nathanielqwilson Reviews

The Ritual (I) (2017)

More of an adventure movie than horror but it's fine

[6/10 · 23 October 2018]

This seems to be a fairly divisive movie. It has very noticeable flaws but it's overall worth your time.

I do wish I had gone into it not thinking of it as a horror movie. Just some kind of mystery or something.

It has solid, though frequently obnoxious characters, a great sense of place and a lot of atmosphere.

I thought some of the mental trip aspects were heavy handed and ultimately an annoying part of the movie.

They were also a bit too willing to show what it should have been hiding. But then again if you're not holding it to the level of subtlety that a horror movie should have it might actually become somewhat creepy.

A Few Less Men (2017)

Stupid but watchable

[6/10 · 23 October 2018]

I'm not going to say there is anything smart about this movie.

It's a dumb, gross out movie of a type that thinks missing out on a threesome is automatically funny.

But I still watched it. I like stupid movies. It's fine for something to watch when you need a good no-brainer but I would watch it on a weekday, do not make it your Friday movie.

Watch it a little drunk.

Contracted (2013)

More like a soap opera than a horror

[4/10 · 23 October 2018]

This one begins auspiciously. It just has a tone that something bad is going to happen.

But it just doesn't go anywhere. I feel this could have been part of any generic soap opera with its themes of venereal disease and sexual confusion just kind of marinade for a while with more bickering than I would like to see.

A disease can be a good source of conflict but the real intrigue in this movie is just wasted. The doctors mention they're not sure what this disease is but so what? The horror aspects of this movie just feel like an afterthought.

A part of me admires how this movie does sort of keep its cards close to its chest but mystery is a balancing act and it really gives me too little bait to hold onto.

I don't want to hate on this movie too much. It's not trashy, I feel it came from a good place creatively but it really does not work, the characters are bland and unlikeable asides from one guy who is way too backgrounded and it can feel like an after school special at times,

You're really missing nothing by missing this movie.

Last Shift (I) (2014)

It's looks original at first but it's another generic horror

[3/10 · 6 October 2018]

I struggle to really enjoy a movie with a cop as a protagonist but with this movie I tried because it's not a simply Law and Order Narrative.

I liked how it hit the ground running. It went straight to the point, no need for filler like in The Conjuring or something.

It's not a bad premise and at one point I was really affected by the situation where you don't want to though the towel in on situation out of fear of being branded a quitter.

But the whole thing develops poorly. It's generic Satanists-are-evil stuff. They don't call themselves Satanists but its basically the same thing aesthetically.

The bulk of the movie are uncanny little camera tricks that remind me of those silent movies where would play around with what the camera could do rather than focus story. The effect is more laughable than anything,

I, Daniel Blake (2016)

It's very well made for it is.

[6/10 · 26 September 2018]

I would be lying if I said I liked this movie in the conventional way because it is really just a problem picture albeit a well-made one. It feels like it should just be a TV movie, but it makes all its points impeccably: the issues of the system and how even when we have welfare it can be structured against the people it's supposed to help. It reminded me in parts of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists except without the political sermons. Obviously, a political movie but it focused on just telling a story with believable, likable characters with a great sense of humour and pathos to lace its hard-edged reality.

If you're looking for a socially conscious picture with fine acting from both our veteran protagonist and a super cute biracial girl then you could hardly do better.

Mr. Jones (2013)

It could have been really cool....

[5/10 · 10 September 2018]

This is not a generic found footage horror, I didn't even really get that it was found footage for quite a while.

I really liked the premise: it reminds me of those top ten videos online where they talk about mysterious things. Mr Jones is some enigmatic craftsman who send his work to seemingly random people.

Our main characters find him by accident during some self imposed sabbatical to live in nature and make some documentary.

My first issue with this movie is that the characters themselves are on their own journey and, though I'm grateful that the movie does not waste time setting them up and instead lets us guess this for ourselves, ultimately it's a point they do not explore and it's only a plot device to give a reason for these guys to pursue Mr Jones. It makes the ostentatious narration-montage in the beginning seem even more deliberate and contrived than it did the first time.

Another major aesthetic issue is that this is supposed to be found footage but the cinematography is so stylized. For example, time laps photography and mismatching audio with visual (such as someone speaking over footage where they do something else). I could let this slide in a standard movie but since it's found footage one only comes the conclusion that the characters making this movie contrived every effect after the fact which just kills it.

