Author: Joel Fisher

Jasper Clay (Nathan Hill) is a private detective on the brink of retirement until he hears about what could be his last job. However, meeting Courtney (Sandy Greenwood) soon convinces him that he should take the case, especially since while they’re making love two men break in and attack her.

So, armed with only his detective skills and animal magnetism, Detective Clay starts his pursuit of Courtney’s missing child.

Jasper is a detective comedy written, directed by, and starring Nathan Hill in the first movie in which he cast himself as the lead. Having always cast himself as characters with dubious ethics, it’s nice to see him in a role where things just seem to happen to him.

A lot of the comedy seems to come from Hill’s own miscasting in his own movie and unlike his other work, this is where he seems to be more aware of it. We’ve all seen detective movies where women are inexplicably attracted to the lead character and Jasper takes this to an extreme level. Not being able to hold a single scene with a woman without her wanting to have sex with him, the audience is sure to smile as Jasper is pulled into one sex scene after another – poor guy.

However, this is a joke which audiences may respond to differently. It’s one thing to point out a cliché of movies such as Jasper where the lead is a babe magnet despite the casting, but it’s another to do this repeatedly.

The audience may even start to wonder if director Hill is fulfilling his own desires or has some kind of inferiority complex which may make the audience feel sorry for him.

They may also not really understand why Jasper is so determined to see the case through to its conclusion because, despite the sexual attraction between them, there’s nothing compelling about his relationship with Courtney. Nathan Hill may be a writer/director/actor with his heart in the right place, but it may help to tell the audience a little more about Jasper so they know whether they can laugh with him or at him.

Joseph Lucky (Nathan Hill) is a cop with a blessed life and a beautiful wife named Esmay (Mary Annegeline). Although one day whilst out talking with his sister-in-law out in his car parked outside his house, two women break in and murder Esmay.

Overcome with grief, Joseph vows revenge on the people who arranged the hit on his wife and is willing to do anything to get justice. However, a little martial arts training wouldn’t go amiss before going into action.

Revenge of the Gweilo (a foreigner, especially a westerner) is an action movie written and directed by Nathan Hill. Under his production company, Hill and his team seem to have set their sights on making the kind of movie you’d find by mistake one night and love it for its absurdity.

The problem is that although Hill’s movies seem to be evoking the kind of films that are so good that they’re bad, there’s just something missing. There are clearly a lot of recognisable tropes in Hill’s movies and they are used to remind audiences of the worst of cinema. The trouble is that you may feel left behind unless you’re in on the joke and know what they’re going for.

For example, it’s all well and good to do a white saviour movie if you’re making fun of that dated trope. It’s just that Revenge of The Gweilo takes itself all too seriously. So, those who don’t realise what the movie is doing will just think it’s another unoriginal action movie.

There’s also something quite pleasing about stumbling across a movie you didn’t know existed, only to laugh at the earnestness of filmmakers who tried something and got it so terribly wrong. With films like Revenge of The Gweilo though, the cheesiness and predictability are intentional which may make the audience feel like the movie is trying to give them something they think they’ll like.

Movies such as The Velosipastor and Sharknado are so over the top and tongue-in-cheek that the audience enjoys the silliness because that’s what the filmmakers intended. Watching Revenge of The Gweilo feels like it’s just trying to cash in on an audience they think is easily fooled.

Beckett (Luke Kleintank) and Samuel Emerson (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) have a flair for the theatrical. Samuel has grown up with a love of Shakespeare like his father, Warren (Sebastian Roché) but he’s not the most reliable of men.

So, whilst Samuel performs in the street for a paying audience, Beckett goes behind their backs and robs them blind. Beckett also has bigger dreams and has hatched a plan with his friend, Larry (Jordan Dunn) but when Beckett gets closer to Larry’s mother (Rebecca Romijn), it stirs up more trouble than he could have imagined.

Sleep No More is a crime drama directed by Antonia Bogdanovich and co-written by Anne Heffron. With a clear love of Shakespeare, See No More is less gritty, realistic portrayal of two brothers trying to escape from under the poverty line, and more of a heightened drama.

The chemistry between Brodie Sangster and Kleintank is probably what drives the film. They make for somewhat believable brothers even though their paths are very different. Roché’s performance also seems to ring true, a former actor who lost it all and succumbed to addictions to overcome his faults.

