Christian Slater

  • Playback (2012)

    Playback (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) As far as low-budget horror films go, there’s something mildly intriguing about Playback and its thematic mixture of circa-2010 DIY filmmaking opposed to early-cinema history. The plot has to do with a family murder in a small American town, leading the characters (fifteen years later) to investigate the matter and discover eerie parallels with the work of a mad pioneer of early cinema who came up with the means to possess people though filming. It’s not much, but you can see how the same elements could be remixed into a far more interesting story—as I await a good film adaptation of Theodore Roszak’s Flicker. Clearly issued from a low-budget production, Playback’s only marquee name is Christian Slater in a supporting role, the rest of the cast being composed of young actors playing teenagers in an inexpensive small town. Wikipedia tells us that the film’s sole claim to fame is having been the lowest-grossing film of 2012, with a total of 33 tickets sold. Ouch — but to be honest, it’s not as if those who skipped on the film missed much. While the result is not terrible when compared to other horror films, there are enough missed opportunities here to make anyone annoyed.

  • Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

    Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) It’s amusing how horror is the only genre to reliably sustain the anthology format. There’s a good reason for this — horror often works best in small doses, and having shorter stories one after the other can let filmmakers play with one idea at an ideal length, then move on to another. As far as anthology movies go, Tales from the Darkside is in the solid average, although some casting choices may bring it up one notch in some viewers’ esteem. The framing device has to do with a suburban cannibal preparing her meal while the main dish, a paperboy, stalls his cooking by narrating three stories from within his cage —not bad as a setup, but the conclusion seems a bit too convenient without the panache that such a tidy ending would warrant. The first story, “Lot 249,” is probably the most impressive from a casting standpoint, what with the much younger Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore and Christian Slater all backstabbing each other horribly for academic purposes — alas, the narrative is a bit bland once you get over how great Moore looks. “Cat from Hell,” the second story, is far more interesting with its narrative hook, as a hitman is hired by a rich infirm to kill… a cat. A murderous cat, seeking revenge from pharmaceutical animal experimentation. It’s George Romero adapting a Stephen King short story, so it’s no accident if this is the most distinctive story in the film, even as it can’t quite avoid some silliness. Finally, “Lover’s Vow” goes for erotic gore with a story of death and promises between an artist and a mysterious woman. Rae Dawn Chong looks amazing here and the story does feel more violent than the others, making it a definitive climax to the film even if it’s a bit on the longer side. Tales from the Darkside can’t quite escape the uneven nature of horror anthologies, but it’s more interesting and varied than many others, and generally well-executed throughout. The surprising casting does add quite a bit to the final result — especially for those who went on to have long careers during which they visibly aged and developed their own screen persona.

  • The Wizard (1989)

    The Wizard (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) As it happens, I was just about the right age to be fascinated by The Wizard when it came out… except that even then, I was a PC player rather than a console one. I distinctly recall the Nintendo-driven marketing push for The Wizard—the Power Glove, the reveal of Super Mario 3, the early glimpse at what would become the eSport scene… but somehow, perhaps fortunately, didn’t see the film until now. Which may have been for the best, considering the period feel that now distinctly lends some unplanned charm to The Wizard. The plot itself is a bizarre amalgamation between a video-game tournament entirely sponsored by Nintendo, and a teen road movie with some very dark undertones featuring runaway kids making their way across the continent for closure. Borrowing a page from the Tommy rock opera, our teen protagonists anoint themselves the guardians of a savant videogame player and decide to exploit his gaming skills by taking him to a tournament with a substantial cash prize. Following them are the worried sets of relatives (the genealogy of the characters is complex) and an unscrupulous bounty hunter. There’s more plot than expected here, although much of it does feel subservient to the demands of the film’s marketing-driven premise. A lot of it has aged, but the jury will stay out for a while as to whether it’s now dated or charmingly quaint. There are some sequences fit to make anyone cringe (I’m specifically thinking of the introduction of the !!POWER GLOVE!!), but there is some rather nostalgic value in seeing the characters react to now-classic gaming paraphernalia. It does add quite a bit to a story that, absent the videogame angle, would have been almost instantly forgettable. The film may have otherwise been only known as a minor early entry for Christian Slater and Beau Bridges. As it is now, it’s a bit of a time capsule for Nintendo’s glory days with the original NES—something that plays well to today’s 1980s nostalgia wave.

  • Dolan’s Cadillac (2009)

    Dolan’s Cadillac (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Surprisingly enough, Dolan’s Cadillac is a faithful adaptation of a Stephen King story, in which a grieving man plans an elaborate revenge scheme that culminates in a tense standoff on a deserted road. The premise is fine, the third-act concept is intriguing (if overdrawn—just bulldoze the dirt on top and call it a day) and Christian Slater has a chance to chew scenery by the mouthful as the villain. Curiously, the Canadian prairies stand-in for a Nevada/California highway. (The film being a Canadian production, it’s a frequent rerun on Canadian cable channels even a decade later.) Where Dolan’s Cadillac falters is in trying too hard with its dialogues and direction—even by neo-noir standards, Slater’s dialogue is unnecessarily verbose and the protagonist’s narration isn’t much better. Some cuts would have done wonders here—the best lines would have been even better without the surrounding clutter, and even Slater’s magnificent monologues would have been more memorable with a bit of culling. Still, Dolan’s Cadillac is a fun little film, and a nice change of pace in seeing King go from northeastern settings to the American southwest. (Although there are plenty of such examples in his oeuvre, from The Regulators to The Stand.)

