Ed Harris

  • Running Mates (1992)

    Running Mates (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) A surprising number of politically themed American films are really romantic comedies in disguise, and Running Mates certainly upholds that tradition. Telling us about the romantic relationship between a children’s book author and a political candidate, it does spend a lot of time detailing how the public glare can make any relationship near-impossible, and how every single past indiscretion can be magnified. Since it’s a romantic fantasy, it also makes sense that the conclusion feels a bit too convenient to be entirely credible (although it’s true that the notion of what constitutes a scandal has taken a beating since 2016). Fortunately, lead actors Ed Harris and Diane Keaton bring a lot to the film, helping keep up interest even through the script’s most obvious moments. As a political film, it’s not that new or interesting… but it’s somewhat more successful as a romantic comedy about characters in special circumstances. The sequence in which one character’s early indiscretions resurface is decently amusing, although it leads to a conclusion that doesn’t quite manage to satisfy. Still, Running Mates is about romance, not political credibility.

  • Westworld, Season 3 (2020)

    Westworld, Season 3 (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Obviously, Westworld could never stay confined to the park for more than a few seasons, and so this third season of the series boldly takes us to the outside world, with androids not only exploring it but also changing it irremediably. It’s a bold move, introducing a new main character (played by Aaron Paul) and taking up the issues of control versus self-determination into a wider context. The production design of this third season is exceptional, credibly presenting (through shooting in modern East Asian cities) a future vision of 2040s Los Angeles with automated cars, mood-showing T-shirts and oppressive social control. Wait, where did all of that come from? Yes, that’s where Westworld is showing its seams. Down to the new visual motifs of this season, we’re presented with so many new elements in exploring this future that there’s reason to believe that half of it is being made up as the series goes along rather than being part of a coherent plan. There’s little in the first two seasons to suggest Rehoboam the all-controlling AI, except as a thematic counterpart to the morality plays taking place in the parks. As a result, much of this Season 3 feels half-rushed, half-indulgent. Even though the first two seasons’ ten-episode plans had plenty of fat to trim, this eight-episode series still couldn’t keep the series’ worst pseudo-profound moralism at bay. There’s no baseline depiction of the world under Rehoboam—our sole significant new character is an underclass, which doesn’t give us a good yardstick to judge the philosophical conflict taking place in this third season. It probably doesn’t help that I have somewhat significant differences with the series’ morality so far. I’ve been Team Maeve since the beginning; I see Delores as a villain despite a last-minute contrition; I have trouble seeing Serac as a monster despite the series’ insistence that I should; and most of all, I am terribly unhappy with the series’ “light the match, burn everything up, let the survivors choose” approach to global revolution and eventual human extinction event—the best way to effect social change is to coopt the comfortable middle class, but I’ve given up on the series taking such a reasonable technocratic approach when it can play with its characters becoming gunslingers, ninjas and social revolutionaries. But, of course, we’re midway through a six-season arc with no way of knowing where it’s going (except for increasingly loud hints of an apocalypse coming up). At least there’s enough to keep us interested on a micro level. Everyone is turning in decent work on the acting front (although I’ve never been much of an Aaron Paul fan), and there’s something quietly amusing in the way the series’ actors are constantly given different personalities to play. Still, some character arcs (maybe even the season as a whole) feel like throat-clearing and seat warming before later events. While Thandie Newton is a constant delight, her character seems a caricature of previous seasons. Jeffrey Wright’s Bernard also seems to be biding his time until there’s a real role for him to play, and Ed Harris’s William seems increasingly contrived. This season was clearly all about Rachel Evan Wood’s Dolores, but this is wearing thin when you could reliably predict that none of her many enemies would manage to stop her before The Plan was revealed. The series has good ideas and set-pieces (Williams’s self-therapy session being one of them), even though its reach often exceeds its grasp—the “genre” drug sequence didn’t quite match its potential. Still, and this is significant, Westworld remains insanely ambitious and daring for a flagship cable TV show—It could have contrived a way to remain in the park, but chose a vastly riskier route. I may not love the results as much as I did in previous seasons, but I’m still on-board to see where it takes us next.

