Tag: Movies

Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort is the bees knees when it comes to backwoods survival thrillers. It’s frightening, elemental, and relentless in pace, inciting primal fear in the viewer who finds themselves terrified of these events ever happening to them. It’s a very overlooked film, with most of the kudos within this genre going to John Boorman’s Deliverance. This one is way better, at least for me. The immediacy of the protagonist’s situation, the hypnotic atmosphere of both score and cinematography working together for something really special. In rural Louisiana, a platoon of American soldiers prepares to embark into the tangled wilderness of the nearby bayou, attempting a routine training mission. Powers Boothe is awesome as Cpl. Charles Hardin, a well educated man who silently resents the roughnecks and dimwitted dead enders in his regiment. He’s joined by Spencer (a cavalier Keith Carradine), and a whole host of others as well. Now, the Bayou is home to the reclusive and eccentric Cajun people, who apparantly will keep to themselves if you do the same. But try telling that to a troupe of childish, immature GI’s packing heavy artillery that’s beyond both their pay grade and IQ. After one lugnut plays a nasty prank on a group of Cajun fisherman, they take it slightly personally. Before you can say crawfish, they promptly murder the commanding officer (Peter Coyote) and set a series of deadly traps and snares for the soldiers, out to send every last one of them to a swampy grave. It’s a beautiful backwoods nightmare, and Hill tells the story exceptionally, aided by a twangy, brilliant score from his go to composer Ry Cooder. Boothe and Carradine are shoe ins to hold off their pursuers, while the rest of them soon fall prey, in elaborate and gruesome ways. Fred Ward is badass as a fellow soldier who turns homicidal, and has a wicked knife fight with Boothe that ramps up the adrenaline and then some. The late Brion James makes quite the impression as a Cajun who they briefly capture, after which he eerily warns them of the hell that’s coming from his compadres. The locations feel authentic, damp and waterlogged as hell, making you feel every squelchy step these poor bastards take into the Bayou and closer to their end. Near the end of the film we are treated to some authentic live Cajun music (some of my favourite kind) from Dewey Balfa, a gorgeous interlude and showcase of Hill’s desire to make the auditory atmosphere of his films as heightened and immersive as possible. An unheralded classic.

Tony Scott’s The Fan: A Review By Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

  
  

Tony Scott’s the fan is a wild ride with an off the hook turn from Robert De Niro. It’s ranked and regarded as a pretty low notch on Scott’s belt, but it’s hard to compete with his best work. It’s still a sleazy blast and pure Scott, his characters always let, lurid and delightfully pulpy. Sure it falls apart near the end, but until then it’s nasty, delicious fun. De Niro plays Gil, a die hard baseball fan and devout follower of Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes), star player for his favourite team. Gil wants Bobby to succeed so badly that he becomes violent, unstable and pretty bonkers. At first it’s obnoxious and amusing, but soon he gets dodgy and dangerous and eventually just out of control. It’s great fun seeing De Niro go bug nuts bit by bit, and he’s always had a wild menace that he like to take down from the shelf and dust off for the occasional performance. Benicio Del Toro does one of his puzzling, indecipherable vocal riffs as a rival player, adding to the weird factor. Ellen Barkin is a sexy sass bomb as Jewal Stern, a mouthy talk show host who sniffs out the controversy in high style. John Leguizamo is always sterling, and classes his scenes up like a pro. Watch for speckled cameos from M.C. Gainey, Brad William Henke, Don S. Davis, Tuesday Knight, Wayne Duvall, Richard Rhiele, John Carrol Lynch, Michael P. Byrne and Chris Mulkey as well, all excellent. Not Scott’s best for sure, but a nicely mean spirited little romp through the psycho stalker fields. Fun stuff. 