  • The Wife (2017)

    The Wife (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) It’s about time that I admit that for all of my so-called progressive sympathies, there’s always going to be a core of reactionary (I’d argue contrarian) impulse somewhere in my system. At its worst, The Wife toys directly with that core, although I’m not sure how much of my reaction is about the movie, and how much of it is due to the acclaim it got as a Grand Statement. But let us summarize: a 90-minute-long extension of the old “behind any great man there’s a great woman” saw, The Wife stars Glenn Close as the long-suffering wife of a celebrated American writer who learns that he’s just won the Nobel prize for literature. The trip to Stockholm proves more dramatic than expected once the façade is stripped away: It turns out that he’s a serial philanderer and that she’s been writing most of the books. I am, going back to my contrarian core, getting a bit tired of the wave of works going out of their way to bash achievements from white men by revealing (egad) how the achievements were, really all about some oppressed minority doing all the work. At this point, it feels like clichés and lazy storytelling, and so the most interesting bits of The Wife don’t simply show her doing the work, but hint at a complex relationship in which husband and wife both have something that only the other can fulfill despite there being only one name on the cover. An exploration of that would have been a bit more nuanced and interesting than the rather trite ending that follows. Still, despite my contrarian knee-jerk reaction, I did like the film a lot—Close is quite good in the lead role (she did get an Oscar nomination out of it) and Jonathan Pryce does play the crusty old veteran writer with some panache. What’s more, Christian Slater has a plump supporting role. I am a sucker for movies about writers, and this one does have some fun with that conceit, even though most sequences about women’s writers do feel on the nose. I would have liked The Wife more if it had just gone off its high horse and started poking and the complexities of its own premise. But that would have led to a far less message-driven movie, right?

  • Young Guns II (1990)

    Young Guns II (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) You don’t have to be a genius Hollywood executive to figure out why Young Guns II exists—the first film was a smash hit, most of the good-looking actors were available for a sequel and what’s a little retroactive modification of the first film’s happy ending if it can lead to a new story? Not that this sequel can be accused of being overly precious with its returning characters—by the end of the film, it’s clear that a hypothetical Young Guns III would have required outright resurrections in order to work. A bit of effort is put into the framing device and narration, adding just a bit more interest to the results. Pop music enthusiasts will also note that the film spawned two hit singles that many people can still hum today: Jon Bon Jovi’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and especially “Blaze of Glory.” As with the first film, the focus here isn’t as much on the story than the actors being glossily photographed—it’s a great showcase for actors who would go on to have decent careers, such as Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips and Christian Slater. An equal-opportunity fan-service machine, the film may feature mostly male actors, but it doesn’t miss an occasion to show mild female nudity either. In between the actors, pop music and numerous sequences featuring heroics, one-liners, explosions and guns, it’s an action western for young and excitable audiences that wouldn’t be caught watching an authentic 1950s western. It’s quite a bit of fun even despite the downer ending.

  • Kuffs (1992)

    Kuffs (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2019) I hope that Americans sometime realize the utterly bizarre nature of their law enforcement “system”, with its odd pockets of arcane rules and historical exemptions. So it is that I knew nothing about the San Francisco Patrol Special Police as depicted in Kuffs … and I don’t think that the film makes a very convincing case for its existence. It doesn’t help that this is a film with severe split personality problems, trying both for 1980s violent police action and for fourth-wall-breaking comedy. Christian Slater (near the height of his popularity at the time) often provides comic asides to the camera, sometimes in the middle of otherwise dark and dramatic scenes. Some sequences (talking to the camera while gagged, bleeped swearing, drugged-out sequence, visitors barging in on a shot-out apartment) approach pure slapstick, while much of the rest of the film is dull dark action undistinguishable from countless other movies. The cast can be surprising: Milla Jovovich shows up in a very early film as nothing more than “the girlfriend”, while Bruce Boxleitner is taken out early and Tony Goldwin is playing silly. While Slater does provide the charisma that his role requires, much of the film seems to succeed accidentally rather than by design, so inconsistently does it whiplash from comedy to drama. It really does nothing good to the image to the private law enforcers of San Francisco to be portrayed like Kuffs does.

