Demi Moore

Indecent Proposal (1993)

Indecent Proposal (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) I thought I would enjoy Indecent Proposal. The subject matter is off-putting by design, but who could imagine that a film with Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Robert Redford could go wrong? To its credit, the film tells you almost from its first thirty seconds that it’s not going to be fun, as a couple reflects on what they had together. One flashback later and we’re quickly off to the celebrated premise of the film as our young couple struggles with money problems and Redford steps in as a billionaire playboy so smitten with her that he offers them a million dollars for a night with her. (In the mid-nineties, this became a popular party question.)  But for such a saucy premise, Indecent Proposal soon sinks in preposterousness and boredom. Directed without much energy nor precision by Adrian Lyne (from a script that reportedly toned down much of the novel’s ambiguity), it’s a film that quickly becomes a feat of endurance as we move from one obvious set-piece to another, the resolution never in doubt even despite the misleading prologue. The longer it goes on after delivering on its premise, Indecent Proposal multiplies the double standards, attempts to make heroes out of obnoxious characters and showcases retrograde ideas about, well, just about everything linked to sex and women. Harrelson is miscast as an intellectual, Moore’s beauty isn’t equalled by an equivalent acting talent, and Redford himself can’t use his charisma to hide the smarminess of his character. It’s all a bit sad, and most fatally, interminable. It took me only a few minutes to lower my expectations, and they stayed there for the rest of the film.

Saint Elmo’s Fire (1985)

Saint Elmo’s Fire (1985)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) It’s one thing to have complex nuanced characters, especially in an ensemble film. But Saint Elmo’s Fire is almost impressive in the way that it features one unpleasant character after another, self-absorbed and terrible to each other. It does start promisingly in its mid-1980s Georgetown setting, as its freshly-graduated protagonists try to figure out life, love and everything else. Alas, this quickly goes nowhere as the characters engage in self-defeating behaviour, do terrible things to each other and can’t seem to learn a single thing. The point of the film, for many viewers, will be the cast and director: A defining work of the “Brat Pack,” Saint Elmo’s Fire features Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy and, not quite in the Brat Pack nor all that long in the movie, my own favourite Andie MacDowell, with Joel Schumacher at the helm (and, unusually, as a co-writer). It does feel like an immature teen movie with characters who only happen to be old enough for sex but not anything feeling like human interaction. It’s hard to believe that anyone involved in the film wasn’t aware of the inanity of the script, but if they tried doing a comedy then it’s a complete misfire. Trying to explain the finer details of the film’s plot is begging someone to call you insane. Anyone thinking of watching Saint Elmo’s Fire for the cast may want to reconsider the limits of that intention.

About Last Night… (1986)

About Last Night… (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I came to About Last Night… the other way around, having seen (and really enjoyed) the 2014 remake before seeing the original. This one is set in 1980s Chicago (nicely using the city’s landmarks), and follows a yuppie couple as they connect, disconnect, and reconnect over the span of a year. Demi Moore and Rob Lowe are quite likable as the lead couple. In fact, this may be my favourite performances from them both—and that’s saying something considering Moore’s extensive career. The better than average dialogue clearly comes from David Mamet’s original theatrical play, and it shines even through the crude French translation doing its best to keep up with its rapid rhythm. It’s easy to see why some consider it to be a semi-classic romantic comedy: the execution is much better than the somewhat stock premise. And yet, and yet: this may be a generational thing or a recency bias, but I can’t quite muster the same affection toward the original About Last Night… than I have for its Los Angeles-set remake. It’s still good enough … but not quite as good.

The Seventh Sign (1988)

The Seventh Sign (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) Somehow, I expected something both worse and better from the 1980s apocalyptic horror movie The Seventh Sign. The first two sequences set the tone, with a quasi-hilarious storm of clichés meant to foreshadow a biblical apocalypse of global proportions, executed in a gloriously overdone fashion. I was ready and primed to enjoy the campiness … and then the film goes dull. Really dull. Still ponderous, still overdone but not enjoyably so. Round-faced Demi Moore is cute enough as a pregnant woman only gradually noticing the portentous signs surrounding the upcoming birth of her child, but Michael Biehn is dull—only Jurgen Prochnow seems to understand the kind of film he’s in, playing every scene with unabashed menace. To be fair, some of the dumb fun comes back at the end, with a climactic sequence of such melodramatic magnitude that we’re finally back in camp territory. Alas, this lasts all of five minutes, leading to a pat ending that doesn’t quite manage to cap it off successfully. It doesn’t help that the film’s middle section is humdrum 1980s stuff, familiar without being comfortable. The Seventh Sign is by no means a good movie and never could have become one, but it’s not unreasonable to think that with a slightly different touch, it could have become an enjoyable one.