  • Places in the Heart (1984)

    Places in the Heart (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) It’s not that Places in the Heart is a bad film; it’s just that I can probably dissuade you from seeing it simply by listing facts. 1930s rural Texas. Cinematography in shades of brown and yellow. A widow with two children. Classic Hollywood melodrama. A farm at jeopardy of being repossessed. Episodic structure. A blind boarder. A black handyman and the KKK. A final sequence that’s pure fantasy. Oscar-winning screenplay and best actress for Sally Fields. If that sounds like your kind of movie, then go ahead. If anyone else needs coaxing, know that despite the above elements, Places in the Heart comes together nicely. It’s old-time rural drama and very low-key, but it does go off running in several directions, some of them more interesting than others. The blind boarder is an intelligent man played by John Markovich. Ed Harris shows up. There’s a tornado special-effects sequence. It all amounts to something that’s more than the sum of its parts, good or bad. I liked it, slightly, and that’s more than I could have said running down the list of ingredients that make Places in the Heart.

  • Needful Things (1993)

    Needful Things (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2019) The more I think about it, the more I realize that the way that Hollywood and I consume Stephen King’s novels has much in common: big binges every few years, between which King has the time to write an entire set of books that would put other authors’ entire bibliographies to shame. Now that King is very much back in vogue as inspiration for horror movies for the third time after peaks in the early 1980s and mid-1990s, it’s time for me to take a look at a film adaptation that was released during King’s second Hollywood binge and read during the first of mine. Needful Things is memorable in that it’s a thick book that uses most of its duration to make us comfortable with an entire small New England town—an ensemble cast of ordinary characters whose existence is upset (or terminated) by the arrival of a mysterious man who can find something special for you somewhere in his new shop. It’s a familiar setup—what if an entire town sold its soul to the Devil?—but in King’s hands it becomes a sweeping, comfortable novel with big ideas in a small context. The movie obviously doesn’t have the running time to do justice to the entire story, but it does manage to nicely condense the narrative in the time it has. The cast is cut down, the plotting is streamlined and if the immersion isn’t nearly as complete, the result is more effective than not. The big sweeping opening sequence begins the inglorious work of establishing the geography and the characters. It’s easy enough to watch, and quietly fascinating in the way the plot and director Fraser Clarke Heston gradually manage to work itself up to an explosive climax after setting half the town against each other by weaponizing small sins. Movies of this kind depend on their actors, and we have a capable lead trio in between the ever-dependable Ed Harris, a very nice Bonnie Bedelia, and a savvy performance by Max von Sydow, who manages to find an appropriate balance between the creepiness of his character and the innate campiness of the concept. In short, an unspectacular but effective adaptation that should please both King fans and casuals. Movie aside I have one semi-related complaint: Why do movie channels such as AMC, heavy on muting out bad language, even choose to broadcast movies with language to mute out? It’s really annoying and makes a mockery of the channel’s so-called cinephile orientation.

  • Pollock (2000)

    Pollock (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) I’m often intrigued by the choices that well-known actors make when they become directors. Often, their chance to direct a film is also a chance to express something we may not have guessed from their screen persona. So it is that when Ed Harris chose a project to direct, he went for the life of American painter Jackson Pollock. Given that he also plays Pollock (including the painting sequences) in addition to directing and that the project was ten years in the making after Harris read Pollock’s biography, this is unquestionably his movie. The result is quite interesting, although it does exist in the lineage of the “complicated white man” tradition, where creative genius sometimes excuses a host of personal failings such as alcoholism and anger. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is its look at the creative process, something that a director without an acting background may not have handled the same way. Harris may direct in a straightforward style (something later seen in his Appaloosa follow-up) but the painting scenes alone are quite good, belying the old crack about watching paint dry. Harris is quite good in the title role, but Marcia Gay Hayden is even better as his long-suffering wife. The slide-of-life look at the American 1940s–1950s art world is intriguing. Ultimately, the film does not shy away from Pollock’s tragic arc, and does make a certain statement about the artist. While Pollock could have benefited from a more explicit look inside the painter’s mind, the result is satisfying enough for Harris, both as a performer and a director. Better yet, it’s not the movie you may have expected from seeing Harris-the-Actor.

