Tag: will Patton

Jon Amiel’s Copycat

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. 

-Nate Hill

The Fourth Kind: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


One should go into The Fourth Kind aware of a single important fact: Despite claiming to be based on a true story, and featuring numerous realistically creepy candid accounts, it’s essentially entirely made up stuff. People seemed to have a huge bee in their bonnet about that, but curiously weren’t bothered by it in The Blair Witch Project, another film guilty of the same gimmicks. Cinema is make believe anyways, and if the story works, then what does it matter. This is one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen, thanks to a few well orchestrated and very bizarre moments that transcend what usually gets passed off as horror these days. It tells the alleged story of several incidents and encounters with paranormal beings in and around Nome, Alaska, from the perspective of psychologist Abigail Tyler, played by Milla Jovovich in elaborate, atmospheric reenactments, and by Charlotte Milchard in terrifying newsreel testimonials. Something has come to Nome, and is causing not only disappearances but very, very weird behaviour among the townsfolk, and a general aura of poisonous unease. Abigail does her best to work with patients and locate the source ofnthe trauma without losing her mind or having an encounter herself. Her patients babble and rave, but there’s consistency to their claims, prompting her further belief and summoning of other experts, including a language specialist (Hakeem Kae Kazim) and an old colleague (Elias Koteas), who are equally as stumped. The town sheriff (Will Patton) believes her to be a complete whacko and does everything to hinder her efforts at every turn. Patton starred in another film that’s very similar to this, Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies, and his grave presence only perpetuates the same kind of eerie supernatural vibe, albeit far closer to outright horror than Mothman. The way the film shows the ‘real’ Abigail sometime following the events chilled me to the bone. She’s broken, haunted and speaks as if there’s a stain on her soul from some otherworldly force. The film knows what gives people that creeping, cold dread fear that we seek so desperatly in the genre, and gave me a fair helping of it. Whether or not the story is even remotely true is trivial; they’ve made a gruesomly scary tale out of it, and that’s what’s important. Also, you’ll never look at owls quite the same way after seeing this. Top shelf horror. 

Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies takes a harrowing look at a curious set of events that did indeed occur for real in the rural West Virginia area. Now, just how much of what we see in the film actually happened is eternally unclear, but I’ve read up on a lot of it and there’s enough testimonials, independent of each other, to both justify the film and shiver your spine. A myriad of unexplainable phenomenon plagued those poor people for some time back then, including visions, eerie phone calls and a mysterious red eyed creature in the shape of a giant moth. Businessman Richard Gere and wife Debra Messing come face to face with what appears to be this entity one night on a lonely stretch of highway, causing a grisly car crash and leaving Messing in a dire psychological state. With the help of a local policewoman (Laura Linney), Gere unwisely tries to figure out this terrifying mystery by putting himself way closer to the occurances than I would ever go, experiencing the stuff of nightmares along the way. Pellington comes from a music video background and as such he is incredibly adept at creating style and atmosphere (his opening credits for Arlington Road are almost as foreboding as anything in this film), two key elements in successfully telling a tale such as this. Gere wanders around in a daze most of the time, distraught over his wife’s condition and obviously influenced by forces unknown. Whatever is out there remains blessedly unseen save for a few hurried glimpses, say, behind a tree or at a kitchen window momentarily, spurring heart attacks from both audience and the poor sods stuck in this brooding bad dream. Rounding out the cast is Alan Bates as the obligatory historian who has seen this all unfold previously in some far corner of the world, and an excellent Will Patton in a frightening turn as a rural farmer who comes who becomes tragically influenced these dark forces. No one plays disturbed quite like him, a jittery, resolute calm always playing around in his eyes, the perfect presence to set anyone on edge. The finale sort of emerges from the chrysalis of dark atmospherics into large scale disaster mode, a choice which didn’t really work for me. I would have preferred to have it kept intimate and creepy right up until some kind of moody end, but they went with fireworks instead. Not enough to hurt the film of negate what came before though, it’s just too good of a time in the haunted house to be dragged down by anything, really. Chilling stuff. 

Alan Rudolph’s Trixie: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

What the hell did just watch. Oh boy, what can I say about this one without tearing it a new one. Alan Rudolph’s Trixie is a dud, a paperweight, a misguided, clumsy disaster of the highest order. It has the tonal equilibrium of heart attack on a flow chart, and a troupe of actors who mercilessly embarrass themselves into the ground with work that goes beyond tireless pantomime. It’s sad, because I’ve seen this type of thing work nicely before, with the right amounts of quaint and quirky qualities, but here the mixture tanks in a god awfully messy cannonball of a landing. It tries to be a detective story, but fails to realize that you need some semblance of a  story to care about, and I just…. didn’t care. It’s a slog to get through, a struggle to stay focused on, and basically a big awkward failure on every level. Also puzzling is the fact that cast, all of which are excellent actors who I love in almost everything they do, all made me want to hit them here, and when you’ve got a cast this good, that’s no easy feat. Emily Watson will make you want to tear your hair out as titular Trixie, a casino security guard with aspirations of taking on a big detective case, an irritating Chicago accent and apparantly mild brain damage that causes her to mispronounce every expression, figure of speech and slang term in a fashion that is neither cute nor funny. She’s wooed by Dex (Dermot Mulroney) a goon who works for sleazy land developer Red Rafferty (Will Patton). Soon, through a set of circumstances both inane and cartoonish, they find themselves deep in some sort of backhanded scheme involving murder most foul, tied to a corrupt state senator played by Nick Nolte, who is the peacock of the bunch, sucking all the energy out of the room with dialogue that is literally lifted straight from political speeches from the past. I’m not even kidding, he blusters out platitudes that vaguely have a place in whatever seen is going on, but barely. There’s also a hot young waitress (a bouncy Brittany Murphy), a flamboyant lounge singer (Nathan Lane is excruciating), a washed up pop star (Lesley Ann Down) and a bizarre cameo from Stephen Lang who attempts an accent that made me supremely uncomfortable. It’s weird, cumbersome and altogether pointless as everything it tries: comedy, thriller, romance, whodunit.. all fall miserably flat. Bummer. I’m gonna go make a list of all the things I could have been doing with the two hours I spent on this wreck.