Month: October 2017

Why Him? (2016)

Why Him? (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2017) There’s a regular number of R-rated comedies these days, but it seems to me as if they’re coming off an assembly line. Take a comedian, take a serious actor, throw them in uncomfortable situations, be sure to feature a copious amount of profanity and make sure to wrap everything in feel-good themes about family, friendship and/or romance. No worries if they all end up feeling familiar since there will be another one six weeks later. Why Him? is PG-13 rated despite feeling like an R, but it certainly struggles with déjà vu: in-between seeing Bryan Cranston as a conventional family man visiting his daughter’s nouveau-riche boyfriend played by an unhinged James Franco, the film seems to have been assembled from familiar blocks in order to give audiences exactly what they would be expecting from the poster, the premise and/or the trailer. Jonah Hill can be spotted as producer and writer, which certainly explains a lot about the film’s well-worn comic elements. It’s not that Why Him? is bad (although some individual moments of the film are obnoxious) as much as it’s the same as half a dozen other recent movies. At nearly two hours, there’s a lot of fluff to the result (most notably a final act that just drags on and on), making the movie feel even more generic. While set at Christmas, I would be exceptionally surprised if Why Him? became anything like a holiday classic—heck, even the very similar The Night Before has a stronger shot at that title.

The Lost Boys (1987)

The Lost Boys (1987)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2017) Even at a time when we think we’ve seen it all with vampire movies, there’s a curious energy at play in The Lost Boys, which improbably blends comic tropes with a theme taken from Peter Pan in order to deliver a rather good horror-comedy. The idea of an idyllic Californian-coast town being home to a small group of vampires and becoming “the murder capital of the world” is amusing enough. But then there’s the protagonist falling in with bad influences, his brother getting acquainted with wannabe vampire killers who do end up being right, the mom hooking up with a suspiciously menacing shop owner … there are a lot of spinning plates here, and they all seem to belong to a slightly different genre. Surprisingly, it works—although there’s some freedom in clarifying that the film is not meant to be scrutinized too closely. Under Joel Schumacher’s direction, The Lost Boys is fast-paced, stylistically moody, generally enjoyable and, at times, an intriguing time capsule of mid-eighties conventions. The opening act is great, the middle act is good, but the third act does get a bit conventional, although still enjoyable in its own way. Jamie Gertz plays a convincing love interest, while Corey Haim and Jason Patric each have their own movie as brothers. Still, the highlight is a very young-looking Keifer Sutherland as the leader of the vampire pack. The themes are slight, but at least there’s something there that goes beyond the usual conventions of vampire movies until then. For the rest, The Lost Boys is a movie that has, through sheer daring and genre-blending, aged very well. It’s still worth a look, long after the vampire boom has come, gone and come back again.

The China Syndrome (1979)

The China Syndrome (1979)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2017) Few movies ever reached topical relevancy as definitively as The China Syndrome, released barely twelve days before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident brought the film’s themes to the forefront of the public discourse. Nowadays, The China Syndrome still plays well, largely because it’s a solid thriller with a capable trio of lead actors. What viewers may not remember (or expect) from the film is how it acts as a great primer on newsgathering in the late seventies, with Jane Fonda playing an ambitious reporter, helped along by a cameraman/technician (a dashingly bearded Michael Douglas, who also produced the film), inadvertently records evidence of a dangerous incident at a nuclear power plant. Trade details aside, the film soon moves into solid conspiracy thriller territory as the characters do their best to go public before the incident reoccurs. The ending is dark, but not quite as bleak as I remembered it. Jack Lemmon anchors the conspiracy angle in reality. Convincing procedural details, either from the TV news angle or the operations of the nuclear reactor itself, keep the film grounded in the required realism. While the film’s surface sheen is clearly from the late seventies, The China Syndrome itself hasn’t aged all that much, and you could indeed imagine a remake that wouldn’t have to change much in order to remain relevant. Still, the 1979 version remains both compelling and reflective or its era. It is well worth a look.

Eraserhead (1977)

Eraserhead (1977)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2017) It is with some satisfaction that I report that really disliked Eraserhead. After all, that’s exactly what I was expecting: I don’t do surrealism and I generally don’t like (or get) much of writer/director David Lynch’s work, so why would this one be any different? The movie itself doesn’t care all that much about whether people like it—advancing at its own glacial pace through nightmarish body-horror thankfully filmed in black-and-white, Eraserhead is a bad dream put on-screen, with minimal plot and maximal non-sequiturs. The themes of parenting anxiety are clear enough, but I can’t be bothered to decode the rest when I care so little about the result. I’m satisfied that, having seen it, I can remove it from my list of films to see and that’s about it. 

Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2017) One of the problems in watching the Naked Gun trilogy on successive days is that the series is so generally consistent in achieving its comic objectives that it’s difficult to tease apart any film-specific commentary. So what’s to be said about Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult? The film is funny; Leslie Nielsen is comedy gold with his deadpan portrayal of a veteran cop; OJ Simpson features in it. This third instalment gets more insistent with its movie-specific parodies, heralding the downfall of the subgenre later on. There’s also a crudeness to some of the gags that clearly makes this third volume the least successful in the trilogy, but that’s not really unexpected. At least the climax, set at the Academy Awards, allows for some pokes at Hollywood itself, although the references there are getting dated far more quickly than the rest of the series. Still, once you’ve started this series, there’s no real reason to stop—even as a third instalment, the film is funny enough to warrant a look.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2017) While The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear is slightly less funny than its predecessor, the difference is slight enough as to be negligible, and the original started out high enough. The result is another solid comedy, perhaps a bit more dubiously motivated (what is Frank Drebin doing in Washington, all of a sudden?) but still effectively hitting upon the tropes of police thrillers. There are a few more outright nods to specific films, but they’re still controlled well compared to the grotesque excesses of more contemporary spoofs. The poke at Bush(I)-era American politics date the film more quickly than the generic cop-thriller stuff of the first film. Otherwise, there isn’t much to say about the film that wasn’t already discussed for the first film: It’s a consistent series, now without its flaws but good enough to be worth a few laughs. 

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2017) Much of the fun in watching The Naked Gun is in seeing the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker team (along with Pat Proft) take on the police thriller as worthy of spoofing. Using Leslie Nielsen as a gaffe-prone policeman with more zeal than polish is inspired, but then again most of The Naked Gun comes from the short-lived but still-hilarious Police Squad! TV show. The basic elements being familiar to the filmmakers, the film itself seems well-practised, something that also probably has to do with the previous ZAZ spoof movies. In any case, the solid plot acts as a clothesline on which to add various gags, joke sequences and parodies. The number of outright parodies is low (the shift would happen in later instalments of the series) but the laughs are high, mostly because the film is spoofing a genre and generating a lot of jokes along the way. Leslie Nielsen is solid, playing his ridiculous character Frank Drebin with absolute dryness. Ricardo Montalban is also a highlight in his own way, while Priscilla Presley, George Hamilton and (ironically now) O.J. Simpson round up the main cast. The third act does get a bit long especially if you have no great interest in baseball. Still, no matter how you see it, The Naked Gun remains a terrific spoof comedy, as essential today as other classics of the genre such as Airplane!, Top Secret! or Hot Shots!

Tonari no Totoro [My Neighbor Totoro] (1988)

Tonari no Totoro [My Neighbor Totoro] (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2017) There’s a refreshing refusal to play by conventions that shines at the heart of Tonari no Totoro: The avoidance of conflict, the supernatural seen as wonder, domestic concerns and a constantly inventive imagination at play. There’s quite a bit of darkness in the film as it focuses on two girls waiting until their mother is well enough to be released from the hospital, but much of the movie is about discovering the hidden magic in their bucolic setting, with dream sequences and spirits helping out the two girls. Whatever drama in the film is limited to looking for a lost girl and the tension of knowing if their mother is doing well. I suspect that Totoro works on a level that escapes analysis or narration—it’s just cute, comforting, wondrous and unlike anything else. It plays like a pleasant daydream, non-threatening to a fault. The cute creature design may also help explain its popularity with kids of all ages. While I wasn’t as taken by the movie as I hoped I would, it’s squarely in Hayao Miyazaki’s impressive body of work and does rank highly as a must-see animation film.

Sleepers (1996)

Sleepers (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2017) The mid-nineties were a surprisingly good time for solid thrillers, and Sleepers works not because of its atypical revenge plot or unobtrusive direction but largely because it managed to bring together an impressive group of actors. In-between Kevin Bacon, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and the always-compelling Minnie Driver, it’s a nice mixture of generations and styles. It helps that the script is built solidly around an unusual conceit, with an ambitious lawyer doing his best to lose a case but make sure it’s widely publicized to take revenge upon childhood enemies. A blend of courtroom thriller and working-class drama, Sleepers may or may not be based on a true story, but it works well as fiction. Despite revolving around difficult subjects such as child abuse, Sleepers manages to be slightly comforting in how it ensures a victory of sorts for its characters, present a solid underdog story in an accessible fashion, and largely depends on familiar actors doing what they do best. Director Barry Levinson mostly stays out of the way of his actors, and the result is curiously easy to watch despite harsh sequences.

