Movies – Page 138 – Podcasting Them Softly

B Movie Glory: The Last Drop

April 10, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Before The Monuments Men, there was a dopey little WWII art heist flick called The Last Drop. Alright, it’s a tenuous connection but they’re centred around the same idea: what better time for a heist than the fog of war? Well, chaos is indeed the name of the game with this scrappy, obviously low budget barrel of fun, both in terms of setting and the film itself. The cast is the main draw, as is always the case with B movies.. without a few names, some veteran charisma, pieces like this would just be bereft of any value. Well they got Michael Madsen, because every movie needs a Michael Madsen, getting more screen-time than usual here as an American military honcho on the hunt for some priceless works of art that have gone missing from Berlin. It’s pretty much just a European wartime Rat Race, with various factions scrambling to find the loot and not get killed along the way. A platoon of Brits blunders across Holland, led by Sean Pertwee and including Tommy ‘Chibs’ Flanagan, Nick Moran, Rafe Spall, Alexander Skarsgard and more. A volatile German double agent (intense Karel Roden) pursues them all. Oh yeah, and Billy Zane calmly and deliberately poses for the camera as a Yankee operative with a fetish for wistful wartime romance, being as weird as Zane ever was. It all doesn’t make a ton of sense or add up to anything much at all, but it’s B movie bliss, and honestly I’d willingly watch this cast install drywall for ninety minutes, so one can’t complain about a silly little war flick that’s a bit rough around the edges. Good times.

-Nate Hill

The Pang Brother’s ReCycle

April 9, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

What do you get if you take a mixing bowl and toss in The Cell, The Grudge, some Stephen King, Alice In Wonderland, The Lovely Bones and a not-too-subtle anti abortion message? You get ReCycle, a visually unbelievable, absolutely terrifying, boundlessly imaginative Chinese horror fantasy that no one saw, got overlooked to the max, and occupies an eternal spot in my DVD collection. Novelist Tsui (The Eye’s Anjelica Lee) is suffering from writer’s block following two bestsellers, expected by her publisher to churn out another one posthaste. Plagued at first by paranormal visions in her apartment, she’s suddenly thrown headlong into the otherworldly dimension of ReCycle, a place that can turn from beautiful to hellish and back again within minutes. Picture a surreal, abstract realm where everything that’s ever lost, forgotten or abandoned ends up, thrown together in a gorgeous but threatening dream world with various levels, planes and passages, seemingly endless and never predictable. The dead also reside here, as she soon learns, some of which don’t take kindly to intruders and can be pretty volatile. Forced to flee from one area of the realm to others and beyond, she’s joined by the spirit of a lost little girl, and put through one hell of time trying to find her way out. Included are dilapidated, haunted amusement parks, fields and mountains that extend for millions of miles, eerie forests where the ghosts of hanged prisoners leer out at them, vast crumbling cities, acres of forgotten children’s toys and in the film’s most wtf sequence, a giant gooey room filled with aborted fetuses that spring to life and slime anyone within reach. That’s right, the filmmakers aren’t really subtle with their pro-life sentiment, especially near the end, but as long as you can get past that, the rest is all incredible. The sheer scope of the film commands attention though, and anyone who daydreams or lets their imagination run wild will get an absolute kick out of it. It’s kind of like the world’s weirdest video game in cinematic form, structured like a play-through but given all the disorienting unease of your worst nightmare.

