Bob Balaban

  • Parents (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) If you read a lot of my horror movie reviews, you will definitely get the sense that I loathe slasher films. But as it turns out, there are quite a few more categories to include in my “horror genre I dislike” marathon, and one of them has to be cannibalistic horror. Most of them have the added disadvantage of being flat-out terrible and with ultra-gory effects (a third “hated horror” category) but Parents isn’t like that—even if I still don’t like it. Being discriminate in its killings, much of the film is a suspense thriller from the perspective of a ten-year-old boy who begins to suspect, after a move from the East Coast to California, that his parents may be cannibals. (Body parts hanging on a meat hook in the basement aren’t the most subtle home decoration choice.)  His paranoia is justified, though, and the film’s big brutal kill happens at the right moment for him to burn the house down, which may not resolve the problem. Parents is supposed to be a comedy and occasionally attempts to be, but with material like that it’s difficult to see just where the comedy (even if black) would fit with boyish suburban cannibalistic paranoia. Eating Raoul it isn’t, and it’s easy to compare the urban snarkiness of that better film with the unfocused nature of this one. Most surprising, perhaps, is how the film was directed by Bob Balaban, an actor whose screen persona doesn’t really match this material. (His second directorial effort was a zombie film, so go figure.)  There are, to be sure, some mildly effective visual moments along the way—but the end result is mean, disturbing and repulsive, without much of a payoff. Parents, in other words, is definitely not changing my opinion on cannibal horror movies.

  • Waiting for Guffman (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Look, I know that Waiting for Guffman is dearly beloved. Christopher Guest’s filmography is incomplete without it; it stands on numerous “best comedies” lists, and it’s a not-infrequent reference even twenty-five years later. But I’m more of a Best in Show person—and when it comes to comedy, I’d rather watch something tightly written than improv that goes all over the place. I also suspect that some of the clichés on which the film is built—which is to say: the backwardness of small-town America—don’t hold quite as true today. Still, that’s what we’ve got: In celebrating a historical milestone, a very small Midwestern town puts on a musical and everyone involved is convinced that they’re one New York agent (the titular Guffman) away from becoming rich and famous. Of course, there’s a quite a gulf in-between their talent and their self-assessment of that talent and that’s where much of the comedy comes in. Guest himself plays a not-very-closeted flamboyant man with Broadway experience trying to orchestrate the show. Around him are various townspeople with delusions of grandeur, small-minded folks not quite grasping what the musical is trying to do, and an assortment of just-normal-people swept up in the craziness. To be fair, Waiting for Guffman is steadily amusing—with people such as Eugene Levy, Bob Balaban, Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard in the cast, it’s hard not to have at least a smirk throughout. But Guest’s much-vaunted improvisational approach (leading to multi-hours assembly cuts that need to be whittled to a much-shorter final film) is a specific taste, and there’s often the impression that the film is going in several directions at once, only to be reluctantly led down a specific path. One thing that may or may not help is the utterly deadpan nature of the comedy: while that’s an impressive alignment of improvisational material (in that no one is obviously mugging for the camera), it takes a specific comedic wavelength to be in-tune with what’s going on. Save for the visually ridiculous musical sequences at the end (some of them surprisingly snappy), there’s little here to suggest at first glance that you’re watching a comedy—you have to pay attention to decode the jokes. It may also be a case of hype exceeding the material—I expected nothing from Best in Show and laughed through the entire thing, whereas I was expecting much from Waiting for Guffman and merely chuckled a few times. It’s certainly not a bad movie—but I’m allowed to pick other guest films as favourites.

  • Altered States (1980)

    Altered States (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Google Play Streaming, December 2019) As someone who watches way too many movies, one of the best things I can say after seeing one is “Wow, that was weird.”  It doesn’t always link with quality, but it does correlate with memorability. Altered States is one weird movie, especially seen outside its 1980s sociocultural context. Circa-2020 society has plenty of issues, but it does feel as if we’re less likely to believe woo-woo parasciences than in 1980, and Altered States depends on taking these things seriously in order to work. There’s plenty of psychobabble as the film sets up a premise in which American academic parapsychologists start messing with isolation tanks and take heroic quantities of drugs in order to unlock other states of consciousness. This being a thriller, it goes without saying that the efforts are successful and homicidal as one of the characters physically regresses to an earlier species and naturally starts murdering people. The final act is a trip put on film as hallucinogenic visions (as executed by dated special effects shots) represent how the protagonist is slipping in and out of reality, endangering his family along the way. It’s bonkers, and it’s that crazy quality that makes the film compelling even as not a single word of it is credible. According to legend, director Ken Russell and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky clashed during the film’s production (to the point of Chayefsky being credited under a pseudonym), and this tension can be seen in the contrast between the script’s earnestness and the wild colourful direction. If wild movies aren’t your thing, consider that the film has early roles for William Hurt and Drew Barrymore, as well as a turn for Bob Balaban. Altered States is not good Science Fiction: In the biz, we’d call it “not even wrong” for its delirious depiction of science and scientists at work. But it’s an over-the-top hallucination and as such is likely to stick in mind far longer than more sedate works of the period.

  • Absence of Malice (1981)

    Absence of Malice (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) We seldom get feature-length classes in journalism ethics, so Absence of Malice is a welcome entry in the genre. Featuring no less than Sally Field as a journalist with a dodgy sense of propriety, Paul Newman as an aggravated suspect singled out by the media, and Bob Balaban as a slimy underhanded District Attorney, this is a film that shows a complex dance between police, media, and private interests. It’s seldom glorious, but it does portray a nicely cynical view of the city newspaper desks of the early 1980s, with the “public interest” running afoul of private interests when unscrupulous individuals get involved. It’s a crime thriller, a newspaper drama, a doomed romance all at once. Wilford Brimley gets a short but spectacular role late in the film as the troubleshooter sent from Washington to untangle the mess and assign punishment—his folksy demeanour hides an iron mind and a determined fist. Meanwhile, Balaban plays a far less admirable version of his usual characters, while Newman and Field are up to their usual standards at the time. The atmosphere of Miami is well presented, and the period details are striking—I mean, the film begins with a montage showing us the minutia of publishing a daily metro newspaper, instantly endearing me. The rest of the film does toy with mounting curiosity as how it’s all going to play out—the script cleverly features first-act secrets, mid-movie coyness and final revelations hopping over each other, a sure-fire way to keep the audience interested. Absence of Malice amounts to a decent film—perhaps not a classic, but one worth revisiting even in these accursed times when the daily metro newspaper is regrettably becoming a relic of the past.