Tag: Scott Glenn

THE MICHAEL MANN FILES: THE KEEP (1983)

by Patrick Crain, posted in Film Review

There is a scene in Michael Mann’s Thief where James Caan’s professional cat burglar takes up the standing offer from a crime syndicate to work packaged scores (ie, jobs that have already been set-up and are mostly ready to execute) in exchange for big dollars. Frank doesn’t like the idea as his is a fully independent operation. “I am Joe the Boss of my body,” he tells Leo, head of the organization. But Frank needs money and he needs it fast so he takes on the first gig that will net him close to a million in cash.

I think about that scene a lot when I think of The Keep, Mann’s big studio follow-up to Thief. Based off the the very popular book, itself the first in the Adversary cycle of novels by novelist/doctor Paul F. Wilson published between 1981 and 1992, The Keep seems like a job taken rather than a job wanted. A tale of a mysterious keep in the Carpathian Mountains where Nazi soldiers have awakened an unspeakable evil while doing Nazi shit to the edifice and the contents within, there seems to be little within the narrative itself that really interests Michael Mann and, to be sure, he never made another movie quite like it.

But Michael Mann does find thematic value in the notion of matter versus anti-matter which is at the center of The Keep. Like his protagonists in Miami Vice, Manhunter, and Heat, there are stark opposites on the dividing line of good and evil but regardless of the size of the chasm between the two, they simply cannot live without each other. In The Keep, the occupying force, first led by benevolent Woermann (Jurgen Prochnow) then by the butcher Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne sporting the proudest of the proud boy haircuts) inadvertently releases Molssar, a powerful force of ultimate evil and destruction that takes terrifying human form with each soul and body it annihilates. This awakens Glaken (Scott Glenn) a curious, timeless being of ultimate good and healing (in somewhat androgynous human form) who, triggered the moment Molssar’s tomb is opened, begins to move from Greece toward the Romanian keep and a final battle royale with Molssar.

Like most other Mann projects, there exists levels and degrees of each character’s goodness and badness and sometimes these get blurred or become interchangeable. A subplot involving Dr. Theodore Cuza (Ian McKellan) a Jewish professor who is called in to assist in figuring out what’s killing all of the Nazi soldiers around the keep, is seduced into selfishly harnessing the destructive power of Molssar for good and there is likewise an attempt to contrast between characters on the same team as reflected in the relationship between Prochnow and Byrne (which, in the case of Nazis, will ALWAYS boil down to a distinction without much of a difference). Present also is the Mann-favorite theme of doomed love that occurs between Eva Cuza (Alberta Watson) and Glaken but the decision to bring the latter into the story when there are only thirty or so minutes remaining in the whole film make it an easy one to miss or really care about on any kind of serious level. That said, the film’s sole sex scene, whiplash-inducing it may be, is so ravishingly shot by cinematographer Alex Thompson that the mind boggles at the idea that, given different circumstances, Michael Mann could have run a side hustle making high-end erotic cinema.

There is a very strong temptation to consider The Keep Michael Mann’s equivalent to The Magnificent Ambersons. In both cases, a visionary director adapts a best-selling work and fashions it to his taste only to see the studio destroy it in post-production. But Orson Welles didn’t have contempt for Booth Tarkington’s novel as Mann did for Wilson’s (reportedly, he didn’t like the book at all) and, unlike Ambersons, The Keep has bigger issues than its ending (though the ending is an issue and a half in The Keep). The film is choppy and festooned with tell-tale signs of post-production stitching such as abrupt ADR laid over wide shots and it sports a sound mix that goes from indifferent to incompetent. Additionally the heavy studio axe taken to the contract-violating three hour cut Mann delivered rendered the film baffling; an oddly paced fever dream with a confused narrative structure encased in a beautiful, smoke-filled phantasmagoria. Also working against Mann was the rather unexpected death of the film’s visual effects supervisor, Wally Veevers, who left this earth with a great many ideas still locked in his head JUST as post-production was gearing up. This was quite an unwelcome bit of bad fortune for a film that had already gone over-budget and over-schedule and whose director, only at the helm of his sophomore theatrical feature, continually gamboled from one unfocused visual idea to another.