-Nate Hill

Ernest Dickinson’s Bones

April 6, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Who would have thought that a horror flick starring Snoop Dogg would actually be a winner? Bones isn’t a milestone in the genre or anything, but it sure is better than the self promoting vanity piece that I expected going in. Usually when rappers or musicians headline their own films they turn out to be spectacular failures (50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Trying and Dee Snider’s Strangeland come to mind), but this one comes off as a legitimate, entertaining horror effort. Snoop plays Jimmy Bones, a lucrative 70’s street hustler who is betrayed and slaughtered by his partners in crime, his own sweetheart Pearl (Pam Grier is never not cool) and one sleazebag of a cop (Michael T. Weiss, excellent). Decades later he returns, undead, in the form of a smooth talking supernatural street demon, out to exact bloody ghetto revenge on his old acquaintances and clean up his former inner city neighbourhood, which is actually just Vancouver in disguise, I mean what city in any movie ever isn’t just Vancouver? Loosely threaded with the story of a few kids who plan to turn his old gothic mansion into a silly hip hop nightclub, things rev into full gore gear when he shows up back in town to stir shit around and collect heads, and I mean that literally. Snoop is wicked fun, wisely dropping any rap gags or meta smirk, showing up in full jive talking boogeyman mode, meaning business and bringing along the dark, angry charisma to back it up. Director Ernest Dickinson helmed a few Tales From The Crypt outings and therefore knows his way around this very specific and distilled niche of horror. Shades of the 80’s are prescient with incredibly gooey, gag inducing effects that would make Freddy Krueger jealous, and one gets an almost Crow vibe from the story structure, via the paranormal revenge motif and baroque, Poe-esque fire and brimstone aesthetic. It’s silly for sure, but far far more grounded and committed than you’d expect this type of thing to be on paper. More of a head on its shoulders than Tales From The Hood anyway, and yes that’s a real thing. I must make additional mention of the prosthetic effects though; not since certain Elm Street outings, early Cronenberg or stuff like The Sentinel have I seen the level of deformed, hellish grossology onscreen than is present in some scenes here, they should be really proud of what they’ve done.

-Nate Hill

So the movies I like are considered shitty…

April 6, 2017April 6, 2017 by Kent Hill, posted in Film Review

The room was dark, or at least that’s how it returns to me in my dreams. The lounge was in the center of the house, so the only light that entered was through a hallway door which often times was shrouded by a deep-green curtain. It was my father who pushed the curtain open this day, three summers and a thousand years ago. He was a giant to me then, but so were all the people in my world. A lumbering, hairy giant with sun-browned skin and hulking features; yet his smile was soothing, and as he entered the lounge carrying two boxes, that smile dominated his face. That smile was directed at me.
He placed both boxes down atop the television set and then disappeared behind it for several minutes. When he re-emerged he took the second box, the smaller of the two, and placed it into a slot, that opened at the push of a button, in the top of the larger box. Then he turned on the television set. The customary snow filled the screen momentarily and then came a flickering. My father fiddled with the big knobs on the front of the set and slowly there came an image, slowly there came sound, slowly there came magic. My life was changed forever.
VHS – come on, you remember. Think back to the films of your youth. Those glorious moments you could stop and rewind and watch over and over again. If you were one of those kids like me that watched 5 videos plus a night, when the rest of the house was in darkness and only creatures stirring were those comprised of cinematic genius and burger grease; those that had no life, except on the small screen in front of me that was a constant, was always waiting to drench my imagination with swords, laser blasters and maniac cops. I came to worship at this alter nightly and then there was the experience of wandering those video stores. Those gigantic basilicas of celluloid splendor; 15, 20,000, 30,000 titles wide. A bold new world I walked into bravely – never came out of really. There are times I feel that I am still wondering among those vast aisles. All those covers curious, strange and ultimately alluring; their siren song still sings to me, on nights when the stars are bright and the wind blows feint whispers and I am alone again . . . watching movies.
But something has changed; as King once wrote: ‘the world has moved on.’ The garden-variety flick experience today is bright and shining and biodegradable. Multi-billion-dollar behemoths or should I say, bottle rockets, that fly high, explode brilliantly and colorfully, and then vanish. Where have all the good films gone, as the Lizard King once put it: “where are the fruits we were promised, where’s the new wine – dying on the vine.” And die they do, in spectacular mutli-million dollars funerals like The Matrix Reloaded and Jupiter Ascending . . . but that’s another story.
I am here to talk about some of the movies I love, movies that they stayed with me, movies I rented so often the dude at the store eventually gave them to me cause well, and I quote:

VIDEO STORE DUDE
. . . No one can love these flicks
like you, you need them more than we do.

