Joel Schumacher

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.

The Client (1994)

The Client (1994)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, June 2019) It’s been so long since I read John Grisham’s The Client that I don’t really remember most of the plot, so you can say that I had an almost entirely new experience with the film adaptation. Here, a teenager having witnessed something of interest to the police and the mob is taken under a tough lawyer’s wing as she tries to negotiate a way out while outwitting both sides. If The Client works, it’s because it’s a sufficiently different riff on familiar tropes—in this case, the kid’s protector trying to protect her charge from overreach by the FBI at the same time as a very real threat from the mob. Susan Sarandon is quite good as the lawyer, flawed enough to have something to gain from the adventure. Meanwhile, Brad Renfro has a decent turn as a resourceful teenager caught between a few bad options. Tommy Lee Jones shows up as a senior FBI officer, while Mary-Louis Parker has a small role as a despondent mom. Director Joel Schumacher keeps things moving swiftly, not getting in the way of the plot-driven film. Grisham went on to write more interesting novels, but this film adaptation does the job and may seem more interesting in retrospect, as medium-budget mid-90s thrillers of the kind exemplified by The Client got much rarer in 2010s multiplexes.

The Lost Boys (1987)

The Lost Boys (1987)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, October 2017) Even at a time when we think we’ve seen it all with vampire movies, there’s a curious energy at play in The Lost Boys, which improbably blends comic tropes with a theme taken from Peter Pan in order to deliver a rather good horror-comedy. The idea of an idyllic Californian-coast town being home to a small group of vampires and becoming “the murder capital of the world” is amusing enough. But then there’s the protagonist falling in with bad influences, his brother getting acquainted with wannabe vampire killers who do end up being right, the mom hooking up with a suspiciously menacing shop owner … there are a lot of spinning plates here, and they all seem to belong to a slightly different genre. Surprisingly, it works—although there’s some freedom in clarifying that the film is not meant to be scrutinized too closely. Under Joel Schumacher’s direction, The Lost Boys is fast-paced, stylistically moody, generally enjoyable and, at times, an intriguing time capsule of mid-eighties conventions. The opening act is great, the middle act is good, but the third act does get a bit conventional, although still enjoyable in its own way. Jamie Gertz plays a convincing love interest, while Corey Haim and Jason Patric each have their own movie as brothers. Still, the highlight is a very young-looking Keifer Sutherland as the leader of the vampire pack. The themes are slight, but at least there’s something there that goes beyond the usual conventions of vampire movies until then. For the rest, The Lost Boys is a movie that has, through sheer daring and genre-blending, aged very well. It’s still worth a look, long after the vampire boom has come, gone and come back again.

Bad Company (2002)

Bad Company (2002)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, September 2016) I really like Chris Rock as a performer, so seeing him alongside Anthony Hopkins in the middle of an espionage comedy should have been interesting. But while Bad Company has its moments of inspiration, it doesn’t rise to much more than a middle-of-the-road action comedy. Unlike some similar film (and there are plenty of similarities between this one and its 2002 contemporary I Spy), Bad Company doesn’t have much in terms of action, focusing rather on the verbal sparring between Rock and Hopkins, as well as a plot that could have served as a basis for a much more serious film. Here, Rock plays a gifted street hustler who is recruited by the American government to impersonate his long-lost twin brother. Street meets high society with a big splash of undercover intrigue—you can imagine the predictable laughs that the street-smart protagonist gets once he confronts both the CIA, upper-class friends of his brother and eastern European terrorist villains. Thanks to Joel Schumacher’s competent direction, the film moves at a good clip and nearly always looks good. Still, the most memorable sequences have more to do with comedy (such as Hopkin’s lame attempt to bring him back into the fold, or whenever Kerry Washington shows up as his brother’s exploitative girlfriend) that with suspense, which is not necessarily a bad thing. As a vehicle for Rock, Bad Company isn’t bad, but it doesn’t rise much above that.

A Time to Kill (1996)

A Time to Kill (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, July 2016) There was a time, before the McConnaissance, before the Decade of Rom-Coms, when Matthew McConaughey was hailed as a promising young actor, and A Time to Kill (alongside Contact, Amistad and Lone Star) was part of the evidence. Watching it today is like unearthing vintage McConaughey, made even better by the calibre of the cast surrounding him. Samuel L. Jackson in a genuinely unsettling angry father role? Kevin Spacey as a slimy prosecutor? Sandra Bullock as the brilliant girl who comes to save the day? Ashley Judd, Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Chris Cooper as part of the scenery? Not bad at all. While director Joel Schumacher lets the film run long, he knows what he’s doing in giving it a sweaty high-polish gloss. (Do I need to highlight once more the disappearance of the big-budget standalone thriller in today’s Hollywood industry?) The story is adapted reasonably faithfully from the John Grisham novel, including the uncomfortable considerations of vigilantism. In fact, the movie may be a bit more upsetting in the way it squarely places its sympathies with the justice-seeker and conflating it with a victory for the oppressed (as in; racists are bad, so they get what they deserve and never mind the judicial process.) There’s unpleasant stuff going just under the glossy surface of the story, and it’s not clear whether this is entirely intentional from either Grisham or the screenwriter. Still, A Time to Kill can coast a long time on the charm and persona of its stars. In the end, it’s a film best seen for its cast and execution than for moral questions left untouched.