And, to be sure, there was a great deal of excitement at Paramount when this went into production. Big-budget supernatural horror films were only fitfully profitable but they were in vogue again and Paramount wasn’t going to miss their chance to get a piece of that pie. In fact, they were so jazzed that a tie-in board game was commissioned and created by Mayfair Games. Today, that game will cost you a small fortune if you stumble across one that is intact but, at the time, they mostly sat on the shelves of game and hobby shops and collected dust due to the fact that the film as released found absolutely no audience.

But for something that STILL feels like an unfinished rough cut, there are many things going for The Keep, and there are enough of them to justify both the film’s rabid cult-following and the academic attention given to it. Chiefly, Tangerine Dream’s score is truly fantastic and it’s perhaps even better than the one in Thief. And The Keep is REALLY where the rubber meets the road in terms of Mann’s near-trademarked, perfect marriage of strong visual ideas with their passionately charged, aural counterparts, often working overtime to create an overwhelming sense of beauty and tragedy. Scenes of great dramatic gravity that Mean Something™️ are underscored with deadly earnest tonal passages that guide the viewer’s emotions in a way that are simultaneously manipulative and inspired, predating the broadly orchestrated dramatic lifts in Miami Vice and Manhunter and would continue to remain a staple of Mann’s work. Likewise, moments of pure cinematic masturbation that are constructed out of little more than backlighting, slow-motion, and fog machines are cut and scored in such a way that an unmistakable gorgeousness is conjured up, absolutely trumping the pointlessness of the artistic choices made.

After there came an impasse between artist and studio, The Keep was dumped into theaters with almost zero fanfare and, these days, Michael Mann mostly disowns it. The rights to the music have been difficult to tie down which has created a legal stalemate regarding the film’s ability to be distributed in the United States and there hasn’t been a domestic release of the film in over thirty years. After its headache-inducing production and the even more hellish post-production, a disgusted and broken Michael Mann turned his back on features for a hot minute to regroup in the world of television, the medium that had previously been so good to him. For he yearned to bring his cinematic vision to the more controllable world of small screen entertainment; a television series with the high production values of a Hollywood film where he could impress his progressively moody visual palate onto his obsessive themes regarding good and evil.

In 1984, he would find the perfect vehicle for all of those things. And when Michael Mann was bound for Miami, nothing in American pop culture would ever be the same again.

(C) Copyright 2021, Patrick Crain

Ric Roman Waugh’s Greenland

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Ric Roman Waugh’s Greenland is an uncommonly superb, heartbreakingly intense, strikingly subversive disaster film, the best of its kind in probably decades, to be honest. Usually when I see a Gerard Butler disaster film coming down the pipeline I promptly step to one side and let it pass by without taking notice, like the lame-brained Olympus Has Fallen series or GeoStorm. Let’s face it, the guy’s agent hasn’t been the best at landing decent projects for him, and for a long time too. Let’s hope this is the start of something new in his career because it’s a staggering work that uses its big budget not for flashy, glossy CGI or needlessly elaborate but ultimately hollow blockbuster set pieces. This is a much more intimate disaster flick that uses character, emotion, spacing, nighttime, growing mass hysteria and poignancy to get its point across. Butler plays a Florida structural engineer trying to get his wife (Morena Baccarin) and kid (Roger Dale Floyd) out of Tampa as a disintegrating comet pummels earth with fragments and the countdown to the end of the world begins. The powers that be have a plan to shelter those with good genetics and useable skillsets in fortified bunkers located in Greenland through a selective process using iPhone emergency alerts and Butler’s family has been chosen but there are many elements that make their journey difficult, mainly the widespread chaos and panic as well as the continued decimation of their planet by falling debris. Butler is fantastic here and sells the frenzied desperation well, while Baccarin has never been better and I never would have thought that Deadpool’s girlfriend was capable of such an affecting, raw performance as she gives here. Others give vivid impressions including Hope Davis, Holt McCallany, Madison Johnson, Gary Weeks, Merrin Dungey and many more. Special mention must be made of Scott Glenn as Morena’s father with whom they briefly take shelter with. He brings his usual gritty gravitas and shares a scene with her that brings out the best in both actors and is the film’s emotional lynchpin. The scenes of disaster aren’t obnoxious, grating or show-boaty like many films of this kind; there’s a haunted, celestial quality to the visuals of the descending comet that is both beautiful and terrifying, like ethereal dying stars entering our atmosphere and lighting up our skies in one final display of sustained, painterly cosmic reverence before the inevitable destruction. If Big Hollywood took notes from Waugh and his team on what they’ve achieved here and employed such creative wisdom into all of their disaster films then maybe the genre overall would be taken more seriously because this is one gorgeously produced piece of work that, for me, now sits as the disaster movie gold standard. Great film.