Leon The Professional: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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Leon The Professional is purely and simply one of the best films ever made. From Natalie Portman’s stunning debut performance, to Gary Oldman’s absolutely nightmarish baddie, to Jean Reno’s lovable and eccentric protagonist, it’s a classic, a piece of achingly beautiful cinema that I could watch on the daily and never get tired of. The three actors are the bricks which make the film so special, and Luc Besson’s fluid, sensitive direction is the mortar which holds them together. Portman is simply miraculous in her first film role as Matilda, a young girl whose entire family is murdered by psychotic DEA agent Norman Stansfield (Oldman). Highly introverted assassin Leon (Reno), takes pity and allows the orphaned girl into his home and his life. Matilda is a strange girl whose specific idiosyncrasies both clash and amusinly interact with Leon’s. He is an exile of sorts as well, with a tragic past and not a whole lot going on in his life besides the contracts he carries out for kindly, paternal mobster Tony (a phenomenal Danny Aiello). Leon and Matilda makes an interesting team; she is brash, unfiltered and lively, he is reserved, awkward and deafeningly quiet, resulting in unique character building and bonding that Besson handles wonderfully. Now, there’s two versions of this film, because apparantly American people can’t handle slightly taboo undertones, even when they’re handled in a caring and tasteful manner. You definitely want to see the longer, European cut which has some interesting scenes that crackle with sexual tension on Portman’s part. Yes, she’s twelve years old, at a very confusing crossroads of her life, the stark black and white mindset of a child dissolving into the very ambiguous and complex psyche of a woman. She believes she loves Leon, and he handles her advances in a way that requires maturity and intuition that he never had to begin with, but rises to the occasion. Call these scenes what you will, but there’s no denying their esential place in the film’s complete story, and to censor them for the sake of prudeness is a straight up crime. Matilda wants revenge against Stansfield and his team, which means going up against his wrath, and also means Portman sharing some incredible scenes with a voracious Oldman. Oh, Gary. This is his final form, the most terrifying villain in his stable, a flamboyant, deranged lunatic that one can scarce believe ever was allowed to be a cop. There’s a fairy tale esque feel to the film, where the bad guys do what they want in the urban forest, never in uniform and free to roam, kill and terrorize with the full might of the NYPD at their dastardly disposal. Oldman is the Joker on mescaline, and in fact Stansfield pops mysterious pills from a little casket, when he’s not murdering people while listening to Beethoven. He’s loud, scary, stylish and animalistic, so intense one feels like his very presence will melt the tv screen. Portman is so superb it’s hard to believe this was so early on in her career. In my mind she did her best work right out of the gate, in this film. Matilda is wise for her years, which she uses to mask the gulf of vulnerability residing in her, a hallmark trait found in children from abusive households. The family and friendship she finds with Leon strengthens her as as human being, and we start to see the emerging person she will continue to grow up to be. Natalie displays all of this uncannily well, and is the bruised, beating heart at the centre oft the film. Reno sells the eccentricities (Leon loves golden age Hollywood musicals) and sorrowful resolve of Leon so well, taking a character that is all action and very little talk, and speaking volumes with both body language and silence which, take it from me, is tough stuff. Besson, whether directing a quiet, introspective scene or a balletic action sequence, gives everything a stylized, earthy quality that makes the film stand out amongst other action ventures. You could spend a billion dollars on production design, but it all comes down to the human element behind the wheel, and if you don’t have a director, cast and team that has the current running through them to create something special, all those dollars go out the window. This one has all of that, and is a solid gold classic.

Sea Of Love: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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Sea Of Love is one of my favourite romantic thrillers of the 80’s. It’s perfectly structured, riveting the whole way through, and just as steamy as you’d imagine a pairing between Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin to be. It’s so well made that we don’t even notice pieces of the puzzle falling into place until the image they make is staring us right in the face and we sheepishly snap out of the sensual trance the film has laid upon us. It’s never too grisly, never sappy, but strikes every note in time with the rhythm of both its script and the acting style of the two leads. Pacino is Frank Keller, a police detective pursuing a killer who is choosing their victims based on personal ads placed in the newspaper. This provides a readily made paper trail for him to follow and hopefully find his man, but in the process he must stage a bunch of blind dates that are essentially theatrical stake outs, in attempt to lure his prey into the open. Pacino is always keen and sharp when playing detective roles, but only in this one does the romantic side of his life play just as important of a part as the thrill of the hunt and the crime dynamics, which makes the role unique in his career. Things get complicated when he gets involved in a torrid and unpredictable affair with Helen, a mysterious girl who replies to one of the adds and quickly becomes a prime suspect. Aided by another detective (John Goodman is fantastic as always) from a few precincts over, he tries to race against both time and the spiderweb of danger which is unseen yet slowly winches tighter on everyone involved, as the killer circles them all. Watch fpr suppoetin turns from Michael Rooker, William Hickeyn, Paul Calderon, Richard Jenkins, Larry Joshua, John Spencer and a cery young Samuel L. Jackson who is simply credited as ‘black guy”, which cracked me up. It’s got rocket fuel for pacing and I mean that as a compliment; It’s pure cinema from both a genre standpoint and in general. Fairly forgotten these days, but one of the very best to come out of its era.