Thus I bring to your attention four films that have been featured on several crap film lists or in worst movies of all time articles. These are the movies I dig – and if you don’t, then you haven’t lived.
These four titles came out between 1979 and 1985. They all have bigger, more expensive A-list brothers, but that is not the point. These are prime examples of the glory days of VHS; and you never truly know it when you are living in a golden age. We did, we lived through it. (I’ll attempt to go spoiler free)

Superhero flicks are a common staple in our lives and they are progressively getting worse. Guardians of the Galaxy excluded, liked that one. But in 1979 a hero that rose in Spain in the wake of Donner’s Superman captured my pre-adolescent attention. He was Supersonic Man;and the race the spawned him must have caught wind that this crazy fucker-of-a-scientist, played beautifully by Cameron Mitchel (star of some of my other favorites like Flight to Mars, Space Mutiny and Demon Cop) as Dr. Gulik, has plans to blow the earth to shit. So they send Supersonic down and give him a magic watch that helps him transform from his hilariously dubbed alter ego Paul. Paul meets Patricia, isn’t that beautiful. Her dad Prof. Morgan has been hoodwinked into working for Gulik and tries to get wise but then Gulik starts to use his daughter as a pawn to see that his evil plans are seen through to fruition. Of course Paul is no ordinary smart-casually dressed cat that is loitering around trying to make a nuisance of himself. He is an interstellar hero in disguise. It is full of funky-funny flying footage, unintentionally funny reactions to bad situations, and a recurring drunk character for comic relief with his little dog, Sugar. Comedy, that’s what they want. Laughter and a bit with a dog. Great beer and pizza movie.

Now we jump into one of my favorite fantasy films. And what I ask you is better than a fantasy film? Well one with Reb Brown in it of course. Reb, in case you haven’t heard of him, was the first Captain America and went on to star in Space Mutiny (yes that is a glorious experience), Uncommon Valour and the film of the hour, Yor: The Hunter from the Future. This came out in ’83 and I am proud to report I still have my VHS copy. From its funky theme music to its cast of sexy-creepy-stupid characters, Yor (Brown) is running around in his best loin-cloth and happens upon a father and daughter being lovingly harassed by a triceratops. And it’s all downhill from there. Everywhere Yor goes he is like the angel of death, bringing with him the ravages of destruction and annihilation to just about every place he wonders into; from a seemingly prehistoric village, to the land of the sand people, to the peace-loving folk by the sea and finally to a futuristic fortress on a mythical island. Yor is searching for who he really is and all he has to go by is a gold medallion which every thinks is pretty cool. He fights and beats dinosaurs, really hairy cave dudes, big lizards, sand men, robots and finally the evil overlord (who killed his old man on the island fortress cause he started a coup d’état.) Turns out he saved his son (Yor), by sending him to Prehistoric Forest. Oh, I can here you drooling.

Time now for a fantasy mash up and one I am so relieved I was able to find and replace my dead video copy – yes this is available on DVD – it’s called Star Knight (or Knight of the Dragon.) Leonard Maltin gave this a bad review, to which I say, FUCK LEONARD MALTIN! This is cinematic cannabis. You’ve got Klaus Kinski (how can you not love that guy), Fernando Rey (you might have seen him in the French Connection as Frog #1 and 1492) and Harvey Keitel, yes I’ll say it again for the hearing impaired, Harvey (I’m a pretentious acting cock) Keitel, the only knight in shining armor with a Brooklyn accent. So the story goes: A beautiful princess is captured by what folks believe to be a dragon but it turns out it is a UFO and the due flying it, played by Miguel Bose (who was a very popular Spanish pop-star in his day) as IX. Trust me when I say he is the quiet type and literally communicates via symphonic chimes. Anyway Klever, or should I say Sir Klever (Keitel) who wants to get under the princesses robes sets out to slay the dragon/UFO. Everybody is dubbed but for Keitel and Rey, even Kinski (who speaks English, though it does add a few laughs) and this again adds to the film’s charm.
I saw a shitload of great flicks in ’85 but this is the one I remember. It is wonderful, from the intentionally and the unintentionally funny segments and that’s not including the comic relief in the form of the Green Knight ( and I’m not talking about Sean Connery from Sword of the Valiant.) Like I said (no spoilers) this is available on DVD, what are you waiting for?