And then the movie itself: it is pretty intriguing at first. And the interviews intercut with the main narrative give a gradual background that could have been a little more subtle but are still fine in their own right. But it is awkwardly paced and by the end descends into an hysterical romp that isn't scary. It's just confusing.

Margot at the Wedding (2007)

It's like a tame Festen

[6/10 · 10 September 2018]

Although it feels a little familiar, when you're in the right mood this is exactly what you want.

Weddings are the perfect place to get a bunch of people with history in the same place and the uncomfortable situations fly here. It's a moderately paced and fairly quiet movie with an eerie candour.

It's almost like it has a check box of transgressive themes it wants to use but it uses them well. I wonder if there was some nuance behind the thing that went over my head like, now I think about this movie nearly 10 years after first watching it, the vividly frank relationship between Margot and her son.

It's hard to forget Jack Black in serious roles and he is actually quite striking as a guy who made one mistake too many. He's very sympathetic.

Maybe not a masterpiece but I feel I want to like it.

The Cottage (2008)

Decent macabre yarn

[6/10 · 8 September 2018]

I went into this expecting an homage to horror but it's not quite like that.

Rather than dive into the horror tropes right away it feels more like a humorous thriller for its first act as everything goes horribly wrong. It then throws its characters into an archetypal slasher to better effect than you'd think.

Not hilarious but good fun as our odd couple stars ( a formidable Andy Serkis and his whelpish brother) struggle against their hostage and then something much more sinister. It impressed me how I am totally rooting for the kidnappers in this movie and worried for them genuinely, due to no small part that their hostage is just so hateable.

It is more than just a parody and an homage to a certain genre. It has its own story with characters I could really feel for that does lead to great pathos.

It even gets a few really well made horror moments in where I was totally going along with it.

WALL·E (2008)

Wall-E himself is great. But there is surprisingly little of him.

[6/10 · 26 August 2018]

The first act of this is solid. It's post-apocalyptic, dialogue free cuteness with much warmth and humour but not trite about it. I love the desolate landscape, I love Wall-E's design and personality, I loved following him and I loved the plot development with the arrival of Eve.

The rest, however, is a bit so-so. The characters I'm most invested in take a back seat to a vision of humanity conceived by your vegan social studies teacher. I am perfectly willing to see the benefit in exorcise, environmentalism and changing the socioeconomic system so that resources are applied more for the benefit of the many and the profits of the few but it's still a bit patronizing in its message of change.

Very visually beautiful and never exactly dull, it's still a bit of a let down due to someone having no idea on how to follow through on a plot that only needed half the run time.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

There is no conflict

[3/10 · 26 August 2018]

For me, the worst movie of its writer and of its studio but then again, I always preferred Fireflies to Mononoke.

The issue of this movie is simple. It doesn't have any conflict. This is the thing that is at the centre of all storytelling. I want to be fair and try to understand what this movie was trying to do. It was not meant to be the resolving antagonism between two forces, but rather a meditation on the good things in life, not the bad. In that respect it isn't badly made. It is a breezy and soothing trek quite perfect for someone recovering in hospital after an emotionally and physically traumatizing experience.

In other movies, one of the little girls would feel spiteful about having to move home or there would be some other type of family disharmony. But here the worst thing going on with these people is the sick mother but even then, we only see her in a convalescent state.

Totoro himself barely does anything but I don't want to reveal too much. I have exaggerated a little, the movie does try to bring a little conflict for the climax, but it is as contrived and out of the blue as the final act of "Twilight". But in "Twilight's" defence, they used their climax to explore themes present throughout the book and they are only part one of the "Twilight Saga". It has a professional, verdant design and many instantly icon moments that unfortunately are wasted in having no real context, but they did make me want to like it. It's the five-year-old's birthday party soundtrack that makes me want to dislike it.

I can see myself at 5 being tolerant of this movie even if you have to wait through all the slice of life to get anywhere. I can't see myself at 10 caring for this movie at all. But I can see myself at 30 maybe warming to it eventually. It's not really a movie for kids, it's a movie that organic, gluten free parents want their kids to like.

But if you're trying to find an entry point into Japanimation or are looking for another from its studio/writer, I'd recommend Porco Rosso way before this, even if this one is the more popular.