-Nate Hill

HBO’s The Leftovers

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Are you content enough in your beliefs to set aside the big questions of what we are, where we come from, where we go when we die and what it all means? Do you strive endlessly across all fields of existence for answers to these questions or are you, for the most part, happy to live your life and just let the mystery be? Whichever side of that fence your soul sits on will have a lot to do with how much you enjoy and what you take away from HBO’s The Leftovers, a confounding, fiercely individual three season showstopper from Lost’s mad storytelling brewmaster Damon Lindelof, a series I just reached the finale of last night and am honestly sheepish about even tackling a review as the thing is so dense and pockmarked with events that take a while to process.

Outlining the show’s general premise does zilch in imparting it’s essence, but here goes: one day, all at once, all over the world, three percent of the world’s human population vanishes into thin air. Just like that. Where did they go? Well.. refer to the first few lines of my above paragraph. This show isn’t really about how or why these people left, it’s about the people left behind, how they live now, how the world has been reshaped and altered by such a huge event, and where to go from it. We meet people like small town police chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux in probably the encore performance of his career), his daughter (Margaret Qualley), his mentally unstable yet weirdly charismatic father (Scott Glenn, awesome as ever), deeply wounded Nora Durst (Carrie Coon, excellent), God himself or at least a dude claiming to be him (Bill Camp taking a whack at an Australian accent), a strange drifter (Michael Gaston) with a penchant for shooting dogs, Kevin’s ex wife Laurie (Amy Brenneman), passionate preacher Matt (Christopher Ecccleston), wayward housewife turned cultist Meg (Liv Tyler) and many, many more. The one who resonates the strongest might just be the great Ann Dowd in a ferocious, affecting and often downright hilarious turn as Patty, figurehead of a spooky cult called the Guilty Remnants who wear all white, chain smoke and take a vow of silence. They serve to represent the splintered remains of humanity who have deliberately renounced many of their ways in recognition of their collective trauma, while the rest of society chooses to bury it, soldier on but are no less afflicted.

Season one is kind of like the dry run, based on an existing novel by Tom Perrotta and serving as a deeply felt series of dramatic and interpersonal revelations revolving around the upstate New York town of Mapletown, and those that live there. Season two and three however are where the cart flies off the rails (in the best way imaginable) and the magic really happens because it’s all brand new material spun by Lindelof and Perrotta himself who signs on as co-creator. These seasons traverse from Mapleton to an eerie Texas town called Miracle, on to Australia and even to dreamy purgatorial planes of inter dimensional space that defy description or logic. There are a wide variety of human beings here who all react differently to this mass departure as they grow, learn and suffer into the future at their own paces, turning to everything from religion, crime, messianic devotion, ..uh… shooting dogs, mind bending near death experiences, time travel, metaphysical pseudoscience and more. I’ll admit I struggled with this one because of its purposeful ambiguity, and not in the impenetrably surreal way of, say, Twin Peaks or even the offhand arbitration of Lost, two narrative vernaculars which I have always been able to accept and intuit. No, here the mystery is different, it’s like a dream where the riddle is so specific and clearly drawn yet the answers are so squarely out of reach, and for the most part remain so until the haunting, emotionally resonant and appropriately hazy finale episode. I began watching this looking for clues, stockpiling them for later, paying attention to behaviour and profiling these folks so that I might get to the centre of the mystery before the show itself did… but I didn’t, and neither did the story. It’s just not that kind of piece, and one need only look at the artistic expression and music of the opening credit sequence to see this. Season one always starts with a baroque, austere and Michaelangelo-esque vision of humans ascending in great discomfort, it feels decidedly biblical and somehow organized. Then in season two the visual aspect of the credits is far more esoteric and less classically spiritual… human beings are caught in candid snapshots of day to day activities with their loved ones, many of whom aren’t really present in the frames, their silhouettes replaced with nebulous stars and open space while Iris Dement’s delightful song ‘Let The Mystery Be’ warbles along in the background. These people are gone and that’s the first mystery, but it leads to many more and it’s almost not even our business or our right to impose so many questions and demand explanations in a story like this. This is *their* story, these brilliantly written and acted humans we see onscreen and it’s an intensely personal, at times indescribable story. We bear witness and can draw our own conclusions as to what it all means, but at the end of the day we have no way of knowing and such as it is in this show, so too is the case in our very own existence, we kind of don’t have a choice but to do just what every episode gently reminds us: just the mystery be.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: The Last Marshal