Finally, and I never left the video shop without one, a purely science fiction entry. It just so happens that (God, I love her) my beautiful wife found a copy of it on DVD for me, the 1979 classic from Italy (yes STARCRASH is one of them) L’umanoide, or as you may have heard of it: The Humanoid. This has three James Bond performers in the cast, most notably two from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker: personified by Barbara Bach (Mrs. Ringo Starr) and the late/great Richard Kiel. Big Rich was also in Moonraker as the assassin JAWS alongside another character from The Humanoid, Barbara Gibson played by Corinne Clery who was famously savaged by dogs for dropping company secrets on the pillow with Roger Moore. On a side note she was also Ka-Laa in Yor, small world aint it. The story focuses on an evil space Lady Agatha (Bach) who finds herself needing to stay young by draining the life out of other young ladies via a very painful looking needle-bed-thing (you’ll just have to watch it). She’s all buddy-buddy Lord Graal who wants to seize control of planet Metropolis from his brother. They stage a massacre from which Gibson (Clery) escapes, so they capture Kiel, turn him into a mindless automaton to bring her in so she can be subjected to the needle-bed-thing, supervised be the so-cruel-I-shouldn’t-have-a-licence-to-practice-medicine Dr. Kraspin. Gibson is aided by Nick, the telepathic Tom Tom, this little Asian kid who has laser-archer-dudes, dressed predominantly in white, watching his back.
Big Rich nearly completes the evil dude’s mission until Tom Tom helps undo their mental tempering and thus ‘The Humaniod’ is back on the side of good, helping defeat the nefarious Graal and joining his friends in a victory dance before Tom Tom has to go bush with the laser-archer-dudes back to his digs in galaxy far far away. Sniff-sniff. I’m sorry, it’s just so magnificent, I hope you get a chance to check it out. Come round to my house – we’ll watch it with Pepsi and chips.

So as the credits are rolling, I think back to that day in that dark lounge room and how a piece of me still lingers there, locked in silence and wonder. The air about me is eclipsed by electricity and magic, my mind leaves my body and I dance among the manufactured dreams of low-budget masters who didn’t need motion-capture and CGI to still my beating heart, ignite the flames of creativity deep within my being which sent me off on the quest, a quest that I am still on to this day, the quest to manifest my dreams. Kermit the Frog sang about it. His dream was about singing and dancing and making people happy, that kinda dream gets better the more people you share it with. My quest goes ever onward, but I have met some like-minded warriors along the way. We have come together recently to compose a trilogy that harkens back to the VHS days of yore. So if these films here mentioned and the millions of others like them are part and parcel of the spark which catches a fire and sends you off into ever-greater heights of dreaming, then you really ought to check them out. And these books to if you dig a celebration of B movies.

And above all, happy viewing. Be kind, rewind.

THE DUDE IN THE AUDIENCE

–

SEAN STONE: An Interview with Kent Hill

April 5, 2017 by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

Many of us can only imagine what it must be like to grow up in a household where one or both of our parents are people of extraordinary ability. We can only muse further what it must be like if that said parent were internationally recognized in their chosen field of expertise.

On the other hand, when we are young, we don’t really question such things. They are the ‘norm’, the everyday, and our parents are simply Mum and Dad. They do what they do and we are none the wiser. Then of course we reach an age when that changes. We realize that there are differences, and our worlds shrink or growth according to the depth of that perception.

So imagine growing up and one day the realization hits that your Dad is the acclaimed filmmaker Oliver Stone; on top of that you have essentially grown up in the movies your father has been making. Now you were unaware to the extent of just how different things at home where compared to other people. But, it’s just how things were, and it’s just how things were for Sean Stone.

Being on the set was normal because making movies is what Dad did for a living. These famous actors were simply people that were helping Dad out. It all seems fine that is till, as Sean told me, the world opens up and your understanding of that which you have been exposed to becomes evident.