  • Stranded (2013)

    Stranded (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014)  Oy…  Repeat after me: low-budget Canadian science-fiction movies are rarely good.  Having been burned a few times already, I really should know better by now.  Still, there’s a lower threshold of quality that one expects, and it’s fascinating to see Stranded struggle to even meet that basic level.  The first five minutes are almost promising, as a small crew on a lunar mining base is threatened by a catastrophic meteoroid impact.  Is this a survival story?  Alas, no: Within moments, the lone female character discovers something alien, is impregnated, gives birth to a shape-shifting monster that decides to look like another character and then go on to kill enthusiastically.  Dull stuff, rapidly crashing at the bottom of the list of Alien rip-offs.  Stranded is so bad that I’m actually offended at the impregnation subplot, which throws a charged plot development in the middle of a movie that doesn’t earn or deserve such emotional heavy-lifting.  Beyond the dull characters and repetitive scripting, much of the rest of the movie is just too dull to care about: badly-lit, limply propelled forward, saddled with an Earth-bound epilogue that weakens the result rather than strengthen it, Stranded is just yet another Canadian SF film filmed in a dim warehouse (in no less a film powerhouse than Regina, Saskatchewan) featuring a handful of characters and a monster.  With this, director Roger Christian has actually made a film worse than his own Battlefield Earth, which is praise of an impressive sort.  Poor Christian Slater looks a bit confused here: sure, he’s getting paid, but is it all worth it?  I was sort-of-impressed to see obvious models being used for moon-base shots rather than CGI: Nowadays, it’s the kind of artistic decision that shows a commitment to lack of quality, and speaks for the rest of the film.

  • Guns, Girls and Gambling (2012)

    Guns, Girls and Gambling (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2013) One of the small underrated pleasures of watching movies on specialized cable TV channels is the opportunity to discover small films that otherwise flew underneath everyone’s radar, especially when so much attention goes to theatrical releases.  So it is that we get to Guns, Girls and Gambling, a low-budget crime comedy that doesn’t try to innovate, but still manages to earn its share of twisty comic pleasures.  Featuring Christian Slater in a lead role good to remind everyone that he can actually be funny, this is one of those crime comedies heavily-narrated in non-linear fashion, and where seemingly-random bizarre occurrences in the first half are (almost) all explained by the twists of the film’s second half.  It works as long as you’re willing to cut writer/director Michael Winnick a lot of narrative slack (and even then, you can’t really explain characters such as “The Blonde” assassin in anything resembling our reality.)  It works if you want to play along, but it’s certainly rough around the edges: many of the recurring gags are a bit exasperating, and there’s a sense that another pass at the script would have cleaned up some of the less-funny material.  Many of the last plot twists can be guessed ahead of time as the only sane way to explain what’s going on (If you’re thinking Lucky Number Slevin after the first half-hour, well, you’re not far off), and the violence gets a bit excessive for what is otherwise a fairly amiable comedic romp.  Also disappointing is the film’s rather less-than-promised exploitation content: With a title like Guns, Girls and Gambling, I would have expected a lot more of all three, and definitely more Girls.  Still, those with a tolerance for the film’s own brand of excess are likely to get a few laughs out of the film: It’s genuinely attempting to be funny, and a number of the cameos are successful: Gary Oldman as an Elvis impersonator is, by itself, enough to warrant a look at the film’ trailer.  Winnick’s direction is both stylish and engaging, and some of the sugar-rush enthusiasm of the film’s early moments produces enough momentum to keep viewers past the repetitiousness of the second third and well into the revelations of the final act.  For a film that seemingly came out of nowhere and onto DVD shelves and movie channel line-ups, Guns, Girls and Gambling is a decent find.

  • Broken Arrow (1996)

    Broken Arrow (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, on DVD, February 2011) I hadn’t seen Broken Arrow since its opening weekend in theatres, but I’m not really surprised to see that it has held up so well as an action film.  The mid-to-late nineties had some fantastic examples of the form (Speed, The Rock, Face/Off, etc.) and Broken Arrow still holds the distinction of being one of John Woo’s better American features.  Structured around a script by Graham Yost, Broken Arrow features a pleasant mixture of military technology, criminal activity and all-out action indulgence.  Christian Slater is forgettable as the hero and baby-faced Samatha Matthis looks completely lost as an action heroine, but John Travolta steals the show as a charismatic scenery-chewing villain, coolly charming as a killer with the best dialogue in the entire film.  (From the seminal “Ain’t it cool?” (dot-com) to the clenched-teeth “Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?”)  Planes, helicopters, trucks and trains are all destroyed along the way, but the clarity of the film’s action sequences still holds up as a fine example of the genre, especially after the erosion of action filmmaking during the last overly-edited decade.  Here, every shot seems meaningful, and we get to appreciate both pending dangers and minute developments.  A few of the night-time effect shots look dated, but the rest is still technically impressive.  Broken Arrow doesn’t make too much sense and definitely feels contrived, but it still carries an action-packed charge with a smile and presents B-grade action films as they should be more often.  The 2010 DVD re-release, sadly, is not even enhanced for widescreen TVs and offers no other features than the trailer –a real shame considering the documentary material available to a logistics-heavy action film.