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Alright, it’s 90’s cheesy Scott Glenn shit-kicker action time. The Last Marshal is low budget cheese of the highest order, a broad, violent and deliriously politically incorrect story of Texas lawman Cole McLeary (Glenn), a racist, homophobic, asshole, dickhead old school cowboy who travels to Miami pursuing two vicious killers (Vincent Castellanous and Raymond Cruz) who shot up a church in his town. His brittle persona clashes hilariously with the uber-liberal culture climate of Miami and he makes friction for himself pretty much anywhere he goes as he works with a local unit to take down a strange German drug kingpin played by the great William Forsythe, who clearly has no idea what a German accent sounds like but I love the big guy so much I didn’t care. This one gets points for having Glenn’s character be a complete insensitive douche who never changed his ways or accounts for his atrocious behaviour, there are several key scenes of character development that give him a turnaround and make him a really likeable guy under all that gruff. Just stick with it past the first scene of the film where he manages to heinously insult both Mexicans and Natives in one breath, it’s a startling first impression, but he softens up as the film goes. In terms of action it’s pretty cool, some neat fights, gun battles and a cool boat chase. It’s essentially action background noise, a cool trophy to put on the DVD shelf for Scott Glenn completists, as it’s pretty tough to get your hands on a copy.

-Nate Hill

John McTiernan’s The Hunt For Red October

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

John McTiernan’s The Hunt For Red October is considered the big daddy of submarine films and up until today I’d never seen the whole thing front to back. I now get the hype. This would always be on AMC or TBS Superstation when I was a kid, and my dad would always tune in no matter what. What a fantastic, thrilling, well acted film and one that carries a life affirming antiwar message while still containing some hair raising scenes of aquatic combat.

Marko Raimius (Sean Connery) is a legendary Soviet sub commander who has disappeared with the covert nuclear boat the Red October, plotting a course for the US eastern sea board and ditching any orders from Russian command. Is he going to nuke the east coast? CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) believes he means to defect and disarm but that’s a tricky thing to prove based on a series of hunches during a time of such uncertainty as this. Jack has an uncanny intuition about this guy, who remains somewhat of a mystery, even to his own crew and country. A harrowing series of chases, near misses, standoffs, moral wrestling, betrayals and political posturing ensue but at its heart this is a film about one dude who has had enough of war and just wants out, a theme I greatly appreciated and enjoyed.

Connery is superb here and this might be my favourite of his performances. He’s both enigma and beacon of personal integrity whilst fiercely not letting anyone get in his way, including a pesky, short lived political officer (Peter Firth). He carries the film with a grizzled nobility and despite being an antagonist of sorts, is the most likeable and relatable character. Baldwin fares very well as Ryan too and although Harrison Ford is still my tops, he plays this guy to the hilt with spirit and determination. Other standouts include Scott Glenn as a badass American sub captain, Richard Jones as a wry US negotiator and Courtney B. Vance as a keen radio communicator. The cast is amazing with killer work from Stellan Skarsgård, Joss Ackland, Andrew Divoff, Tomas Arana, Sam Neill, Tim Curry, Jeffrey Jones, Timothy Cathhart, Ned Vaughn, Fred Dalton Thompson, Gates McFadden, Shane Black, Peter Jason and James Earl Jones. This is the very definition of a solid film in all arenas and in that of thematic material and character, it excels wonderfully. My two favourite scenes: Connery and first mate Sam Neill discussing how they’d live their lives in America when all is said and done, where they’d live and what vehicles they will drive. Later on Ryan and Raimius share a moment alone on the sub’s deck as River banks pass by, each remembering their grandfathers teaching them to fish in their respective countries. Amidst all the angst, political unease, torpedos and destruction it’s nice to find little oasis moments of character, serving to remind us that whatever side we’re on and no matter how bad the conflict is, we are all just people. We all need reminding of that once in a while, and both Connery and Baldwin do that exceptionally with their work here. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Revisiting Jonathan Demme’s The Silence Of The Lambs on the big screen