Being a lover of the work of Sean’s dad, I, like the rest of you, have seen him as a baby on the lap of Gordon Gekko, as a young Jim Morrison, as the brother of an eventual mass murderer and more. He is now, however, a storyteller in his own right. Beginning with the chronicling of the making of Alexander, Sean has emerged as a naturally talented filmmaker. He has continued exploring the documentary as well as genre filmmaking, and I eagerly anticipate his intended adaptation of his father’s book A Child’s Night Dream.

It was a real treat to chat with him at the dawn of 2017 . . . ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . . Sean Stone.

https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Revisited-Blu-ray-Colin-Farrell/dp/B00CSKQ5TK/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1491450945&sr=8-9&keywords=alexander+blu+ray

https://www.amazon.com/Greystone-Park-Blu-ray-Combo-Pack/dp/B008NNY93K/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1491451403&sr=1-2&keywords=greystone+park

https://www.amazon.com/Childs-Night-Dream-Oliver-Stone/dp/0312167989/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491451496&sr=8-1&keywords=a+childs+night+dream+oliver+stone

Scott Frank’s The Lookout

April 5, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Scott Frank’s The Lookout is a film where every turn of plot, exchange of dialogue, set piece and stylistic choice just seems to mesh flawlessly, resulting in a package that’s nearly as perfect as you can get. Part psychological character study, part crime thriller, sewn together lovingly by threads of brilliantly written, intelligent interpersonal drama that seems lived in, the writer never uses the pen to pander nor patronize, but provides well drawn, realistic human beings who sound like actual people and not archetypes dwelling within the pages, never fully realized. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Chris Pratt (not actual Chris Pratt lol) a young hotshot who becomes the victim of his own cocky, self destructive behaviour. After a horrific car accident that was entirely his fault, his girlfriend is left maimed and he a busted up shell of his former self, saddled with bushels of brain damage and the inability to cohesively live his day to day life the way he did before. It’s some sort of synapse frying neurological scarring that’s never fully explained, but the symptoms are clearly and fascinatingly outlined in a way that no other film has really tried before. He’s left somewhat adrift in life, naively attracted to his foxy psychiatrist (Carla Gugino), misunderstood by his parents (Bruce McGill & Alberta Watson), and cared for by his eccentric, blind and motor-mouthed roommate (Jeff Daniels, a standout as always). He happens to be from a small midwestern town though, and in movie land these burgs are almost always filled with schemes, heists, double crosses and feed store robberies. ‘Bro seduced’ by an equally suave and shady dude (Matthew Goode, whose work here lives up to that surname and then some), Chris is shanghaied into assisting in the hold up of the very bank he works at, and soon the kind of hell that would make the Coen brothers applaud breaks loose. Everything makes sense though, the jigsaw pieces of the narrative nestling flush against one another, not a beat feeling out of place or in danger of derailing the whole thing. That’s not the easiest thing to achieve, especially in a taught running time that clocks in under two hours and still manages to feel substantial. Levitt is terrific, a guy who used to be in control, used to be revered as the alpha who takes care of things, his condition worsened by the knowledge that people know full well how broken he is. The stakes are inherently high when someone that set back by life must navigate their way through the complex ins and outs of pulling off a bank heist. One hell of a film.

