Bill Pullman

  • The High Note (2020)

    The High Note (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) There isn’t anything particularly new to The High Note—we’ve seen many movies about assistants to superstars, about young musicians trying to succeed in Los Angeles, about demanding divas and about the machine behind successful artists. But it’s always about the execution, and The High Note does have what it takes to make an impression. It starts with the casting: Dakota Johnson can carry a mid-budget production by herself now (playing a young personal assistant with dreams of producing music), but she gets good support from notables such as Tracee Ellis Ross (as a diva), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (as an upstart musician), Bill Pullman (as her dad) and, perhaps most notably, Ice Cube as a cranky manager. Somewhat fluid directing from Nisha Ganatra pulls us into the glitzy Los Angeles music scene and its backstage antics. The somewhat conventional narrative gets a wild third-act revelation, but that’s all in good fun in keeping with the film’s amiable, no-antagonist nature. It can be watched in a relaxed state with its equal blend of wish fulfillment, low-stakes drama, emotional comfort and bright cinematography. In other words—there’s nothing exceptional in The High Note, but it’s sufficiently well executed to be interesting.

  • Dark Waters (2019)

    Dark Waters (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Much in the same vein as the Oscar-winning Spotlight (which shares headliner Mark Ruffalo as he settles comfortably in older, heavier, gruffer, more cerebral roles), Dark Waters takes on a big target and humanizes the fight against it. This time, the story begins once a farmer brings evidence of severe animal poisoning to a lawyer used to argue on behalf of Dupont. But, intrigued by the story, he starts poking and prodding at the evidence, eventually unearthing, after a decade of work, an incredible corporate coverup of toxic material dumping. It’s easy to think of similar films (Erin Brockovich also comes to mind), but that doesn’t make them any less relevant every time: we need to vulgarize those stories to give an example of what can happen when the system works. It may work slowly and grind those involved in it (Dark Waters is merciless in describing the toll that such a vast undertaking can take—Anne Hathaway’s character seems included solely to work that angle), but it can work and effect change. The problem is keeping a light on it. Dark Waters, as befit its title, is not a light and colourful film: shot in muted, cold cinematography, it looks serious and important even before any dialogue is said. But it’s successful at summarizing a complex matter of biochemistry and law in a way that doesn’t insult viewers—it makes the complicated accessible, even if we often feel the invisible strings of dramatization work their magic. Ruffalo (who also co-produced the film) makes for a likable low-key protagonist, with some assistance from noted co-activist Tim Robbins (who gets a fine speech that may reconcile a few viewers with the necessary role of lawyers), Bill Pullman, Victor Garber and Bill Camp as the very down-to-earth farmer who initiated it all. I wasn’t expecting to like Dark Waters so much, but found myself steadily engrossed in it. It does have the heft of an important film, but it doesn’t lose track of its requirement to keep audiences interested.

  • The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

    The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) Knowing that The Serpent and the Rainbow is a horror movie taking place in midt-1980s Haiti, I was expecting the worst—and for the most part I got what I was expecting: the portrayal of a nation torn between petty dictatorship (The Duvalier regime fled the country midway through the shoot, prompting a move to nearly Dominican Republic) and old-school pre-Romero voodoo zombies. In the middle of it comes a white scientist (Bill Pullman, mildly likable) investigating the voodoo drug that turns people into zombies—for pharmaceutical science! What he encounters in Haiti is a nightmare gallery of characters either in service of a terror-based regime complete with genital torture, or all-knowing in the ways of voodoo. What may have been plausibly deniable as drug-fuelled realism turns ambiguously supernatural in time for the ending, with a villain defeated by lost souls freed from their restraints and a hero whose mind can now do telekinesis. No, The Serpent and the Rainbow (very loosely adapted from a true story) does not deal in subtleties. That’s too bad—As a French-Canadian, I have a real affection for Haiti, and I wish the country was portrayed in a somewhat more credible fashion once in a while. On the other hand, and I’m not that happy about it: now that the film is thirty years old, there is some value in it having captured the terror of the Tontons Macoutes and the Duvalier family of despots. The Serpent and the Rainbow is on somewhat firmer ground when dealing straight-up scares: Director Wes Craven knows what he’s doing, and while the hallucination shtick gets obvious early on, he still gets to build a few intriguing images and suspense sequences along the way. The film does also benefit from solid work from Zakes Mokae as a villain, Brent Jennings as a morally chaotic contact, and the very cute Cathy Tyson in the thankless role of the doctor/damsel-in-distress. As distasteful as the stereotypical portrait of Haiti can be, it does add quite a bit of atmosphere to The Serpent and the Rainbow and helps it stand out from blander horror movies of the time.