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I got the chance to see The Silence Of The Lambs on the big screen last night and was very curious to see if it held up as I had only seen it once before, when I was like fifteen and on VHS no less. Well. This has to be one of the most airtight, hair raising, gorgeously produced psychological horror shows ever made and it really, *really* pops in a darkened theatre. I remembered bits and pieces, some of the iconic interplay between Anthony Hopkins’s Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling as well as all the freaky pervo stuff with Ted Levine’s Buffalo Bill and had retained the general atmosphere. I *knew* I loved this film already but getting to see it in that environment of the theatre with focused, uninterrupted absorption really reminded me not only of what a masterpiece this is but also why it’s important to see films theatrically to begin with.

From the moment we see Clarice running through those misty Quantico woods to that final extended shot of Lecter strolling down that street in the Bahamas this is fluid, brilliantly edited, first rate storytelling and the one aspect that stands out most to me is the way the characters relate to each other psychologically. Scott Glenn’s Jack Crawford handpicks Clarice in this assignment for a reason. Hannibal takes an immediate and intimate interest in her for a reason. Clarice toughs out the terrifying aspects of this case and taps into her own vulnerability for a *reason.* We the audience are never told exactly what these reasons are but they’re clearly spelled out in each mannerism, each glance, each performance, there for us to find and digest each in our own way. There’s a reason this film crushed the Oscars, the acting awards in particular. Hopkins lingers over every scene like a cobra, his voice that of an icy river and the horribly calibrated intellect behind it scarier still. Foster shows the wounded orphan in Clarice, toughened up by years of hardship and her training at the academy, all her innermost qualities brought out by Lecter’s presence in a relationship that’s hard to classify. “The worlds more interesting with you in it” he assures her later in the film and we silently beg to know what’s going on in his head. Levine is every bit as scary as we remember, finding the human notes in this egregious monster and making him one of the most iconic serial killers in cinema. Glenn is buttoned down and unassuming as Crawford but we slowly see from his acting that it’s a ruse and he’s as sharp as any of them under that well kept veneer. The rest of the cast are carefully picked and include the likes of Kasi Lemmons, Charles Napier, Tracey Walter, Daniel Von Bargen, Anthony Heald, Frankie Faison, Brooke Smith, Diane Baker, Roger Corman, George A. Romero and Chris Isaak all doing great work.

One sequence in particular demonstrates how well this film holds up and why it should be seen on a big screen, and it’s where Lecter escapes from federal holding, dodging dozens of agents, SWAT operatives and sheriffs along the way. It’s an extended scene full of law enforcement lingo shouted breathlessly, a sneaky elevator roper dope, bloody special effects, desperate mustering of FBI forces to stop him all set to Howard Shore’s exceptionally creepy and exciting score. All that plus Jonathan Demme’s tight, succinct direction make a sequence that just hums along and showcases the film’s firm grip on horror, suspense, police procedural, editing, music and overall storytelling. They don’t get much better than this.

-Nate Hill

Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve said before in reviews that it’s pretty much impossible to pick a favourite from the initial trilogy of Bourne films, and I stand by that. They’re somehow completely their own thing as separate entries and also a synergistic entity together as well, using Moby’s propulsive song Extreme Ways to jet into each new chapter.

Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum brings Matt Damon’s arc as super-spy spy to a gong show of a close in New York City after breathless jaunts through London and Madrid. By this time Bourne has had so much trauma inflicted on him and lost so much that he’s almost in devil-may-care mode, but something in him senses that despite recalling a whole bunch lost memory, there’s still a few pieces of the puzzle that need to fall into place, starting with the interrogation of an ill fated British reporter (Paddy Considine). This puts corrupt wings of the CIA onto his trail once again, with evil David Strathairn filling in for evil Brian Cox and evil Chris Cooper before him. It’s a vicious cycle of selfish, narcissistic shirt tuckers trying to cover their asses while innocent people all over the globe die needlessly, and Bourne’s mounting anger has never been more understandable than here. Joan Allen returns as stern but sympathetic Pam Landy, Scott Glenn brings leathery charm as the agency’s duplicitous director and watch for Corey Johnson, Daniel Bruhl, Albert Finney and Edgar Ramirez as a rival asset dispatched to hunt him who is the first of his kind to show a glimmer of humanity. Julia Stiles also returns as Nicky Parsons, an integral person in the saga, her work in all three films is underrated as a restless portrait of guilt over past actions and patient resolve to do better with each new decision, I wish she’d get more complex roles like this because she’s so great.