The Animal (2001)

The Animal (2001)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Amazon Prime Streaming, October 2017) For such an easy punchline, Rob Schneider’s apex as a leading comedy actor is actually quite short, from 1999’s Deuce Bigalow to 2002’s The Hot Chick, with 2001’s The Animal in the middle of those two. Before and after that, Schneider is to be found in supporting roles and cameos in Happy Madison productions … sometimes effectively but usually not. The Animal certainly presents Schneider in a familiar role, taking advantage of a high-concept comic premise to be as crude as possible in the name of getting laughs. It very occasionally works here, but The Animal is more annoying than funny even while allowing for the usual Happy Madison lowest-denominator methods. What helps a bit is that Schneider is up against first-season-of-Survivor early TV Reality star Colleen Haskell in the lead romantic role. She may have charmed all of North America in 2000, but as an actress Haskell is an empty void—she’s cute but so bland that she’s a rare case study of non-acting in a Hollywood picture. She at least has the decency of looking suitably baffled as Schneider showboats all around her, exhibiting animal traits in a series of comic bits that would be actively embarrassing to explain to the preschoolers for which the film is seemingly destined. (“Yeah, he’s rubbing against the mailbox because … oh, let’s watch a Disney movie again.”) There are a handful of laughs in the movie, largely due to Norm MacDonald’s too-short appearance as an overly analytical mob member, and a final anti-racism joke that surprisingly lands despite the film’s best efforts to make it offensive. Otherwise, well, The Animal is surely sliding away as an unlamented dim memory, and that’s not a tragedy. Maybe, someday, we will forget all about Schneider as well.

Stretch (2014)

Stretch (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, October 2017) I had been waiting for Stretch for years. A new film by writer/director Joe Carnahan? Yes, but after two years in post-production hell, Stretch was never shown in theatres and its release on the VOD market was quiet enough to go unnoticed—I learned about the film from an article about how Netflix was changing the distribution market. But it took another three years for Stretch to make it to Canadian Netflix, and I ended up watching it within days of its availability. Verdict? It’s the Carnahan movie I was waiting for: fast-paced, darkly comic, strangely conceived, tightly edited. It takes potshots at the insanity of Los Angeles, exploits Patrick Wilson’s charisma to its fullest extent and gets Chris Pine to deliver a wonderfully bizarre performance quite unlike anything an actor like him is expected to provide. Jessica Alba shows up as a gal-pal love interest, Ed Helms’ cackling voice-of-reason character has a mostly-posthumous presence … and that’s not even talking about David Hasselhoff or Ray Liotta. Produced on a shoestring $5M budget, Stretch looks ten times more expensive, and has more manic inventiveness in its 90-minutes duration than any three random Hollywood theatrical releases. The pedal-to-the-metal pacing of the film helps sell its weirdest quirks, as one day (and night) in the life of a limousine driver gets worse and worse. Stretch isn’t a great movie, but it’s pitch-perfect at reaching its target and it’s maddeningly entertaining for anyone who discovers it. I’m really annoyed that it’s still largely unknown, and somewhat grateful that, thanks to Netflix, it now has a fighting chance of being seen. 

The Bad News Bears (1976)

The Bad News Bears (1976)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2017) Either they don’t make kids movies like they did, or The Bad News Bears was an oddity even in its time. As we meet our protagonist day-drinking in the parking lot of a neighborhood baseball field, it’s obvious early on that this film goes for hard-luck gritty life lessons. Fortunately, it works even as it’s horrifying by 2017 standards: Seeing kids tag along an adult drinking beer while driving a convertible is the kind of thing that register as a very different kind of funny these days. Walter Matthau is pretty good as the initially reprehensible protagonist—a washed-up failure who learns lessons from coaching a team of early-teen misfits who shouldn’t even be playing in their league. Good character work (especially by Tatum O’Neal as a tomboy with a history and Jackie Earle Haley as a teenage hoodlum) helps a lot, and The Bad News Bears’ fondness for its oddball characters remains endearing even today. The various slurs aren’t so much fun, but given that the film is forty years old at this point, it’s not entirely unexpected. The ending remains a case study in how to transform defeat into a moral triumph. The score is also noteworthy, taking bits and pieces of opera Carmen for inspiration. There’s also an interesting, very American atmosphere to this bicentennial film—the emphasis on baseball helps ground it into a depiction of suburbia circa 1976.