Schindler's List (1993)

It could have been amazing but it's just oscar bait.

[3/10 · 25 August 2018]

What I really dislike about this movie is that it I think I was really mislead about what it was. Whether the movie itself, its marketing or just word of mouth is to blame I can't say.

I believed it was meant to be the story of Oskar Schindler saving some Jews. Which I was fine to see. But what I got instead was some candid exhibition of the holocaust with the Schindler plot kind of tacked on for good measure. I can agree that we should have a really well-made holocaust movie out there but it's the duplicity of the picture that sits unwell with me. The scenes are disconnected and episodic which would have been appropriate if only it could have been established that this experience was the focus of the movie but since there is a pretence of a linear plot that we only get glimpses of they just feel like filler. I barely remember how this thing of saving anyone developed or how he did it. It was really just a marketing gimmick and is in its own right really not that interesting beyond its premise.

Maybe if it had been some kind of hybrid of "Shoah" with "Waltz with Bashir" it really could have been something; with real people relaying their experiences which were then dramatized. But because of the way these episodes are contextualized, they just seem pornographic in the sense it is more about a sadomasochistic voyeurism on this example of genocide, relying way too much on its production values and the gruesomeness of what it is showing so to me it is basically just a slasher than rips off reality. At least "Friday the Thirteenth" tried to be original.

Another design flaw is the film's desperation to show you things to make you recoil. Once you establish crimes against humanity to be on the stakes, the endless parade of candid shootings just seem redundant. It doesn't matter how bluntly they the lady gets shot, the apathy to human lives already blatantly obvious. It's just "what's going to happen? Oh? Another person got shot? Shocking..." This candour is also jarringly contrastive to strangely lyrical dialogues and monologues that make it very unclear what tone the movie really wants.

Powerful moments asides, it's a very sugary experience, and the horror of its subject matter does not excuse the handling. As you can tell from the cover art used on this website. I respect the use of black and white, it's very appropriate and usually the colour against black and white thing would greatly appeal to me, but it focuses on a little girl which is just pandering. The same kind of physiognomy that Nazi Propaganda used. Maybe I'm slow but the point that it was to personalize the impersonal nature of mass killings was lost on me. Perhaps most insultingly of all, the movie, despite how keenly it fetishizes holocaust imagery, doesn't give any kind of reflection on why the holocaust happened. No one is entirely sure but there is surely something to say about it. It's happy to talk about why people went along with it, but the mentalities of the axis peoples are lacking. That these people don't have more of a presence is a big hole in this movie.

Also, it's in English, which costs it a whole point out of ten from me. It should be in German. I am not German.

As snooty as this must sound, I am inclined to think that this movie was a case of people really falling for a sentimental, well produced collage of an historical even we all like to hold in mind but not really think too carefully about that compromised the art (and the very story it was supposed to tell) for artsiness.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Good parts make an awkard whole.

[6/10 · 25 August 2018]

It's sort of hard to review this movie since it's not really one movie, it's set of several intercut and overlapping short stories with their own appeal. I suppose it's meant to be a meditation on the spontaneity of fate.

Along the way we get a lot of colourful characters. It's never exactly funny or poignant but it's stylized enough to be worthy of our time and give something for cartoons to parody for years to come. Ultimately, it's really just an exercise in badassdom but it does that pretty well.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Everything with Hopkins is great but otherwise...

[5/10 · 25 August 2018]

Everyone remembers Anthony Hopkins' delicious take on an epicurean monster and they should since its good enough to hold the whole the movie, near enough...

But asides from these startlingly well written little monologues it's remarkable what a bland movie this otherwise is. I have an issue with any narrative that at its centre just follows law enforcement tracking down a killer. It leaves very little room for any meaningful development of either the plot or the characters, no matter what the details of the case, it always treads a familiar path. A big part of a story for me is what motivates the main character but with these kinds of things the answer is "it's their job" and Jodie Foster laying on the Saccharine about a bunch of farm animals only strikes me as a contrived way to humanize a basic, taciturn character type.

The movie is obsessed with suggesting there is some type of spiritual connection between Hannibal and Clarice, but it is entirely an informed attribute. The whole murder at its centre just feels like an arbitrary McGuffin as an excuse to get Anthony Hopkins out, so I guess I can't blame it.