The Number 23 (2007)

The Number 23 (2007)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2012) Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Jim Carrey is still primarily perceived as a comedian, and part of the appeal of psychological thriller The Number 23 is seeing him headline a fairly grim tale of obsession and death.  As an ordinary guy suddenly fascinated by a book explaining the numerological intricacies of the number 23, Carrey does well –especially when the film take a meta-fictional bent and start presenting both the character’s reality and the heightened fiction that he reads.  The Number 23 is never more enjoyable than when it’s weird without explanations, going from reality to fiction to increasing paranoia.  When comes the moment for the movie to lay down its cards and tie everything together, you can hear the creaks of the tortured storytelling (in which characters do bizarre things for no better reason than to look suspicious later on), the disappointment of threads being tied up and the lousiest plot cheats come up again.  Still, the film feels underrated: Ably directed by Joel Schumacher, it has a potent visual kick, a strong directing style and some stylish cinematography.  Carrey is believable in the lead role (though not distinctive enough to be worth the rumored 23 million dollars he was paid for it), while Virginia Madsen and Danny Huston provide able supporting work.  The plotting certainly isn’t airtight (the boy’s age doesn’t match the chronology), but the film makes a compelling case for itself as a visual piece of work.  Schumacher may have burned out spectacularly after Batman & Robin, but he has since been turning in some interesting niche movies, from Tigerland to Trespass and now The Number 23.

Flatliners (1990)

Flatliners (1990)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2012) For years, I wondered missing out on Flatliners had led to an embarrassing omission in my movie-going culture.  Hadn’t this film earned some interest as a science-fiction film?  Didn’t it star a bunch of actors who went on to bigger things?  Wasn’t this one of Joel Shumacher’s best-known movies from his earlier, better period?  The answer to these questions is yes… but the film itself seems a bit of a letdown after viewing.  Oh, some things still work well, and may even work better than expected.  Of the five main actors, Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and Oliver Platt have all gone on to big careers –with poor William Baldwin being left behind.  Schumacher’s direction is backed-up with Jan de Bont’s impressive cinematography: the visuals of the film may not make much sense, but they evoke a modern-gothic atmosphere that remains distinctive even today.  The high-concept of the film remains potent, with genius-level medical students voluntarily defying death to investigate the mysteries of the afterlife.  Unfortunately, all of these elements don’t quite add up satisfyingly.  The jump from the high concept to the characters’ personification of those concepts is weak, and the contrivances become almost too big to ignore.  The idea of atonement being closely linked to death is powerful, but the way this variously follows the character is more difficult to accept.  (As Platt’s character knowingly remarks, those without deep-seated traumas will end up with some fairly silly phantoms.)  There is quite a bit of repetitive one-upmanship in the way the plotting unfolds, and Flatliners sadly goes too quickly from provocative idea to ordinary morality.  Still, it’s easy to argue that the film is worth a look: Roberts, Sutherland and Bacon look really good in early roles, and the visual style of the film is still an achievement twenty years later.  There are some good ideas in the mix (witness the visual motif of “construction” -reconstruction, deconstruction- underlying nearly each scene), the portrait of intelligent characters interacting is charming and some of the suspense still works surprisingly well when it doesn’t descend in silliness.  There are a few films that qualify as “minor classics” of their era in time.  While Flatliners certainly won’t climb year’s-best lists retroactively, it’s a film that remains more remarkable than many of its contemporaries.  I don’t regret seeing it… and I may even have liked to see it a bit earlier.

Falling Down (1993)

Falling Down (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2012) It’s hard to watch Falling Down (a movie which, for two weeks in 1993, dominated the North-American box-office) without reflecting on the evolution of movies over the past twenty years.  Director Joel Schumacher’s film has become both a period piece of life in Los Angeles during the early nineties, and a reflection of the kind of films we don’t really see in big cineplexes any more.  As Michael Douglas plays a proverbial “angry white male” driven mad by the pressures of modern life, Falling Down targets annoyances but does not indulge in the glorification of vigilantism.  The lead character is to be pitied more than to be admired, something that the conclusion makes sadly clear.  The indictment, in-between on-the-nose symbolism and a little bit of speechifying, is equally spread between victim and aggressor.  Douglas’ clean-cut character is a relic of the fifties unable to cope with the chaos of the nineties, but his downfall is party his own fault.  Not entirely interested in being thriller but a bit too action-packed to be pegged as a pure character study, it’s hard to imagine Falling Down being released widely in 2012 and earning strong box-office success.  The past twenty years, after all, have seen Hollywood shift gears from movies to spectacles: The big screens of the cineplexes, now that alternate distribution mechanisms are well-developed, are for overblown thrills and sure commercial bets: A modern-day Falling Down, absent a wildly popular star as once was Michael Douglas in 1993, would most likely be an independent feature, released on DVD after some success on the film-festival circuit.  On the other hand, things have also changes for the better the moment you stop talking about movies: Los Angeles doesn’t have as big a smog problem as it did in 1993, and its gang violence problem is quite a bit better as well.  Thankfully, much of the film still resonates now thanks to interesting flawed characters and an endearing outraged earnestness.  Who’s to say that only one bad day is the only thing standing between our normal selves and falling down?