Fallen Angels: Dead End For Delia- A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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Fallen Angels was a super cool L.A. film noir television series that ran in the 90’s, only never to be heard from again, curiously. It attracted an incredible lineup of directors including Tom Hanks, Alfonso Cuaron, Steven Soderberg, Peter Bogdanovitch, Jonathan Kaplan, John Dahl, Keith Gprdon, Tom Cruise and more, with an even more unbelievable troupe of prolific actors. For whatever sad reason though, it was never really released or marketed well, and has never seen the light of day. Dead End For Delia is the first, and one of the best of the bunch, directed by Phil Joanou, with the lead roles taken by Gary Oldman and Gabrielle Anwar. I’ve always wanted to see the two of them do something together, and funnily enough they share almost no screen time, but having the two occupy space in any project is electric enough. Oldman plays Pat Keilly, a police sergeant who is summoned to the scene of a crime, only to find out that the murder victim is his wife Delia (Anwar). As he is led along a trail of clues as to who her killer might be, he discovers things about her and realizes that he may have never really known his wife, or the person she really was. Oldman does something interesting here; for most of the film his trademark intensity sits at a low boil, lulling us into a false sense of calm and seeming to be one of his more restrained exercises. Then, all of a sudden in the last act he downright explodes and goes on a tirade of fuming emotion that is quite something to see. Makes me wonder if he planned this with his performance, or if he surprised himself with the unexpected outburst. The whole series is solidly star studded, and in addition to Oldman and Anwar we get to see Meg Tilly, Wayne Knight, Paul Guilfoyle, Vondie Curtis Hall and the great Dan Hedaya who works overtime playing at least ten different characters all throughout the show. It’s filmed through a lacy lens, the windows on set always open, the gauzy curtains set unearthly adrift to let in that clammy, humid L.A. breeze that promises secrets you wish you never knew as soon as it brushes against you. Perhaps one day this forgotten show will get a lovely dvd box set. Until then you have to scavenge for fragments over in the scrap yard of youtube. Good luck.

The Caveman’s Valentine: A Review By Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

 

 The Caveman’s Valentine has always fascinated me. As someone who has a mental illness, I’ve always tried my best to seek out films that portray such conditions in a respectable, inquisitive and enlightening tone. While this one cushions it’s earnestness with a slightly lurid and generic murder mystery, much of its desire to explore its character’s inner mindset shine through superbly and with much more authenticity than other films that try the same. Unless you suffer through, or have some intimate experience with someone like this protagonist, it’s tough to artistically represent their state. This one manages very well, and Samuel L. Jackson gives one of the most memorable, affecting and curiously overlooked performances of his career so far. Jackson is an actor who almost always gets cast in assured, authoritative roles. Here he portrays exactly the opposite of that as Romulus, a severely schizophrenic man who lives in a cave in Central Park, New York City. Romulus was once a brilliant pianist and a student at Juilliard, before his illness cut his career and personal life painfully short. He spends his days in confusion, raving in delusion about an all powerful man named Stuyvesant who secretly manipulates everyone in the city. When a young man is found murdered near his cave door, he feels an internal compulsion to find out what happened to him. As you might imagine, a man with his affliction might not make the most reliable detective, but Romulus tries his best and in between bouts of paranoia he makes his way towards weirdo avant grade photographer David Leppenraub (always excellent Colm Feore) who may have had something to do with the homicide. He also has a daughter (Aunjanue Ellis) who is a policewoman and somewhat resents him through her ignorance, and a wife (Tamara Tunie) who no doubt left, but still speaks to him in segments of his visions. Because his perceptions can’t be trusted, even by himself, it makes it a touch and go plot-line that’s heavily accented by frequent visual detours into his own consciousness, where humanoid Moth Sarefs hauntingly play unearthly instruments. Director Kasi Lemmons is not only a woman, but an actress herself, both traits which I believe lead to a certain intuitive advantage in filmmaking. I absolutely love how she moulds the narrative to patiently linger with Romulus’s perception of events and never make them sensationalistic or rushed. Even though Romulus walks through a dangerous, real world story of murder and corruption, the film always sticks with his childlike, abstract and very intangible internal view of the world, a choice which most films either don’t possess the courage or aren’t allowed to do. Jackson is subtle, complex dynamite in what is for me the best work of his career, playing completely against type and most definitely the opposite of his usual instincts to give us something truly special, to any viewer who wishes to exhibit the same patience and understanding that the filmmakers have strived for in making this unique piece. 