Alien (1979)

For people with long attention spans only

[3/10 · 25 August 2018]

I try to remember when I'm watching this that I am very much a product of my generation, by which I mean that I have a very short attention span and I'm not good with slow pacing. When it comes to horror I like a slow burner but there must be lots of little, uncanny things happening.

Like watching a Tarkovsky movie, this one has a lot of meditative pauses and a lot of purely logistical content that often doesn't seem to make too much sense. It is one of many films that is very famous for being original where many other films have taken the premise and tone and improved upon it. I remember watching a parody on "American Dad" and thinking if only Ridley Scott had actually made this film so compelling.

A couple of amazing, instantly iconic moments notwithstanding (and with a wonderful sense of design with its lonely, junkyardish ship and a super Alien), I would not say this has stood the test of time and is really more for viewing for historical interest.

Overall my favourite part was Sigourney Weaver's anal cleavage.

The Shining (1980)

Stylish and Hilarious but not scary

[7/10 · 25 August 2018]

A very visually compelling little ghost story (with a lot more to it than ghosts) with oodles of bizarre imagery to illustrate what is essentially a decent into madness but there's way more to it than that as you will find in the layers of meaning that have spawned a thousand fan theories. However, it happens that it is so over the top that any attempt at being genuinely chilling falls on its face but it's still quite a ride as it slowly builds atmosphere and then delivers.

The sensation of isolation yet with a little world of memories to explore is the lasting impression in what really ought to have been a PC game if the flavour had been conceived two decades later.

I wonder if Jack Nicholson was miscast. His vivid, bestial father stands apart from other examples of the character type by the comical twist but does kind of change the tone of the movie.

Not exactly very sensical the first time round but then again it isn't supposed to be. Definitely worth a view just for the experience but as a horror movie it doesn't quite work.

Probably its makers best movie.

Apartment 1303 3D (2012)

Worse than The Conjuring.

[1/10 · 21 June 2018]

This is the worst movie I've seen this year. I didn't like the conjuring but at least they had a bit of professionalism.

There's little to really say. It's not only a generic horror movie, it is awkwardly written and has absolutely no sense of mystery or atmosphere. All the cards are on the table very quickly.

There is some subplot of the characters dealing with their verbally abusive, alcoholic ex pop star mother that adds nothing. It could be taken out so easily and so feels like fanfiction.

No Character has any personality. The protagonist is just some cliché vulnerable girl-woman who breaks down very easily. Her sister just looks down her nose at everyone. the mother is insufferable...don't make me relive it....and then there are some cops that are useless and have less depth than the ones on GTF.

There are countless little points you could make fun of or criticize (she actually says out loud that the apartment is "spooky". NEVER use that word in a horror movie!).

It's not so bad it's good, just resist your curiosity until yourmoviesucks or someone does a commentary.

I wish I could give it a 0 because I seriously believe # the people who write amateur creppypastas could write a better movie/

Persona (1966)

Watch Wild Strawberries instead

[3/10 · 4 June 2018]

It is almost impossible to praise this movie without sounding smart and cultured and it's almost impossible to criticize this movie without sounding like a bit of a philistine but...yeah, I don't like it.

Now, I'm all for stylized cinematography, when "If" switched from color to black and white for no obvious reason I was so impressed because it's the kind of movie that can do that.

But here I don't feel it works because, firstly, it makes the whole thing kind of risible, especially given how stone faced the tone is and secondly, the essence of the thing kind of gets drowned in bizarre angles and sudden blurriness.

It could have been a fairly effecting exploration into the way, despite superficial differences we are all alike, and part of the same universal journey yet still determined to analyse others. It's ambitious in being mostly just 2 characters (one of whom is almost mute by choice) but ambition doesn't equal skill.

I don't think I totally missed everything the movie was trying to say: we see the nurse as the one who has it together and is so different from her but then we see that she is more like simply being at a later stage in her life with elements of her being already visible in the Nurse with her problematic relationship with her fiancé. Or maybe that's tripe but it's the impression I got.

And the motif of film: the literal film reel and that she's an actress...the artificiality of the persona...we get it. Oh, and one of them is called "Alma". Seriously.

