Greg Sestero

  • Retro Puppet Master (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) Writer-director-producer Charles Band and his Full Moon Pictures studio are known for low-budget films, but if there’s something else that keeps popping up in their filmography, it’s puppets. Puppet antagonists. Puppet supporting characters. An entire thirteen-film Puppet Master series, of which Retro Puppet Master is the seventh. Band did not technically direct Retro Puppet Master (long-time acolyte David DeCoteau did, but that’s not much of a distinction) but his stamp is everywhere on the film. You can recognize the hallmarks of the Full Moon Pictures’ low-budget style everywhere in the production, what with its meandering plot, unconvincing period production values, low-grade actors (including Greg Sestero, eventually made famous by his involvement in The Room) and, obviously, a lot of puppets. No Full Moon films are good, but some of them squeak by on rough charm and quasi-accidental enjoyment. Retro Puppet Master is not one of them – it just limps along with a self-involved plot that doesn’t manage to become interesting, and is clearly part of a cult following for the Puppet Master series. Maybe that’s you, in which case – have fun. Otherwise, there are better movies out there and, more crucially, better Charles Band movies as well.

  • The Disaster Artist (2017)

    The Disaster Artist (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, August 2018) The question of whether good art can arise from bad art is sophomoric (of course it can; just as surely as good art can come from bad things) but it does seem to be central to the critical reaction to The Disaster Artist. It is, after all, a successful dramatization of the making of the terrible movie The Room. If you haven’t seen The Room, well, you really don’t have to: It’s an incoherent romantic drama that has become a modern ironic reference for fans of bad movies. The reasons why it’s bad are far more interesting than the film itself, and The Disaster Artist correctly focuses on that aspect of the story in showing how a young actor (Greg Sestero, who authored the book on which this film is based) is befriended by an enigmatic man (Tommy Wisseau) who somehow has the money to finance an entire film. Alas, when means exceed talent, strange things can happen and so it is that The Room is a singular vision from a man who doesn’t seem to be entirely human. The Disaster Artist hits its stride when it portrays the real-life story of how The Room was shot, with the crew practically rebelling against the director and yet trudging along despite the results. The Disaster Artist can practically stand alone as a filmmaker’s insider movie of what can happen during shooting. Fortunately, it’s as funny as the event themselves, as we see the Franco brothers (James and Dave) play off each other, with some assistance from Seth Rogen, Alison Brie and half a dozen cameos. The narrative doesn’t always correspond to the real-life story, but director James Franco’s recreation of The Room‘s ineptness is striking and, as the credits sequence shows, matches The Room‘s footage really well. It’s a fascinating story, ridiculous and yet endearing at once. After all: Tommy Wisseau got to make a movie seen by millions … which is more than almost all of us can claim. Now the terrible The Room has spawned the Oscar-nominated The Disaster Artist … a remarkable feat even by Hollywood standards.