Nothing but Trouble (1991)

Nothing but Trouble (1991)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) If you’re curious to know what would happen if you mixed Silent Hill with gross-out dumb comedy, then have a look at Nothing but Trouble … but heed this: It’s not going to make you happy. This so-called horror comedy follows Chevy Chase and Demi Moore as they make their way from their comfortable upper-class Manhattan penthouse to the depths of rural New Jersey where they will be tormented by murderous hillbillies led by the local hanging judge. The film’s execution is meant to be comic (with a lot of fake screaming, cultivated grotesqueries and a series of dumb sketches strung along) but the effect is more puzzling and dreadful than funny. The only sequence worth highlighting as being tolerable features Digital Underground and a few party girls bringing some welcome urbanity back in the film—but then the same sequence features Dan Aykroyd’s worst tendencies in having him join the song with a piano bit. Landing the blame at Aykroyd’s feet is only natural given that he’s the film writer, director and producer, in addition of holding two on-screen roles—with a smattering of other Aykroyd family members in the supporting cast list. Nothing but Trouble definitely reflects a personal comic sensibility trying to find a happy middle ground between horror and comedy, but doesn’t succeed at even mastering one or the other—at best, the film settles for a series of disgusted yucks and blank stares at what it thinks is funny. There’s a waste of John Candy (in dual roles, one of them in drag), the overuse of Chevy Chase (now known to have been as unpleasant behind the scenes as his reputation suggests), and not a whole lot to do for Demi Moore. The set design is good, though—it’s a shame that it couldn’t have been used for anything better. I suspect that the film has aged slightly better than upon its reception, if only because it features a few familiar names in earlier roles, because there’s now an even bigger glut of hellbilly horror movies that it could be seen as parodying and because today’s audiences may be more familiar now with genre hybridization. On the other hand, there’s been many better horror/comedy hybrids since 1991, and the limits of Nothing but Trouble are now even more apparent.

G.I. Jane (1997)

G.I. Jane (1997)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2016) Hollywood has a tradition of progressive message movies, but few of them have been as muscular as G.I. Jane. Nominally about the integration of women in US combat forces, this Ridley Scott action thriller quickly goes for a harrowing portrait of the SEAL training process, violent harassment of its heroine and a quick action mission to top it all off. Wrap everything in the American flag, well-shot military images, pulse-pounding music and it ends up being a recruitment video that incidentally has a female protagonist. Demi Moore was at the height of her fame in 1997, and part of the film’s power is seeing one of the lead female actresses of that time adopt the gruff aggressive mannerisms of the men she’s asked to surpass, shaving her head and proving her resilience by making a crude request to suck on an appendage she only metaphorically possesses. Against some expectations, it actually works. The military sequences are handled competently, and there’s just enough story wrapped around them to make it interesting. Moore is impressive (far more so than in the thematically linked A Few Good Men) and Scott is able to transform what could have been a preachy script into an effective propaganda piece for both feminists and militarists. It has aged surprisingly well.

A Few Good Men (1992)

A Few Good Men (1992)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, July 2016) Nearly everyone can quote Jack Nicholson’s furious “You can’t handle the truth!” but watching A Few Good Men highlights how that line works best as a culmination rather than a standalone quote. A somewhat sombre judicial drama in which a hotshot lawyer (Tom Cruise, remarkably good) takes on the US Marines establishment in an effort to discover what happened to a dead soldier, A Few Good Men is the kind of slick mainstream drama that has almost disappeared from the box-office top-ten. Slickly made with a roster of good actors, it has the means to present its story as effectively as possible. The result is a good comfortable film, handled with old-school care. It may not be all that efficient (the opening act is notably slow, and missteps in initially focusing on a character who’s not the real protagonist) but it’s competent and slowly makes its way to a conclusion heavy on shouting and courtroom excitement. Jack Nicholson is good in a surprisingly small role (it looks as if he showed up for a few days of work), Kiefer Sutherland pops up as a soldier, while Demi Moore doesn’t impress all that much in a fairly conventional role that leaves far too much glory to Tom Cruise’s character.