But ultimately I'm a bit "so what?" about it all. There's a tendency for the characters in Bergman's movies to be complex but in the way a psychiatric case study is complex without any relatable human qualities or individuality within except for what is strictly and obviously relevant to the plot or central themes; a tool for movie rather than someone I could meet. So the incites the movie has may be intelligent but also a bit pointless and irrelevant.

And while I won't reveal the ending, I didn't even realise it had finished when it did because I saw it with ads on Film4 and there are no credits. So when I found it had finished I was like "wait, is that it?"

It's a dense, not very accessible piece of "arthouse" cinema that really exemplifies what people imply by "arthouse" though of course all films are art. It may have been good if it had been half the length and one third the stylization. It has some great atmosphere, the sense of the cold desolate Nordic beach is intensified by its creepy arrhythmic score. The acting is quite stilted, it is first year performing arts academy stuff.

Kind of interesting but that doesn't stop it being dull and giving every impression it's convinced of it's own genius. Really just for cinematic curiosity.

Curse of Chucky (2013)

Supercedes the first movie.

[7/10 · 30 May 2018]

Usually when you say a movie feels Just as much like a remake as a sequel it's a bad thing. But this was simply a delight.

Chucky is an excellent horror villain and as much as I enjoyed "Bride" and "Seed" this is a return to his roots; to give him the chilling horror tale he deserves.

Yes, it's old school creepy mansion stuff but the effect is in the details as we rediscover Chucky through the eyes of a fresh protagonist discovering him for the first time as he goes from an innocuous object to the menace he really is. And you won't be disappointed if you want to see Chucky's attitude shine through.

It isn't the continuation of the previous movie some might be expecting but it's an excellent yarn that will satisfy both fans and newcomers.

I would even say skip the first movie completely. It was really just the freshness and charisma of Chucky himself that made that movie famous at all in the first place. It's not technically very well made.

The Conjuring (2013)

I just don't get the Appeal!

[1/10 · 29 May 2018]

I will say when a spoiler is about to appear.

I have a rule that I never watch a horror movie with a gerund for a title.

But I made an exception for this movie because it was so high profile and people were just raving about it.

I didn't notice this first time round but yeah I guess it does have minimal sex or violence but the problem is that it didn't replace it with anything.

I actually tried to begin it once before I knew it was so popular and just turned off after 20 minutes. Trying to watch it seriously recently I just got bored toward the end and it's taken me a while to actually finish it, one bit at a time. I've watched a lot of horror movies which is really the worst thing you can do if you want to be frightened by them so I guess I have become a bit picky.

But I just don't get the hype. It's not that it's just OK, for me it is simply a through-away film that isn't worth remembering even for critical interest. Other horror movies I think are over-rated like Alien, The Exorcist or Child's Play, I at least sort of see the appeal because they're kind of different and have an individual.

But this is just a generic horror movie riddled with clichés: demons smell bad, demons are cold, demons have deep voices, the dog knows, "something bad happened here"... I found the characters generic which is forgivable in a horror movie admittedly but when they try to make me feel pathos for them it just feels trite.

We get all the familiar horror schtick: the gruesome which, the Roman Catholic angle...I struggle to take a movie that expects me to just role with the idea that things that mock the trinity are bad guys and the Christians are the Saviours. Many Christians are wonderful people but I think we're at a point in human development where simply having the Christian god equal good just feels like simplistic propaganda. Maybe if it were an irreligious persons discovery that Abrahamic forces were after them...then maybe it could be frightening.

That we get some professionals on the scene to describe everything and give them names also kills any mystery or atmosphere and makes everything just feel under control so the remainder of the movie just feels like going through the motions.

(soft spoiler in this paragraph)

To knit pick a particular moment: they have this game called "hide and clap". The mother is in a room and the door of the wardrobe opens by itself (pretty creepy) and then hands emerge from it and clap. They should have kept the camera on the mother so we only heard the clapping.

(No spoilers after this point)

I also don't like the Annabelle Doll. It might be the more frightening design in real life but when contextualized within a horror movie, the more innocuous looking thing is always creepier. They should have stuck with Annabelle's real life design.

Ultimately, although it isn't a trashy movie, I still feel kind of insulted by it and even with the positive feedback it has received, people who are like me should not feel bad for missing it.

My 1/10 grade reflects that it sort of feels like it could get a good atmosphere at times but there's really nothing original here at all. The worst movie I have seen this year.