-Nate Hill

Hector & The Search For Happiness

April 1, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve read a lot of reviews for Hector & The Search For Happiness, and there’s a common, and fairly petty gripe that seems to be a theme throughout them, pissing me off no end. In the film, Simon Pegg plays a wealthy psychiatrist with a solid career and a beautiful wife (Rosamund Pike). Deep down though, he feels empty, unfulfilled and as if something is missing, and embarks on a spontaneous, unplanned global voyage to essentially search for the meaning of happiness, or at his own on the smaller scale. Now, a few critics have this whiny sentiment that because he’s well off, stable and lucky in life (I won’t even use the dreaded ‘P’ word), that it’s somehow offensive to see him search for more, or find himself unhappy. He ventures forth to places like Tokyo, L.A. and Africa in his travels and it seems to be some consensus that because he runs into people from third world areas who haven’t been dealt as lucky a hand as he has, materially speaking at least, that he has no right to complain or contest his position or mindset in life. Absolute butthurt. Everyone on this planet, be they billionaires, orphans, middle class mothers, movie stars or refugees, everyone is going through their own private set of problems and inner turmoil, and no one has the right to so blindly insist that some people’s problems, mental and/or material, matter more than others just because they have more money or resources than. The richest, most capable individuals could be going through hell on the inside, and they deserve to be acknowledged and sympathized with just as much as anyone else. Grow up. Now that my rant is over, on to the film, which is somewhat of an oddball and not easy to define, genre-wise. The posters and trailers make it out to be one of those quirky ‘find yourself’ comedy dramas where some plucky misfit goes on a journey, meets various archetypal characters and discovers a bunch about themselves, until the inevitable revelation that caps their story. Well, it is that, and it kind of isn’t as well. It’s certainly structured like that from beginning to end, but at times it gets quite dark, more than merely momentarily, and has far more of a brain in it’s head, both in terms of script and technical execution, than you would see coming. Pegg feels adrift in his profession, smothered by his doting but high maintenance wife and needs that leap into the unknown, which he takes. His first encounter is with a cynical hotshot businessman (Stellen Skarsgard), a man who lives in planes, airports, hotels and nightclubs, filling his time with life’s pleasures and the power of commerce, yet fully aware of what else he’s missing out on, perhaps the reason he is drawn to Pegg’s character. Over to Africa next, where he spends time with relief workers, to see if fulfillment can indeed be found in selflessly aiding others, but things turn intense when he’s captured by scary rebels and somewhat befriends a volatile arms dealer (nice to see Jean Reno, who’s been laying low these days) with a sad secret of his own. His trip takes him to the states, where he reconnects with an old flame (Toni Colette), no doubt allured by the sweet promise of nostalgia, a powerful force that doesn’t always yield happiness when adhered to. A loopy self help guru (Christopher Plummer), Skype sessions with Pike back in England and other encounters beset him, and in the end we wonder what the point of it all was, but this is his journey, not ours. I like that it doesn’t necessarily follow a blueprint that we’re used to, moves forward in fits and starts, meanders a bit, even veering into thriller territory briefly, his path truly an unforeseeable one that could lead anywhere based on chance, timing and the decisions he makes. That’s the mark of a good script, one that surprises and confounds in the best possible of ways, and shirks all labels applied to the final product, arriving on our screens as something just weird enough to be memorable and just this side of accessible in order to not be too much of an off-putting black sheep. Interesting stuff.

-Nate Hill

The Crow: Salvation

March 29, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Now let’s be real, there’s only one good Crow film. They were just never able to catch that midnight magic again, though they tried, with four more films and a dud of a tv series. Each of the sequels is nearly the exact same as the first, in terms of plot: a man is killed by feral urban thugs, only to be resurrected one year later by a mysterious crow, blessed with invincibility and begins to work his way through the merry band of scumbags in brutal acts of revenge, arriving at the crime lord sitting atop the food chain, usually a freak with vague ties to the supernatural or occult. All the films in the series are structured that way, but only one deviated and tried something slightly different with the formula. City of Angels, the second, is a boring, almost identical retread of the first, it’s only energy coming from a coked up Iggy Pop. Wicked Prayer, the fourth, had a premise with potential aplenty, and turned out so maddeningly awful I’m still dabbing the blood from my eye sockets. Salvation, however, is the third entry and almost finds new air to breathe by altering the premise slightly. Instead of lowlife criminals, it’s a posse of corrupt police detectives who frame an innocent dude (Resident Evil’s Eric Mabius) for crimes they themselves committed, fry him to a crisp in the electric chair and get off scott free. His girlfriend (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe) is also killed in the process. Now, not only is it cops instead of criminals, but the arch baddie at the top of the pile is the police commissioner, who has occult written all over him. *Not only* that, but he’s played by Fred Ward, who is brilliant in anything. While nowhere near an iota of the atmosphere or quality of the first film, this one works better than any of the other sequels, thanks to that spark of an idea that changes the game ever so much. The detectives are a nice and skeevy bunch too, played by the reptilian likes of William Atherton, Walton Goggins and others. Ward wears the starched, proper uniform of an authoritative figure, but his eyes gleam with the same secrets and dark magic we saw in the two other previous underworld kingpins, Top Dollar (Michael Wincott) and Judah Earl (Richard Brooks), but it’s that contrast that takes you off guard and makes things more intriguing. And as for Eric, does he hold his own with the others who’ve played the role? Mabius he does, Mabius he doesn’t, you’ll just have to watch and see. He definitely knocks Vincent Perez out of the park, that silly Frenchman. Real talk though, no one will ever dethrone Brandon Lee, not even whatever piss-ant they get for the remake that’s been hovering on the fringes of preproduction for the last half decade. On top of it all we also get Kirsten Dunst, of all people, as a sympathetic attorney who works alongside Mabius to clear his name, as he clears the streets of no-good crooked cops. So there you have it. If you ever find yourself meandering around the kiosks in blockbuster, and see the Crow films lined up on the shelves like emo ducks in a row, the first film will naturally already be rented out. Where then to turn? You can certainly do worse than this one.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Minotaur