Ghost (1990)

Ghost (1990)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2016) There’s no denying that Ghost has ascended to the film pantheon as a romantic fantasy film (cue the pottery sequence!) but a fresh viewing shows that the film is a bit more than that: Beyond the romance, it’s got strong comic moments, a decent amount of imaginative flair and quite a few thrills. Anchored by Patrick Swayze’s fair performance and bolstered by a surprisingly funny and good-looking Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost is more interesting when it deals with the mechanics and complications of a ghost trying to make contact with the living. Suspense elements are woven (not always seamlessly) with comic sequences, giving the film a multifaceted appeal that doesn’t quite degenerate into abrupt tonal shifts. Demi Moore is a bit generic and baby-faced Tony Goldwyn is more fascinating than anything else considering how well he has aged in Scandal. Still, the film holds up relatively well beyond the pottery sequence, hitting marks on a wide spectrum of targets. It’s enough to make anyone wonder if today’s blockbusters have grown a bit too selective in their intentions for fear of tonal incongruity. Ghost, at least, deftly goes from romance to comedy to horror to thrills, and the result still speaks for itself.

Bunraku (2010)

Bunraku (2010)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, December 2011) Every so often, a visually ambitious film slips through the cracks of distribution and promotion to land almost unannounced on video-store shelves.  From the first few moments, executed with a gorgeous mixture of animation and puppet-theater, it’s obvious that Bunraku is going to be an odd and interesting film.  With its fantasy-world mixture of western and samurai iconography, colourful art direction and dynamic direction, Bunraku certainly looks and feels completely different from your run-of-the-mill film.  Experimental, action-packed, crammed with confident performances, it’s also a movie that aspires to the “hidden gem” section of anyone’s collection, right next to films just as The Fall and Sin City: not perfect, maybe not even accessible to audiences who aren’t predisposed to this kind of genre-blending, but surprisingly satisfying to those to do get it and certainly looks like no other film: writer/director Guy Moshe has put together a lovely piece of art.  Josh Hartnett and Gackt share the lead roles, but Woody Harrelson, Ron Perlman and Kevin McKidd get more remarkable roles as supporting players.  (McKidd is particularly good as an eccentric killer.)  The script certainly could have been tightened up: Demi Moore’s character doesn’t look as if she has anything to do, the dialogue sometimes veers toward the pretentious and there’s a pacing slowdown during the third act of the film.  Nonetheless, Bunraku gains back all of its lost points on sheer visual fun alone, and from its references to other tough-guy movies.  For a film that never really showed widely in North-American theaters, I predict a modest cult following.

Striptease (1996)

Striptease (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, June 2009): Carl Hiaasen’s particular brand of comic crime fiction can be tricky to swallow even on the page, so it’s not much of a shock to find out that this straight-up adaptation somehow fails to click. His usual strategy of surrounding a competent character with a bunch of idiots may be successful in a novel, but here it creates a comedy vacuum around lead Demi Moore, which becomes a problem since most scenes revolve around her. Hiaasen’s all-knowing narration can’t be used, and the uneasy mixture of comedy and violence becomes even more uneasy on-screen (even after toning down the book’s gratuitously blood-thirsty ending) Worse yet are the problems that the film creates for itself: While a film about strip-teasing is expected to show some flesh, the entire club sequences lose their charms quickly, especially when they still grind the film to a halt about three different times: it doesn’t help that Hiaasen’s twisty plot is snipped to a only a few thin threads that don’t create much suspense. Still, the film isn’t the disaster one could expect: Ving Rhames is hilarious in one of his first big-screen roles, whereas Burt Reynolds hits a late-career peak as a particularly perverted politician. The Miami locations are often well-used, and the whole thing is over before anyone has time to be really displeased.