Summer Love, aka Dead Man’s Bounty: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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Ever wish there was a movie where Val Kilmer plays a dead corpse? Like…the whole movie? Well you’re in luck, because in Summer Love he does just that. It’s funny because there aren’t even any flashbacks, any death scene or any instances where he’s alive. He’s just a dead body for the whole. friggin. movie. Now you might think what an lazy, pay cheque collecting half ass move, but let me assure you that shit isn’t easy. I’ve played a corpse in films for maybe minutes at a time after I’ve bee killed, and that was bad enough. Thinking about having to lie still and do that for an entire film gives me hives. So kudos to Val who sticks through it like a champ, spending every frame all rigor mortis-ed up and dead as disco. The film was released in North America unde the dvd title ‘Dead Man’s Bounty’ a decidedly more genre title than Summer Love, which is all part of an effort to label it as a violent action western. It’s It’s a western, alright and it’s plenty violent. But action? No sir. It’s slower than the service I get at McDonald’s and very, very European. Most of the actors besides Kilmer are Polish, kind of like Eastwood waltzing around with a bunch of Italians in a spaghetti western. I guess the term for this one would be perogy western. The lead actor is actually Czech, the ever awesome Karel Roden, playing a perpetually wounded and apparantly mute gunslinger who arrives in a dinghole of a town with Kilmer’s body, looking to collect his bounty. The town is a sour, miserable, derelict place, populated by bad tempered, booze gulping men, and one much abused whore (Katarzyna Figura). The sheriff (Boguslaw Linda) is a stumbling, incapable drunkard whose first thought is to rob anyone who passes through his town. Roden silently navigates this cesspool outpost, keeping Kilmer near and his guns at the ready. Not much actually happens in the film, mostly everyone just sits around drinking and mumbling incoherently to themselves in tones that no doubt sound poetic to their heavily inebriated minds. The whore gets slapped around a whole lot which will no doubt put some viewers off, if they aren’t already asleep. The ‘Summer Love’ title comes from the chorus of a song which is played in an opening sequence that proves to be one of the few sparks of life in this fairly dead affair. Kilmer’s trademark peppiness is nowhere to be found because… well… he’s a dead guy, and the rest of the cast are basically drunk western zombies who have all lost their scripts. Morbidly fascinating, never enjoyable, startlingly bad.

Tony Scott’s Beat The Devil: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

  

Tony Scott’s Beat The Devil is one part of a multi episode series of promotional short films called The Hire, themed around, and sponsored by BMW. An unbelievable amount of acting heft and prolific directors were brought in to make these, including Scott, Joe Carnahan, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, Guy Ritchie, Ang Lee and more. They’re all wonderful and different in their own way, but Scott’s is my favourite of the bunch hands down. From the eclectic cast, all having a blast, to the sheer kinetic momentum and adrenaline soaked velocity of the stylistic direction, it’s pure moviemaking. Tony Scott’s very distinct and polarizing visual aesthetic rears its beautiful head here for a literal crash course which would go on to emerge from the chrysalis and fully spread its wings in the director’s two best films, Man On Fire and Domino. This one is a delicious little treat and obvious precursor to those. The story is fable in nature, starring James Brown as himself (!), pining about his old age. He hires the 007 sequel Driver (Clive Owen, stars in every one of these films, drives a BMW all the time and ties them all together), who takes him to Las Vegas to see The Devil (Gary Oldman, who else), who he sold his soul to decades earlier for fame and fortune. Brown wants to renegotiate the terms of contract, or simply put. Wants to live as a youth longer. Oldman is a sight to see, adorned in crimson lipstick and all manner of kitschy wardrobe numbers, a flamboyant debutant who acts like a Dr. Seuss character in drag. He makes a deranged proposal: the two of them will race the Vegas strip at dawn, Owen against Devil’s driver Bob (a deadpan perfect Danny Trejo). If Brown wins, he gets an extension on life and youth. The race is pure Tony Scott, a commotion fuelled superstorm of breakneck editing, colours flying off the saturation charts proudly and auditory assault as only the guy can craft. It’s the most fun out of the Hire series, careening along on its own delirious and joyful reckless abandon. Watch for a priceless cameo from Marilyn Manson as well.

