Christopher Reeves

  • Deathtrap (1982)

    Deathtrap (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) Murder mystery and theatrical metafiction meet in Deathtrap, an enjoyable and unpredictable dark comedy starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeves. It opens on Caine as a playwright experiencing a fourth failure in a row and retreating to his rural mansion, where he explains to his wife that he just read the most brilliant play by a complete novice, and the best plot he can think about is to murder the young writer and steal the play. Shortly thereafter, he invites the apprentice playwright home… but saying more would be a disservice, so quickly does the film go through different narrative configurations. Christopher Reeves plays the younger writer with an edge rarely seen in other films from him—not only does Deathtrap feature an explicit homosexual kiss (albeit as a mark of villainy—the early 1980s weren’t that progressive), but there’s a shot that makes him look like a maniacal Bruce Campbell at some point. The somewhat forgotten Dyan Cannon (whose career peaked between 1969 and 1982) has a decent role here, but the stars are clearly Caine and Reeves, especially as their antagonism becomes more explicit. Given the film’s origin in a long-running, widely acclaimed play by Ira Levin, there are plenty of metatheatrical references to be found (“It’s a two-act play with five characters,” says one of the five characters of a two-act play…), which adds both to its comedy and wittiness. The limited number of characters, dark comedy, secluded location and featured role for Caine immediately draw parallels with 1972’s Sleuth, but while both movies belong to the same subgenre, they’re sufficiently different as to make a great double feature rather than repeat themselves. (You could also make a double feature with 2019’s Knives Out, considering the wall-of-weapons and mystery-writers-getting-into-the-business motifs.)  The metafiction carries through to the climactic ending, which seems cheap at first glance but appreciates with time. Even with its quirks, Deathtrap remains a very enjoyable comic thriller, not always audience-friendly at times but certainly surprising and memorable.

  • Village of the Damned (1995)

    Village of the Damned (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, January 2020) If you’re a horror fan, the 1995 remake of Village of the Damned should be somewhere on your long list of things to see—if only to see how famed director John Carpenter would take on the task of modernizing the classic 1960 film. Predictably, the result is decent… while remaining quite a bit less than the original. Still, let’s recognize that Carpenter at least has the chops to make the film slightly more accessible than the sometimes-cold original, and that, from a distance of 25 years, the mid-1990s setting is fast becoming a period piece in its own right. The result can boast of an intriguing cast—Kirstie Alley is fine as a hard-driven scientist, and it’s fun to see both Christopher Reeves and Mark Hamill in roles away from the best-known characters. (As it happened, this was the last film that Reeves completed before the horse accident that left him paraplegic.) Carpenter fans will recognize this as middle-tier work from someone who had mastered horror directing at this point in his career—it’s suspenseful and atmospheric, but also slightly ridiculous and at times too gory (but not always). The rescue subplot at the very end is troublesome, considering that it messes with something that should not be messed with. Still, while it may not reach the heights of Carpenter’s best work, Village of the Damned is still a serviceable little chiller that can be watched easily—and it’s probably more interesting now than it was upon release.

  • Somewhere in Time (1980)

    Somewhere in Time (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2018) For science fiction fans who like the genre for its take on fact-based extrapolations, anticipation of the future or explorations of the possibilities of science, it can be a bit hard to make a space in the SF tent for the unusually robust sub-gene of time-travel romance, in which the mechanics and possibilities of time-travel take a distant back seat to star-crossed romance. Rachel MacAdams has a trilogy of such films in her filmography, but the genre is considerably older than twenty-first century views can expect, and one of the references in that steam is 1980’s Somewhere in Time. The time-travel mechanism is incredibly flimsy—just wish really hard!—although to the film’s credit this becomes a climactic plot point. But the justification is not the point—the point is to allow a young playwright the opportunity to go back a few decades in time to meet and romance an actress. The wish fulfillment is baked into the plot, as is the unrepentant nostalgia presented as unabashed good by the film. It’s a specific kind of film, and I suppose that it does have its audience. Christopher Reeves is noteworthy as the romantic protagonist, ably supported by Jane Seymour with Christopher Plummer playing the heavy as only he can. Somewhere in Time pulls no stops on its way to a timeless tragic romance, so know what to expect. It’s not bad, but aspects of it will strike a few hardened cynics—I plead guilty—as irremediably silly.

  • Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

    Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, June 2017) I remembered very little of Superman IV (basically: Luthor getting ahold of Superman’s hair, and him throwing nuclear weapons in the sun, both of whom happen early in the film), and so spent much of the first half-hour wondering why the film had such a bad reputation. Sure, it wasn’t up to the standards of the first film, and yes the credit sequence was obviously done on the cheap … but getting back to the Superman universe (even if perceptibly updated to the late eighties) isn’t bad, the “day in the life” Superman episodes are enjoyable, Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane and Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor are back, Christophe Reeves is still a capable Clark Kent/Superman and the whole “getting rid of nuclear weapons” subplot feels far less egregious now than during the cold war. Then the atrocities began. If the first half-hour of Superman IV is tolerable, the film very quickly sinks to newer and newer lows as it tilts in its second half. Despite some good images here and there (most notably in the street-level fight that begins near the Daily Planet offices), the film devolves in a series of increasingly ridiculous set-pieces. The chase sequence over Manhattan with Lady Liberty is just … wow. The lunar fistfight is also … wow. Superman going full-shmuck and using Lois Lane for his own gratification before wiping her memory (as he probably did many times before) … yuck. The rest is either dull or ridiculous, and that’s not even getting into the limits of the film’s budget. I’ve used the analogy before with the Jaws series, but the same also goes for the Superman quartet: The first one is at the upper half of good movies; the second one at the lower end of good movies, the third one at the upper end of bad movies and the fourth one at the lower end of bad movies. Thankfully, they stopped right there.

  • Superman III (1983)

    Superman III (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Third viewing, On Cable TV, June 2017) Aw, yes, Superman III. I know what the reviewers say, and yet you will never be able to convince me that it’s a movie that I should not enjoy. Keep in mind that I didn’t have cable TV when I was a kid … but one of my aunts did, and I was amazed, while visiting back in 1984, to see Superman III show up on a TV screen years before it would be broadcast on network channels. Also keep in mind that Superman III spends a lot of time talking about computers, something that fascinated me then and still interests me now. Never mind that it’s a comedy with seriously dumb ideas about technology: it’s still a lovely time capsule about how people saw computing as magic back then. Then there are the sequences: Superman turning evil and going full-shmuck! Superman fighting himself in a junk yard, wow! Superman going against a supercomputer with a vat of acid! Nine-year-old me was amazed back then, and forty-one-year old me is still charmed right now by the whole thing. I’ll acknowledge that the film is deeply flawed. Putting Richard Pryor in the movie is good for an atypical hacker character, but the various attempts to force comedy out of the film (the ski jump scene and the videogame being the worst) often seem jarringly out of place. The Superman-versus-Superman stuff is still quite good, though, the return-to-Smallville subplot works well, and I enjoyed the funhouse depiction of magical computers far more than I thought. While Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor is sorely missed, I did not mind at all Lois Lane’s amusing cameo—and rather liked Annette O’Toole as Lana Lang. Christopher Reeves, as usual, is near-perfect as both Clark Kent and Superman. Heck, I even liked the opening slapstick credit sequence. In other words, you may argue forever that Superman III is a bad movie and I won’t dispute the point much. But it’s a bad movie that I like a lot, and there’s no disputing that either.

