Author: Christian Sauvé

(On VHS, September 1999) This film still plays very well, even on a third viewing: It’s no accident if it earns a spot on my Fav-100 list. A brilliant genre parody (as opposed to a movies parody) mixing together both Elvis and Spy films, Top Secret! remains fresh by deconstructing several standard cinematographic devices you never noticed before. Though some of the acting and the timing is a bit off, the laughs are well-paced and heartfelt. For a pseudo-musical comedy, the dance/song numbers are well-handled and very enjoyable. Recommended.

(In theaters, September 1999) Another one of these creepy films which work quite well in the theater, but make less and less sense as you think about it later. Numerous incidents end up having no further meaning (the buzzing red lights, the pregnancy, the deep voice), the characters ignore clues-by-four (like the bizarre skepticism of the wife after meeting the policeman), ominous elements are used as comic relief (thirst for orange juice), an overlong flashback borders on overkill, etc… Nevertheless, the plot builds up effectively and the result is a basically decent horror film. A shame that the conclusion had to be so conventionally predictable and that the supernatural elements doesn’t seem to follow their own rules. Not bad, but I’d be careful to consider it as being anything better than okay.

(On VHS, September 1999) I’ll automatically recommend anything featuring the gorgeous Andie MacDowell, but that shouldn’t make me blind to the weaknesses of Michael. John Travolta may star as an angel having a good time on Earth, but what could have been an original comedy is reduced to inconsequent sight gags about a mildly wacky angel, with a romantic tag that seems tacked-on. The whole film is like that, oscillating between different things until it never knows where it should be. The country soundtrack doesn’t help. Still, Michael manages to score a few fun lines and some formulaic-but-sweet romantic moments. That’s probably good enough.

(On VHS, September 1999) Nifty premise, meandering execution. A hundred various criminals are locked inside a high-tech prison. The prize? The three survivors get ten million dollars. Buckets of guns and bullets rain down on the initial hundred, and the fun begins. What follows is, roughly, a non-stop firefight barely interrupted by some half-hearted character development. Think of The Killer, though without emotional content and without John Woo’s superb eye for pulse-pounding action sequences. A cheerfully subversive mambo soundtrack is bound to bring a grin to your lips. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only cool or funny thing in the film, despite the darkly comic potential of the story. This film would have been a first-class classic in the hands of Woo or Robert Rodriguez. Christopher Lambert and Ice-T both shine in roles we completely expect them to play as they do. A pure B-movie worth a look on late-night TV.

(In theaters, September 1999) Wickedly funny French film, reasonably well-subtitled in English. The theatrical origins of the film are obvious from the one-set location and the superbly convoluted script that does miracles with simple elements. Wildly unpredictable, interestingly directed and well-supported by the rather good acting. The ending is a bit of a letdown, as the film desperately tries to be nice and mean at the same time, with mixed results. Worth tracking down at your local video store.

(On VHS, September 1999) An interesting experiment. An Italian hitwoman (played by the beautiful Kendra Torgan) is hired to do a job in England. Due to complications, she’s forced to wait for her prey in a hotel room, literally “killing time” as various hoodlums try to murder her. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that she initially doesn’t speak a word of English. What would have been a terrific Nikita episode is stretched out to 89 looong minutes. The action sequences don’t really shine and the minimalist script is annoyingly contrived. Though the end result is still of some marginal interest (no doubt due to the strong screen presence of the lead actress), it’s simply too long and too indifferently directed to be enthused about.

(On VHS, September 1999) I was initially cautious about this film, and all the Academy Awards it received, which seems to relate a lot to external factors: Robin Williams was overdue for something (so he got the Supporting Actor nod) and Hollywood has the curious tendency to reward actors who write scripts (which would explain the Ben Affleck/Matt Damon win for Best Original Screenplay, though the script doctoring by William Golding is almost never mentioned) But that would be belittling the all-around pretty good film that is Good Will Hunting. It has a lot of heart, interesting characters and simply a good grasp of what is a satisfying story. The acting is uniformly good and the conclusion is suitably bittersweet.

(On VHS, September 1999) The unlikely pairing of Dennis Rodman and Jean-Claude van Damme would at first appear to be an exercise in cinematic awfulness critical mass. But Double Team ends up, strangely, as a curiously enjoyable piece of “guilty pleasure” B-cinema. Helping out is the effective direction of Hong Kong-expatriate Tsui Hark, who knows how to film an action scene. Otherwise, the script offers enough logical howlers and missing scenes to elicit gales of hilarity. Watch out for the deux-ex-Coke-machina ending! Not enough is done with Rodman’s character, but hey—at least he doesn’t embarrass himself.

(On TV, September 1999) So what is this film? As serious SF, it fails completely, never being able to convincingly explain its very framework. As satirical SF, it would have worked… in the fifties, and then again would have been re-written another time. (Though it does go through the motions of creating a different future.) As action, it’s almost a bore, given that we’ve seen all of it in other films, and more often than not, in other Sylvester Stallone films. As a comedy, it does have its moments, though those are dispersed between a mass of limp material. To the film’s credit, Stallone is okay and Sandra Bullock (“Lenina Huxley” is one of the few clever elements of the film) is adorable… but otherwise we’ll have to fall back on set design to say nice things about this movie. An acceptable divertimenti if you haven’t yet seen it, but otherwise not an essential.

(On TV, September 1999) One learns a lot from a movie while doing the dishes while it plays on TV. First; made-for-TV films are never of superior quality. Two; beautiful actresses can make you look at the screen even if what they’re doing isn’t really interesting. Three; it’s a very bad sign if you can’t remember the end of the film only two days later. Four; There is still no reason to disprove the axiom that “any movie title containing cyber is sign of a rotten script”. Five; When making a film about a pop signer, don’t repeat the same song four times, especially if it bears an uncanny resemblance to a Republica song. Six; washing dishes while watching a completely empty film still gives you the feeling you’ve accomplished something.

(On TV, September 1999) It’s hard to see where a soft-porn film about car crashes can go wrong for any young male, but David Cronenberg’s film never amounts to anything beyond a collection of brief sex scenes. And even then, most of those are cut so quickly as to be insignificant. If it’s supposed to be an exploration of sex versus machine, it doesn’t do a whole lot of exploring. The lack of development is such that once the superfluous is cut out, there can’t be much more than fifteen minutes of plot left. (At least Deborah Kara Unger is very hot, so much that she makes plain-looking Holly Hunter look ridiculous in comparison.) Say what you want about porn films, but most of them contain both more plot and more excitement -and, possibly, more realism- than Crash.