Zombeavers (2014)

It's a low brow comedy horror horror and it couldn't been made better.

[7/10 · 21 May 2018]

This is a movie that has no delusions about what it is. It's a dumb little piece of horror comedy but within those parameters it's made so intelligently.

Maybe that's going a bit far but it's heaps of gorey fun that makes you lower your guard so that it does get some scares in amidst some breast and at least a couple of twists I never saw coming.

It has a sweet setting and the characters were fleshed out enough though I was quite glad to see at least one of them get beavered.

Also, the choice to use animatronic beavers, not CGI, sets this apart from the money other nickel a dozen creature features out there.

It's a competent pastiche of both the zombie genre and the zombie parody genre.

Annabelle (I) (2014)

It's...fine. Beats The Conjuring in any case.

[5/10 · 21 May 2018]

I thought the Conjuring was terrible. This is...OK?

There's not much to say: it's a generic horror movie of a kind we've seen a thousand times. Very on the nose and the mystical black lady doesn't help.

It's not easy to really root for Mr and Mrs Wholesome USA...

And another thing: the original Annabelle is way scarier. Admittedly this Annabelle is the more creepy looking in her own right and I would NOT like to go to sleep in a room with her in but when contextualized into a horror movie, scary looking things are not scary. You need to use harmless looking things. So the used Raggedy Ann concept would have been much better.

Darkness/Light/Darkness (1989)

Exactly what you want from a surrealist short film

[8/10 · 21 May 2018]

This really cool short film is everything you want from surrealism.

It's bizarre, freaky, but it's not arbitrary. It establishes a simple concept and follows it through with a fetishistic weirdness in every moment.

It's not meant to convey some cryptic message, it just gets it's hands dirty as it delves into the dream like and reshuffles the familiar human body.

In Search of the Titanic (2004)

If you wondered how euphorically shoddy an animated movie could be...

[5/10 · 21 May 2018]

This movie is just...a phenomenon.

There are bad movies, just think of a movie you know is bad, something the critics nor the public could like and I suspect even that movie at least showed some semblance of professionalism, they at least made sense, they gave the impression that there was some kind of quality control so a certain kind of undemanding viewer could occupy themselves briefly before they left the hotel room for dinner.

But not here. This is a level of shoddiness that I never expected could even come about; no one would part with the money required for animation if they knew what this was. How Lucid were the people writing this? They must have known. This HAS to be some kind of Winter for Hitler project where they could get more if the movie failed. And it's he sequel to an almost as bad movie!

But I don't hate this. I love that something like this exists since it jus defies belief. The imagery and the bizarre lines and the plot that's jus tall over the place...watch it once and then just feast on all the media that's been creating pointing every absurdity , every plot hole, every shoehorned piece of absurdity.

It can get kind of dull: it drags so much in places since they struggle to progress the plot in any way but talking but wowee this will give you new respect for the continental bargain bin, American Movie rip-offs.

It's in that so bad it's almost good category so my rating of 5/10 factors that in. If I couldn't laugh at its expense it would be a big 0.

The Emoji Movie (2017)

Pound Shop Lego Movie but it really doesn't suck that hard.

[6/10 · 21 May 2018]

Everyone keeps saying this movie is terrible but it's not that bad.

I think anyone will admit that it's not exactly polished; a lot of the jokes are too in-your-face, there's an over abundance of puns and a lot of the dialogue is heavy and awkward but that doesn't mean it isn't fun.

The inspiration apparently came from toy story and continues a tradition of compiling real pop culture references that we saw in Roger Rabbit, Food Fight and Wreck It Ralph though the movies actual narrative seems most indebted to the Lego movie with its themes of conformism and creativity of expression.

I like the message even if it is kind of ham fisted, both our protagonist Gene and the female lead Jailbreak are likeable even if JailBreak is blatantly just Wyldestyle from the Lego Movie and James Cordon's High comic relief as High Five is maybe kind of annoying but that's more due to lame jokes than any intrinsic problem. I found the antagonist actually pretty creepy, as are all perpetually happy people.

Ultimately I came away feeling warmly about the movie for it's rich, distinctive world, positive message and how it embodies an aspect of its time while tying it to a universal them even if it's not exactly subtle about it.