  • Superman II (1980)

    Superman II (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, May 2017) I’m old enough to actually have memories of the promotional material for Superman II (including, if I’m not confabulating, a View-Master disc about the movie) but revisiting the film much later is like seeing it for the first time. The way it is tied to the first film is impressive—although even a quick look at the fascinating making of the movie reveals that it was nearly all shot at the same time as the first one, then largely reshot when Richard Lester took over Richard Donner as a director. Compared to the first film, Superman II does seem a bit less serious and more overtly comic: However, this may make the sequel more even toned than the first film. (But not entirely, as there are a number of gruesome deaths in the film, such as the one of the astronauts, that are almost immediately glossed over.) The inclusion of super-powered villains makes for good spectacle, especially once the film gets down to its showy New York City street fight—with plenty of blatant product placement! The movie does have a few high notes along the way: the de-powering of Superman doesn’t last long nor mean much, but it’s a nice thought and does mark a high point in the Superman/Lois Lane romance. This being said, there are enough plot holes and dumb choices left and right to baffle anyone. Never mind the trips to/from the supposedly isolated Fortress of Solitude, the regrettable exclusion of Miss Teschmacher from much of the story (although literally jettisoning the Ned Beatty character was the wise choice), the abundance of material for the whole “Superman is a Shmuck” thesis or the suddenly ludicrous “Cellophane shield” superpower. Christopher Reeves is once again very good both as Superman and Clark Kent, while Margot Kidder does seem even more comfortable as Lois Lane. Gene Hackman is welcome as Lex Luthor (arguably better here than in the original) while Terrence Stamp is memorable as the British-accented Zod. Superman II, like its predecessor, is now almost charming in its period blockbuster aesthetics—it’s got grand ambitions, but the special effects are often primitive considering the technology of the time and it doesn’t quite have full control over its tone given the various hands that interfered with its production. Still, it’s got a heart and a certain faux-naïve earnestness. If you’ve seen and enjoyed the first one, the second is mandatory viewing.

  • Superman (1978)

    Superman (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, May 2017) Ah, there it is—Superman, the granddaddy of the superhero genre. Has it aged well? Not really, but perhaps better than you’d think. Structurally, Superman doesn’t do anything truly different from countless other superhero origin stories—although it does take its own sweet time to get there, and even includes sequel-setup elements in the prologue (I had to pop open the DVD tray and double-check that I hadn’t accidentally inserted Superman II in the player, because I honestly did not remember Zod being part of the first film). What works is that, at times, the script does try to reach for something beyond the silly humour and into drama—either the missing-parent subplot, or romantic hijinks. That does keep the movie afloat now far better than the slapdash humour of much of the rest of the film. Nowadays, though, the script has serious tonal issues in-between its serious protagonist and silly antagonists: Gene Hackman is rather good as Lex Luthor, and I can’t say enough nice things about Valerie Perrine as Miss Teschmacher, but Ned Beatty is insupportable as a henchman too dumb for words, let alone supporting a so-called genius of crime. But so goes Superman, torn in-between actual artistic ambitions for its characters and a reluctance to see comic-book origins as anything but a big joke. Other issues abound. The ever-popular “Superman is a schmuck” theory is bolstered by more than a few sequences, while the ending sequence (with Superman going back in time) is still worth a disbelieving groan. On the other hand—and this is an important point—Superman manages to float above its worst flaws by virtue of honesty. It believes in its own protagonist and it does try to explore what it means to be Superman. It tries to ground itself in-between its flights of fancy, and the seventies period details now looks deliciously retro rather than dated. It also helps that, beyond Margot Kidder being good as Lois Lane, Christopher Reeves is fantastic both as Clark Kent and Superman—his performance as one is unlike the other: far more than making us “believe that a man can fly”, Superman’s greatest achievement is making us believe in the difference between superhero and alter ego. Director Richard Donner had enough experience to do justice to the script using what was available at the time—while the film’s special effects now look amateurish, they still make their point even today. Superman is still a big grab-bag of various qualities and problems, but it can still be watched with some pleasure today. If nothing else, it’s not gratuitously dour or dark like some of the latter representation of the character, and I believe that it will endure decently because of that uplifting tone. Cue the theme music…