Greengrass got a lot more kinetic and hyped up (the shaky cam is a turn off for some) than Doug Liman did with Identity, the first chapter. The hectic vibe serves to illustrate Bourne’s stormy, frayed mental climate and works for me, as does Damon’s ferocious performance. The stunt work and action set pieces are flat out spectacular, especially the explosive bike derby in Spain and the tense cell phone tag sequence in London’s crowded financial district. Like I said I can’t really pick a favourite, this is as close to a completely cohesive trilogy you can get, but this one was my dad’s top pick of the three so I suppose it has that edge going for it. As far as the other two that exist outside this trilogy… that’s a story for a far less glowing review. Ultimatum, however, is solid gold.

-Nate Hill

Off Limits aka Saigon

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

What do you think of when the Viet Nam war comes up in conversation? Platoon? Apocalypse Now? Born On The 4th Of July? All great films, but one I like to call attention to is Off Limits, a sweaty, disturbing murder mystery set in the heat of Saigon during the height of the war. Someone is brutally murdering prostitutes in the brothels, raising enough of a stir that Army cops Willem Dafoe and Gregory Hines are called in to investigate all fronts. Because this is war and anything close to an organized procedural is hopeless, there’s a creepy, lawless feel to their work as they probe American GI’s, shady local characters and even US military honchos. This is an unpleasant, royally fucked up film that isn’t easy to sit through or warm up to, but it’s brilliantly made and the sheer level of feverish intensity kept up by everyone involved has to be commended. Dafoe is reserved but lethal when necessary while Hines brings the humour as a guy who creates a flippant smokescreen to hide just how sharp he really is. Fred Ward plays their commanding officer of sorts terrifically but it’s Scott Glenn who lays down one absolute WTF of a performance as a psychopathic American colonel with some disgusting extracurricular habits, one hell of a nasty attitude and probably the single funniest and most unnerving death scene I’ve ever seen. Keep a lookout for Richard Brooks, David Alan Grier and Keith David in solid turns as GI’s who are immediately suspects because in a climate this volatile, everyone is. A fantastic film that fires on all cylinders, is exceptionally well made and very overlooked but be warned: you’ll want to take five or six showers after those credits roll.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Into The Grizzly Maze

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve never seen potential, cast and atmosphere so wasted like I did in Into The Grizzly Maze, there’s just no excuse for dicking up such a great premise like they did here. Originally titled Red Machine, which is way better anyways, it concerns various characters chasing down a monstrous rogue grizzly bear somewhere in the Pacific Northwest (actually Vancouver, naturally). These folks include ex con James Marsden, his park ranger brother Thomas Jane, Sheriff Scott Glenn, poacher Adam Beach and miscast Billy Bob Thornton as some sort of guru bear hunter. The character and writing are almost all flat, which amazes me because I’d be hard pressed not to write at least some engaging dialogue for a cast this badass, but nope. Marsden is as bland as sandpaper, Jane seems bored to tears, Thornton is so misplaced even his coat looks uncomfortable, Glenn is more grizzly than the bear but is underwritten, while Piper Perabo has a classic thankless chick role that’s beneath her talents. Seemingly immortal actor Bart The Bear is used effectively here but he can’t carry a film on his own and as a result the only truly memorable things are the beautiful locations and a particularly gruesome bit of makeup where half of Thornton’s face is literally slashed to ribbons, nice touch that. This seems to be a vague rehash of a 70’s bear flick that, from the looks of it, is probably eons better than this TV movie level garbage. Shame, as we’ll probably never see this cast together again. Avoid.

-Nate Hill

Hoping for resurrection: Michael Mann’s The Keep

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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

-Nate Hill