March 28, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

If you ever find yourself in conversation with Tom Hardy at some cocktail party (one can dream), Minotaur is the film you bring up to both flabbergast and embarrass him, if only for your own amusement. It’s one of those low budget sword & sorcery schlock-fests that the SyFy channel used to broadcast at two in the morning on sleepy Saturday nights, to serve as background noise for whatever hedonistic shenanigans are going on in the living room. It’s Tom’s first ever starring role, and therefore should never be forgotten, like those old camcorder tapes of kids learning to ride sans training wheels for the first time. The story borrows from the legend, adding its own lurid, t&a soaked flair that only SyFy can get just right. Tom plays the son of a Viking chieftain (a brief Rutger Hauer), who goes looking for his true love, one among a few of the village’s youngsters who get kidnapped every year by a freaky pseudo African tribe of weirdos who sacrifice youths to the mythical Minotaur, residing in rocky catacombs beneath their city’s surface. Led by supreme weirdo Deucalion (Candyman’s Tony Todd, hamming up every scene), who fervently wants to impregnate his own hot sister (chill, dude), and oversees this theatrical occult ritual with obscene relish. This is one of those creature features where you barely see the beast for the first two thirds of the film, save for a quick snaggle of fur or fang rushing by in the shadows, and suspiciously looking like a bearskin rug cello taped to antlers and a hobby horse. Hardy does get an eventual confrontation with the Minotaur late in the game and deep in the maze, providing a few schlocky moments that are worth the ride, but it’s silly stuff most of the time, scraping the bottom of a barrel that does lower than the maze of the bull. Totally tagging Tom in thee blog post though in hopes that he sees this and it brightens his day just a bit.

-Nate Hill

Jon Amiel’s Copycat

March 27, 2017 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Jon Amiel’s Copycat is one intense piece of work, as tightly wound as razor wire and primed to stir up the adrenal glands. Sigourney Weaver contends with not one, but two extremely vicious serial killers a lá Silence Of The Lambs, with a bit of ass kicking help from spitfire Holly Hunter. Weaver is a clinical psychologist specializing in serial killers, and like most in her cinematic profession, just happens to be a serial killer magnet as well. After narrowly escaping a perverted maniac (Harry Connick Jr.), and assisting in his capture, she retreats to the sanctuary of her San Francisco penthouse apartment in a fit of agoraphobia following the trauma. But there’s another killer out there, one who meticulously recreates the crimes of others. Weaver is reluctantly coerced into helping to find him, and who better to help her than her old buddy Connick Jr.? He’s an odd choice to play this type of character, but he sells it with a sickly swagger and that off kilter grin, a much more lively performance than that of the actor playing the copycat killer. Holly Hunter provides the kick in the ass that timid Weaver needs to see the job done, but there’s danger around every corner, and the film earns it’s hard R rating with some truly uncomfortable bits. Along for the ride is veteran actor J.E. Freeman, Will Patton and good old Dermot Mulroney as fellow cops on the case. Not as instantly iconic or memorable as many in the genre, but takes what could have easily been generic trash and gives it life, style and a sense of real, sweaty danger.