and murder most foul, or in this film’s case, most celebratory. Holland is terrific as Arvin, a tough kid with a nasty past who was taught early on in life by his extremely troubled father (Bill Skarsgard, haunting) about what kind of evil is out there. He’s forced to reckon with quite a few gnarly characters including a married couple serial killer duo (Jason Clarke and Riley Keogh), the county’s most corrupt lawman (Sebastian Stan), a belligerent small town mobster (Douglas Hodge) and a piece of work preacher (Pattinson playing gleefully against type) with a penchant for sexual abuse of underage girls and not a remorseful bone in his body about such acts. Arvin anchors the whole sordid tapestry together but is by no means a hero, and as much as the violence he inflicts is justified when you consider the people he’s up against, he is still a very harsh and cruel force, made so by Skarsgard’s passing of the torch as a young boy. The narrative doesn’t always seem to flow naturally, there’s a few jerks on the pacing chain that I noticed but the film is so beautifully made in terms of production design and performance it just sweeps you up anyway. It’s based on a novel by a fellow called Donald Ray Pollock, and judging by the wistful narration provided here he approves of what the filmmakers have wrought with his work, but I also see on google that he grew up in the actual county this is set in, and god help him if any of this stuff happened in his life because I wouldn’t wish these events on anyone. This is a pessimistic film that doesn’t pretend to be some holy treatise on pain and suffering whereby showing awful things happen we attain some kind of catharsis, by distance, perspective or irony. No, this film just presents to us the absolute shittiest human behaviour it can think of, and let’s us sit with it as we will. Many will abhor it, I appreciated it for what it was, for the craftsmanship, acting, artistry and scriptwriting on display and I suppose if there’s one thing it had to say that I absorbed, it’s that violence begets violence, generationally speaking in this case, and sometimes that’s not such a terrible thing when put to good use. A tough pearl of wisdom, but then again this is the toughest sort of film to be moved by.

-Nate Hill

Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

A lot can happen on a nearly eight thousand kilometre railway trip, and much of it does in Brad Anderson’s chilly, blunt, ruthless and exciting Transsiberian, a Hitchcockian whodunit with as many turns in the plot as there are bends in the railroad. Filmed on location in Russia and China, the Trans Siberian is indeed a real train that makes a long, snowy voyage from Beijing all the way to Moscow and here serves as evocative backdrop for six various characters involved in a dangerous game of deceit, escape, intimidation and foul play. Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer are the American couple, he’s a bit of a bumbling nebbish, she’s more quiet, shrewd, observant and possessive of a reckless past. Eduardo Noriega and Kate Mara are another couple, outwardly shady, edgy and suspiciously rough around the edges. One of these four is smuggling a large amount of heroin somewhere in the train, and it’s up to the viewer to discern why, how, where they got it and what the consequences will be. Meanwhile, two Russian narcotics officers trawl the train trying to smoke out the mule, played by a cold, psychopathic Thomas Kretschmann and a wily, charismatic and utterly scene stealing Ben Kingsley. This is such an entertaining, suspenseful, panicky, fascinating, character based piece of melodramatic escapism, made so by brilliant work from its cast, powerful scenes of violence, pursuit and distrust and locations that are at once beautiful, desolate, eerie and breathtaking. Mortimer is excellent as the kind of woman who fiercely guards her true nature and is resourceful to the bone in a tricky situation. Mara is low key very effective as the mysterious girl in over her head, Noriega just the right mixture of charming and dangerous, Kretschmann thoroughly chilling in his full on Slav tracksuit while Harrelson gets the film’s only comic relief as the lovable schmuck who doesn’t see danger until it’s in the same train compartment staring him down. Kingsley steals the show though, he’s a cackling fiend who exudes menace, dark humour and terrifying villainy, sometimes all in the same note. Director Anderson is responsible for some of my favourite horror/thriller films out there (Session 9, The Machinist, Vanishing On 7th Street) and this is one of his best. Cold, stark, with well written, believable characters, oppressive atmosphere, tangible danger and a feeling of karmic forces giving each player exactly what they need and deserve as the serpentine narrative unfolds. Great film.

-Nate Hill

David Koepp’s You Should Have Left

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

This one is called You Should Have Left, and buddy let me tell you if I saw this in a theatre I just might have. It’s a fairly terrible film, just muddy, cluttered, rushed, undercooked, unfocused and painfully mediocre. It’s directed by David Koepp, who did the awesome Secret Window based on a Stephen King yarn and with this one he’s clearly trying to evoke The Shining, it’s a breadcrumb trail of inspiration that leads down a bunch of dimly lit corridors of a spooky manor that looks like a hurricane whisked up an entire Ikea and shat it out on a hill in the Welsh countryside. Kevin Bacon plays a wealthy Hollywood type married to famous actress Amanda Seyfried (I’m not being funny, she plays a famous actress) who, um, is like two decades younger than him and it’s just creepy seeing that kind of casting decision at work. He’s got a murky, tragic past, their marriage isn’t all wine n’ roses, their daughter (Avery Tiuu Essex should be commended for outshining Bacon and Seyfried combined) picks up on the friction and things are very tense before supernatural stuff even pops up. When it does, it doesn’t make much sense narratively, borrows off more than a few better films and feels out of place. Bacon plays two characters, and the story was so willy-nilly I couldn’t tell if we were supposed to know right off the bat that it was him in both roles or not (it’s obvious). The twist has zero impact because everything before wasn’t explained to us anywhere near close to clearly enough, and the level of incomprehension is almost insulting to any viewer. Why Bacon and Seyfried would do this kind of lukewarm, flaccid excuse for a horror flick is beyond me. I will say it had some cool lighting, and a half decent atmospheric score, but beyond that? Secret Window this ain’t, You Should Leave before wasting seven bucks for this on iTunes like I did.

-Nate Hill