  • Geostorm (2017)

    Geostorm (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2018) Don’t tell anyone, but I do have a soft spot for those dumb catastrophe movies that run on a stream of special-effect sequences. Geostorm really isn’t anywhere close to being an exemplar of the form, but it’s enough to scratch that itch. The setup, with its runaway weather-altering satellites in a rigid grid, makes zero sense … but that’s irrelevant as it’s merely meant to enable a series of distinctive action vignettes. Gerald Butler is the lead here, his square jaw and dubious ability to pick good movie projects being all we need in a protagonist. Dean Devlin has his first solo directing job here (although reshoots three years later under another director kind of sabotage this achievement), which makes sense considering that he, alongside Ronald Emmerich, had a hand in similar global-destruction projects such as Independence Day and Godzilla. Alas, for all of the destructive joy found in Geostorm as it targets Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Moscow and Dubai (and an entire space station), the plot has trouble keeping up with the spectacle. We’re soon stuck in a familiar morass of rogue American officials, conspiracy theories, out-of-control systems and rote character dynamics. The actors don’t do much to help: Butler is his usual reliable self, with Ed Harris and Andy Garcia also doing their best, but Abbie Cornish continues to be distinctively boring. Only Zazie Beetz distinguishes herself in a small role. Still, that’s not much, and seeing the disjointed result only makes one wish for a tell-all documentary showing what prompted the reshoots and how they tried to patch Geostorm into its final form. Otherwise, the film does better as a battle between spectacle and stupidity, as very little effort is made to even make the mayhem halfway plausible. Considering that we’ve seen a lot of these movies lately, Geostorm may have worked as an almost-parody camp version of those films … but it chose to attempt a straight version, and the very middle-of-the-road result speaks for itself.

  • Westworld, Season 2 (2018)

    Westworld, Season 2 (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2018) The problem with second seasons of high-concept shows is that you don’t quite have the same element of surprise in reserve. In Westworld’s case, it means that the dizzying timeline tricks and character revelations of the first seasons can’t be exactly reproduced, and that the show has to work within known parameters. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t try to keep things interesting. Set in the few days immediately after Season 1, this second series follows characters as they react to the events of the first season, revealing new secrets along the way and digging even deeper in mind-twisting questions about personalities and predetermination. Thanks to the endless wonders of flashbacks, simulations and body/mind separation, nearly the entire cast is back (yes, even those confirmed dead), meaning that the solid acting talents of the series are once more on display. Tessa Thompson gets a deservedly more prominent role, while Ed Harris, Thandie Newton and Rachel Lee Evans all keep on doing what they did so well the first time around. While I was initially disappointed by the series’ renewed focus on the park (I expected the hosts to escape in-between seasons), the park’s uncovered secrets made things even more interesting. And while this second season is straightforward about its dual-timeline structure, it does experiment with storytelling in focusing certain episodes on specific characters (some of them peripherals) and taking trips in other theme park areas to hilarious parallel effect. My pick for most-improved character goes to Lee Sizemore, formerly an annoying writer here transformed into the incarnation of everything he wished for (including a late empathy boost for his own creations) in a neat commentary on the relationship between creator and characters. Meanwhile, the season’s best episodes (setting aside the season finale that features so many character deaths that it feels obliged to have a few resurrections as well) has to be the eighth, in which a relatively unsophisticated character discovers the true nature of his world in a mostly self-contained episode that spans decades of series history. There is, once again, a lot of material to digest in Westworld—the storytelling is challenging, the themes are explored to the point of pretentiousness, and the science-fiction devices used in generally compelling fashion. It all amounts to solid TV—worth following as it airs, episode after episode.