However, whilst an increasingly exciting stirring pot of drama, the whole may not be as good as the sum of its parts. That’s because although Sleep No More has a relatively brisk run time, it feels like too many cooks have spoilt the broth. This means that by the end there may be a few too many threads that are left unsolved.

There could be an argument that Sleep No More is a slice of life drama and that may be how it starts. However, as the events in the Emerson brothers’ lives unfold, the things that happen become more hyperbolic and stretch the point of believability. There are some great performances, particularly from Brodie-Sangster, Roché and a cameo from Tobin Bell. However, it feels like Sleep No More wanted to be a grounded drama about a bond between brothers that was secretly overtaken by a plot from True Romance.

Whilst the story of Samuel and Beckett may be an engaging one, it feels like without any clear direction, Sleep No More pulls too many punches.

Jaffy Rotunda (Nathan Hill) is a private eye and a successful one too. He never lets his personal feelings get in the way of a job and he gets it done thoroughly and in record time. Then one day he’s contacted by Alfred (Ian Rooney) who tells him about Trix Baxter (Anica Brown) a woman looking for her sister, believing that she may be suicidal.

So, Jaffy searches for Sia (Anne Gauthier) and as he follows her throughout her daily life gradually getting closer, he decides to bite the bullet and talk to her. However, this is where Jaffy’s professional ethics start to waiver as he starts to fall for Sia.

Colourblind is a modern noir drama written and directed by Nathan Hill, moving away somewhat from erotic thrillers to a more character-driven detective story. However, whilst Colourblind may be one of Hill’s more visually impressive movies, the narrative lets it down.

There seems to be something of a trend with Hill’s work and whilst he may be aware of it himself, there may be others who may not quite fully understand where he’s coming from. Taking his work at face value, he tends to play men with questionable ethics who the audience has to warm to and sympathise with so that they can follow their story. Something which if somebody were to follow his work may start to think is a reflection of the writer/director himself.

However, Hill’s movies tend to want to evoke genres of a time gone by where the protagonists were unethical scum, but the audiences loved them anyway. This unfortunately may be a problem for general audiences today though who will get through Colourblind only to find Jaffy’s self-indulgent behaviour to lack any self-awareness or empathy.

Colourblind may also be playing it straight, mimicking a ‘simpler time’ if a viewer were to be generous, but it feels like the plot is too thin to be stretched across the runtime of a movie. This unfortunately means that the more time the audience spends with Jaffy, the less they are going to like him.

Add to that various plot twists that add nothing other than padding out the plot and Colourblind may not be worth seeing.

Julian (Nathan Hill) is happily married to Carmen (Natalie Heslop) and they have a perfect life. Until one day Carmen confesses that she’s had an unusual ability since childhood. The ability to bring to life whatever she draws. Amazed by this side of his wife that he never knew, Julian does whatever he can to set her career going as an artist, but soon things take a sour turn.

Stephanie (Stephanie Sass), an old friend of Carmen’s comes back into her life and they pick up right where they left off. However, Stephanie has her sights sight on Julian and his indulgence in his own fantasies threatens to tear his marriage apart.

I, Portrait is a thriller written and directed by Nathan Hill which attempts to bring back a genre long forgotten in cinema. Or at least a genre long forgotten in theatrical releases. Casting himself again as the lead, this time his penchant for the shlocky and the absurd brings a more supernatural twist.

However, for all his good intentions to scratch an itch that cinema doesn’t provide anymore, Hill’s movie often exposes why that is the case. Audiences are just far too familiar with the tropes and cliches of those movies often labelled as ‘erotic thrillers’ and this is no different.

Even adding magical elements doesn’t do much for I, Portrait either. As for the most part audiences will know that a quirky element should be paid off later and they’re not wrong – No matter how ridiculous it is.

There are also parts of the movie that may suggest to the audience that Hill’s not confident that the running time will stretch to barely 80 minutes. This means audiences will have to sit through extended scenes which could have been cut down for pacing. Things such as montages between characters talking and having fun, an extended song during a club scene and a part where Julian is watching a bad movie on TV all could have been cut.

There are still the bare bones of what an audience may expect to see in such a movie as this, it just may take a little time or fast-forwarding to get to the plot.