Trespass (2011)

Trespass (2011)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video-on-Demand, December 2011) Once upon a time, maybe in the mid-nineties, a thriller directed by Joel Schumacher and featuring both Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman would have been a sure-fire box-office draw.  But this is late 2011 and the most noteworthy thing about Trespass is how a very limited theatrical run was followed barely two weeks later by a wide DVD release.  So does the film best compare to theatrical thrillers or direct-to-video efforts?  From a visual perspective, it’s clear that this is an A-list effort: Schumacher’s direction is effective, the cinematography is striking and even as the film focuses on house-bound action from dusk till dawn, the filmmakers are able to get a lot of visual energy from limited locations.  Much of Trespass, in fact, feels like a theatre production as a well-off family is threatened by a small gang of home invaders.  But the criminals aren’t united, and everyone has secrets to hide: by the film’s twentieth-minute mark, they’re already shouting at each other in trying to figure out what’s happening.  Nearly hidden behind over-sized glasses, Cage gets a typical “Cage flip-out moment” early on by trying to negotiate with people who aren’t expecting negotiations.  The intensity of the psychological drama can’t be sustained over 90- minutes: by the third act, the action diffuses itself back to B-grade movie levels by going out of the house and a few repeated plot beats while we’re waiting for the various elements previously set up to be used in rapid succession.  Once the shouting is over, it’s a bit easier to see the generic nature of the plot and the plot cheats used to constrain it.  Still, Trespass is a clear notch above much of what’s meant to go quickly from theatres to video –more of a comment on the changing video landscape in the age of instant home video consumption than a particular reflection on the film itself.  If nothing else, it’s an average thriller made by above-average filmmakers and stars.

Tigerland (2000)

Tigerland (2000)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, May 2011) Director Joel Schumacher’s public profile arguably peaked in the late nineties with his disastrous stint as the director of the two worst Batman movies ever made.  Upon its release, Tigerland had been hailed as a return to form for the director and it’s easy to see why even a decade later: A Vietnam movie set entirely stateside, this drama studies the gradual transformation of a cynical young man as he goes through infantryman training in anticipation of a foreign deployment.  The harsh reality of the training is well-depicted, but it’s really then-unknown Colin Farrell’s performance as Roland Bozz that holds all the attention.  Mirroring contemporary audiences’ mindset, Bozz knows that Vietnam is a prodigious waste, has read all of the anti-war books and has little patience for the charade of training.  He’s a free spirit stuck in a machine grinding down everyone to the same component pieces.  It would have been easy for the film to turn into a comedy in which an unrepentant Bozz knows best, or a crude anti-war statement in which the only way out is to get out.  But Tigerland is after something slightly different in putting Bozz up against other facets of morality and the logical consequences of his own compassion.  There’s a lesson in leadership there, in reluctant responsibility and in the humanity to be found in even the most inhuman structures.  It helps that Tigerland’s dialogue are a notch over the average, and that the film feels gripping even though solely set during the training phase.  The film earned some critical notice upon release but practically no commercial success, thus qualifying for an evergreen “hidden gem” recommendation.  Never mind the often too-grainy cinematography and the impression that half the actors look like each other: This is a decent Vietnam picture, and it has a bit more than the usual in mind.

Batman Forever (1995)

Batman Forever (1995)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second viewing, on DVD, September 2009) In retrospect, the post-1989 Batman movies neatly fall into a trio of pairs, with Batman Forever being the first of the Joel Schumacher duo that would reach such a nadir with Batman & Robin.  While Batman Forever is noticeably worse than Burton’s Batman Returns, it still carries itself with flashy colourful blockbuster grandeur, with ridiculous set-pieces that nonetheless show a certain breadth of conception.  As a result, it hasn’t aged all that badly… but don’t expect much: there are still plenty of ridiculous moments in the mix, and Jim Carrey as the Riddler now feels like Ace Ventura in costume: his tics are so recognizably his that they don’t mesh all that well in the bigger tapestry of the movie.  The rest often feels overlong and underthought, with a campy atmosphere that never completely meshes with the rest of the film.  The special edition DVD is both interesting and disappointing in that it does present a number of interesting deleted scenes that deepen the film (and those themes would later pop up in the Nolan-era Batman movies) but almost never acknowledges its troubled production history.  Even Schumacher’s commentary presents a rosy view of Batman Forever’s production: it’s not an uninteresting commentary, but it seems to skirt around essential material.  The rest of the features aren’t much above promotional fluff.