  • Westworld, Season 1 (2016)

    Westworld, Season 1 (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2017) Early word on Westworld was not good. Hyped by HBO as their next big-budget SF&F show now that Game of Thrones is on its way out, the show suffered ominous-sounding production delays while scripts were re-tuned, which didn’t bode well in the wake of Vinyl’s failure. But while this first season definitely has its issues, the result occasionally reaches delirious peaks of peak TV goodness, playing with savvy audience expectations and delivering reality-altering perceptional shift. While the show begins and more or less ends where Michael Crichton’s original 1973 movie did, there’s a lot of complexity under the surface, and the attitudinal shifts in the show’s sympathies for artificial humans is notable. In-between Inception and Memento, show-runner Jonathan Nolan is known for mind-warping scripts and Westworld is occasionally no different: the first episode is a fantastically twisted introduction to a familiar concept, while the end-stretch of the series delivers solid revelations about the nature of some characters, narrative time-play and unexpectedly philosophical rambling. It’s hardly perfect: much of the stretch between episodes 2 and 6 could have been compressed in half the time, while the so-called deep thoughts of the conclusion feel both ponderous and nonsensical. But when Westworld works, it really works. Episodes 1, 7 and 10 alone are worth the long stretches in-between. Top-notch actors such as Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright and Thandie Newton deliver good performances, the script cleverly plays to an audience that demands more from their TV miniseries and the visual polish of the result can be astonishing. Even the most pretentious aspects of the script can be seen as a plus given how high it aims. The sympathy of the series for its synthetic characters is a notable representation of the maturing of media Science Fiction—especially when humans act this rotten, can we really blame the robots for turning on their masters? I’m not sure where season 2 can take us, but as far as HBO is concerned, it’s mission accomplished for Westworld—expectations run high for the follow-up.

  • The Right Stuff (1983)

    The Right Stuff (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second or third viewing, On DVD, September 2017) I’ve been on a semi-streak of American space program movies lately and revisiting The Right Stuff was practically mandatory as a bookend to Apollo 13. Adapting Tom Wolfe’s superlative docufiction book, writer/director Philip Kaufman’s film is epic in length (nearly three hours) and clearly in myth-making mode as it draws a line leading from cowboys to astronauts by way of test pilots. It’s a long sit, but it’s filled with great moments, enlivened by a surprising amount of humour and a joy to watch from beginning to end. It helps that it can depend on great performances, whether it’s Ed Harris as a clean-cut John Glenn to Fred Ward as Gus Grissom, among many other known actors in small roles. It’s an astonishing ensemble cast for a wide-spectrum film, though, and it manages to compress quite a bit of material in even its unusually long running time. As a homage to the space program, it remains a point of reference—even the special effects are still credible. Despite a generous amount of dramatic licence (including the infamous Liberty Bell 7 incident, now thoroughly debunked thanks to the 1999 recovery of the capsule), the film seems generally well regarded when it comes to historical accuracy. From our perspective, it credibly humanizes yet mythologizes the test pilots who were crazy enough to go atop rockets when they were known to explode shortly after launch. It’s a stirring bit of filmmaking for viewers with a fascination for technological topics and the history of spaceflight, and it has aged rather gracefully. I loved the movie when I first saw it (in French, on regular TV interspaced between ads) and I still love it now. As suggested above, The Right Stuff is an essential double feature with Apollo 13, and both movies even feature Ed Harris in pivotal roles.