  • Scary Movie 4 (2006)

    Scary Movie 4 (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 2006) Roughly similar in tone to the previous Scary Movie 3, this one is a comedy grab-bag that chiefly goes after (in decreasing order of importance) War Of The Worlds, The Grudge and The Village, with other assorted pokes and tweaks at other films (Saw, Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain) and pop-culture icons. Scary Movie 4‘s biggest problem is that it’s quite happy to pastiche other films, but seldom goes for the jugular: Movie critics had funnier jabs at War Of The Worlds during the summer of 2005 than the parody ever manages to put together. (The constantly-screaming little girl shtick isn’t even mocked.) Scary Movie 4, alas, is almost completely bloodless in its parodies: it recreates the original with some goofiness but seldom more. (This being said, the production values are often impressive, especially considering the short shooting schedule) Even the rare political gags only make us wish for much more. It’s no surprise, then, if some of the film’s cleverest moments stand completely apart from previous films. As for the actors, well Anna Faris is still cute in an increasingly irritating clueless shtick, while Craig Bierko does well with the thankless task of parodying Tom Cruise. Still, it’s Regina Hall who steals the show as the insatiable Brenda: her arrival in the movie kicks it up another notch (plus, doesn’t she look unbelievably gorgeous in founder’s-era clothing?) Yes, Scary Movie 4 will make you laugh. Dumb, cheap, easy laughs but still; consider it your reward for slogging through endless mainstream horror films.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, October 2021) One of the side-benefits of my Scary Movie series marathon is a renewed appreciation of how the series is broken down into three distinct phases, and how closely related are the films of those phases. Phase one is the Wayans Brothers phase—closely following genre protocols, often very funny but just as frequently too gross or too dumb for any laughs. Phase Two, the Zucker phase, is more controlled in tone but deliberately chaotic in plot, with fewer gross-out gags but far more comic violence that quickly gets old. Scary Movie 4 is very much of a piece with its predecessor, blending together the plots of very different films in order to create a clothesline on which to hang smaller film-specific parodies. There’s an effort to go beyond simple re-creation to create a more comic tone, and the number of known names in the cast is proof enough of the budget that went into the thing. Anna Faris makes a final appearance in the series (Phase Three of the series is the Faris-less one, which doesn’t help anything) and once again bears the brunt of much of the gags, but Regina Hall sharply improves the film once she joins in mid-plot. (She does look real nice playing a nymphomaniac in 18th century garb.)  Craig Bierko does well in a role asking him to spoof Tom Cruise, while various smaller roles are held by Leslie Nielsen, Bill Pullman, a pre-stardom Kevin Hart and many others —alas, Chris Elliot is once again a laugh-inhibitor whenever he shows up on-screen. In the end, Scary Movie 4 is not a great spoof comedy, but it’s better than many others (including Scary Movie 2) and works reasonably well when the filmmakers can keep their worst tendencies in check (their fondness for hitting women and children aside, at least they don’t include an excruciatingly long door unlocking/opening sequence). It’s more or less the end of the series, though—Scary Movie 5 is a different, almost unrelated beast, and another other sharp turn lower for a series that doesn’t have a lot of room to spare before hitting the bottom of the barrel.