Wrong Turn At Tahoe: A Review By Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

  
I’ve been ragging a lot on Cuba Gooding Jr. The past few reviews, so I’ll go easy and speak about a good one instead. Wrong Turn At Tahoe has a script that should have been given the royal treatment; it’s wise, brutal, thought provoking and very violent, with many sets of morals clashing against each other in true crime genre style. It didn’t get a huge budget or a lot of marketing, but what it did get was a renakably good cast of actors who really give the written word it’s justice, telling a age old story dangerous people who inhabit the crime ridden frays of both society and cinema. Cuba plays Joshua, a low level mafia enforcer who works for Vincent (Miguel Ferrer), a ruthless mid level mobster who runs his operations with an OCD iron fist. He also rescued Joshua from a crack house when he was a young’in, forging a father son bond that runs deeper than terms of employment. When a weaselly informant tells them that local drug runner Frankie Tahoe (Noel Gugliemi, reliably scary) has it in for them, Vincent brashly retaliates first by viciously killing him. That’s where the shit starts to get deep. Frankie was an employee of Nino (Harvey Keitel) that most powerful crime boss on the west coast and not a man to cross. Nino Wants hefty payment for the loss of Frankie, who was a good operative. Vincent, being the proud and belligerent son of a bitch that he is, bluntly refuses. So begins a bloody, near Shakespearean gang war in which both sides rack up heavy losses and the phrase ‘crime doesn’t pay’ collects it’s due. All parties were inevitably headed to a bitter end whether or not the Tahoe incident occurred, and I think the writer simply used that inciting incident as an example of many ways in which a life like that will always end up at a dead end. The writing is superb, especially for Gooding, Keitel and Ferrer, a vicious triangle indeed, all at the top of their game and then some. Johnny Messner is great as Gooding’s cohort who can’t keep his mouth shit, and watch for Mike Starr, Leonor Varela, Paul Sampson and Louis Mandylor too. Dark deeds, unexpected betrayal, self destructive ego, combustible machismo and ironic twists of fate are explored here in a script the remains as one of my favourite of that year. Really excellent stuff. 

The Last Rites Of Joe May: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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The Last Rites of Joe May is Dennis Farina’s bittersweet swan song, his final exodus from a long, epic and beloved career, showcasing the actor in the role he was always meant to play, and a lead role no less. He did a few other films after this one and a priceless cameo on Family Guy, but this is the spiritual final entry, and when you look at the story of the film, it’s both eerie and fateful that the man would go on to pass away just a few years later. He plays Joe May here, a Chicago wiseguy and short money hustler who has been in the hospital with pneumonia for almost a year. Upon returning to his borough, he finds his apartment rented out to a woman (Jamie Anne Allman) and her daughter (Meredith Droeger), all his belongings sold, and his presence pretty much forgotten, with some even under the belief that he has died. The woman takes pity on him and let’s him stay in his apartment with them if he helps her out, and he goes back to the same hustling, or at least tries too. All his ventures have gone dry, his former boss (a splendid Gary Cole) giving the cold shoulder. Joe starts to realize that one must face the eventual consequences of a life lived in selfishness and foolhardy actions, as he finds himself alone in the world and shunned even by his own son. He gets a shot at redemption upon having the little girl in his life, and being there to help out her mother who has one lowlife monster of a boyfriend that just happens to be a cop. Farina is sensational in every scene, and it’s a shame the guy didn’t ever get more lead roles. He makes Joe a grim yet sympathetic being who serves as a sorrowful reminder of how we all will arrive at the end of our road someday, and how important it is to line said road with good deeds, kindness, respect and worthwhile ventures, even if they only show up in the last few miles of it. This is a Tribeca festival film so it’s tough to find, but anyone with a love for Farina or simple, well told and emotional stories should definitely check it out. The beautiful piano score adds to the loneliness of Joe and his state of mind, as does Farina’s performance which a a gift to filmgoers and contains see of the hardest work and piercing truth I’ve ever seen from the guy. RIP.