  • Apollo 13 (1995)

    Apollo 13 (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, September 2017) I remember standing in line to watch this film on opening week, and being energized by the result. Decades later, Apollo 13 is still as good as it ever was—as a triumphant look at the American effort to land on the moon, it remains unequalled, and while the then-astonishing special effects have aged, they still hold up reasonably well—that launch sequence is still awe-inspiring. They may never be a movie about Apollo 11 because it went so well, but the Apollo 13 mission was a different story, and it’s through that fateful flight that we get a look at the astonishing achievement of the American space program. The historical details are immediately credible, and there’s much to be said about a film made in the nineties to reflect events that were then barely more than twenty years past—trying to recreate 1973 today would be more difficult and probably less authentic, without mentioning all the people who have since died and wouldn’t be there to provide their advice. Reportedly free of major inaccuracies, Apollo 13 can’t quite escape some artistic licensing issues, whether it’s leaden explanatory dialogue, scenes set up to discuss a thematic concern or the vastly overwrought climax played up for all it’s worth. Still, these are small concerns compared to the entire film—it remains one of director Ron Howard’s most successful films, and it features a cast of a half-dozen great actors, from Tom Hanks’ immediately sympathetic commander Jim Lovell to Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and one of Ed Harris’s career-best iconic performance as no-nonsense flight director Gene Kranz. Everything clicks together to make up that elusive movie magic, effective even when knowing exactly how everything will play out. It’s not meant to be subtle (the last-act passage in which NASA reflects that Apollo 13 will be remembered as one of their “finest moments” lays out what viewers are expected to take away from the film itself) but it’s remarkably effective. As a lapsed space buff, I can’t help but love Apollo 13, but I’m reasonably sure that it remains a great movie for everyone even today.

  • Stepmom (1998)

    Stepmom (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2016) Prepare your hankies, because Stepmom is determined to make you cry as hard as you can. The narrative threads are set up early, as the younger second wife of a sympathetic but featureless man (Ed Harris) can’t quite get the respect she wants from her stepchildren. Real mom is best mom, and so Susan Sarandon puts Julia Roberts in her place a few times to establish the narrative tension right before her cancer diagnosis is revealed. The rest is by-the-number sentimental filmmaking by director Chris Columbus, made fitfully interesting by a few hilariously unrealistic looks at fashion photography and adequate performances. Harris, Sarandon and Roberts can’t disguise that this is a very specific kind of movie. Everything plays exactly like we expect, and the result defies any attempts at deeper analysis or even sustained interest. Stepmom will appeal to its target audience and leave large groups indifferent. It is well made, but it is not worth more than a moment’s attention.

  • Phantom (2013)

    Phantom (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, June 2013) The submarine-movie subgenre is interesting in that there are only so many things you can do, story-wise, aboard a submarine.  Sense of isolation; claustrophobia; being stuck with an insane individual; nuclear weapons (sometimes); submarine fights; ocean dangers; the list is finite, and nearly every submarine movie ever made seems to play with the same ideas.  Phantom is no exception: while “based on a true story” (albeit the most incredible interpretation of events, with an added dash of magic science to make things even less plausible), it’s resoundingly familiar in the way it re-uses common plot elements.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing –execution is everything, and writer/director Todd Robinson does a generally acceptable job at transforming a fairly low budget into a cold-war nuclear thriller.  A good chunk of the film’s success can be attributed to a trio of capable veteran actors: Ed Harris as the flawed captain, William Fichtner as his capable lieutenant and David Duchovny as a potentially dangerous outsider.  The film has enough credibility to carry audiences across the less-believable moments, and the sense of tension that comes from being confined in such a small space for so long is also good enough to entertain.  But while Phantom is generally fine for audiences with an interest in its style or subject matter, “generally fine” isn’t enough to elevate it above its subgenre for a wider audience.  It doesn’t help that the film shoots itself in the foot with an ending that tries to fit narrative consolation with cold hard historical fact.  While the result will be just entertaining enough to satisfy those who are predisposed toward submarine movies in general, Phantom doesn’t have what it takes to reach a much bigger audience.

  • Man on a Ledge (2012)

    Man on a Ledge (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, August 2012) There’s a comforting familiarity to genre exercises that makes it easy to forgive them for, well, being genre exercises.  Man on a Ledge may benefit from an unusual premise (man goes on a ledge as a diversion for a heist), but it quickly becomes just another thriller with the usual palette of elements: clever virtuous thieves, corrupt cops, framed hero, rapacious journalists, and so on.  To its credit, Man on a Ledge plays its thriller cards well, especially in the first act of the film while all of the plot strands are being set up.  It’s the second third that hits a bit of a lull as the same situation is re-threaded for about 15 minutes: thrillers live or die on narrative energy, and there’s a sense, as the thieves goof around their target, that time is being wasted.  At least the last act of the film speeds up again, leading up to a nice appropriate moment of stunt-work.  Some dynamic camera work helps keep up interest throughout, but some thanks must be given to the good cast assembled here for the film: Sam Worthington as a scruffy protagonist, Ed Harris as a rail-thin villain, up-comer Anthony Mackie as a partner working at cross-purposes, Elizabeth Banks as a damaged police officer and Genesis Rodriguez as a wise-cracking rogue.  It plays reasonably well as a genre thriller, and that’s fine if that’ all you really want to see.  Where it falters is in comparison with other better movies of this kind –specifically Inside Man, Spike Lee’s far-better “New York crime thriller” entry which felt as if it had some connections to contemporary reality rather than just being a somewhat showy thriller.  The far-fetched nature of Man on a Ledge’s plot could have used a bit more grounding (so to speak, ahem) and that’s probably when genre exercises can go astray, by being more focused on their own plot convolutions rather than spending just a bit more time on making it feel even more credible.

  • That’s What I Am (2011)

    That’s What I Am (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, April 2012) As far as mid-sixties coming-of-age films go, That’s What I Am has almost all of the usual elements: Life lessons, befriended outcasts, wise teacher and eighth-grade first love.  It plays without surprises (although some of the expected plot beats aren’t dwelled upon –I was sure that something was going to happen to the car, for instance) but it does so with warmth and wit.  The narration is better than usual, the characters are nicely defined, there are quite a few moments of decent humanity (something that’s perhaps a bit too rare nowadays) and the film does have a certain narrative energy in finding out what’s going to happen next.  Ed Harris shines as the protagonist’s influential teacher, but the child actors all turn in some good work as the students.  I’m still trying to figure out why the film was produced by Word Wrestling Entertainment, but never mind that logo: That’s What I Am is the kind of small-expectations movie that fills up a nice quiet evening.  It’s perhaps not special enough to warrant an effort to seek, but it’s absolutely fine at what it attempts to be.

  • The Way Back (2010)

    The Way Back (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) The Way Back is inspired by a story that may or may not be true (check Wikipedia for the controversy), but the premise is the stuff of epic adventure as a few prisoners escape from a Russian Gulag and make their way, on foot, to India –crossing Siberian forests, enormous caverns, the shores of Lake Baikal, vast plains, the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas along the way.  By the time the film ends, it feels like an odyssey, and not solely in the best sense: This is a long, sometimes tedious film.  The characters suffer, the attempted realism of the presentation offers very little levity, and the script doesn’t trouble itself with compelling dialogue.  As a result, The Way Back feels longer than it should, and ends up shortchanging viewers on the “viewing pleasure” aspect.  Still, there’s a lot to like and admire: The scenery is often breathtaking, the actors (including Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Saoirse Ronan) do a fine job in rough circumstances, the story kills off a number of characters you wouldn’t expect, and the feeling of a difficult odyssey certainly comes across on-screen.  A bit of plot-tightening, more compelling character work (enough so that we can distinguish between the minor players) and some punched-up dialogue may have helped The Way Back rise above the good and become great.