KaDee Strickland

  • Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

    Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) The only question anyone can have about Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is not “Is it as good as Anaconda?” (Because, clearly, that’s impossible) as much as it’s “Well, is it fun to watch?” Clearly, we’re not in arthouse territory when a film reassembles all of the elements of the 1997 snakesploitation film (young attractive people; a jungle; gigantic snakes) and gives it another bigger go. The special effects are more digital than they were in the first film; there are more snakes, the “prize” hunted by the protagonist is a longevity elixir, and the cast is clearly pulled from the minor leagues. But, if you’re in the mood for a bog-standard monster feature, Anacondas should do the trick. KaDee Strickland is no J-Lo, Morris Chestnut isn’t Ice Cube and the almost-accidental cheesiness of the first film isn’t quite duplicated here, but the film delivers the kills, the snake, the adventures and the sweaty jungle that we could expect from a follow-up. That still doesn’t make it good compared to the countless other movies you could be watching instead, but if you’re dead set on “snake thriller,” then I guess no one can stop you from watching Anacondas.

  • Grand Isle (2019)

    Grand Isle (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) Nicolas Cage is certainly cranking out the films in his older back-tax-paying age, and while Grand Isle isn’t a particularly good Cage film, you can see why he was cast in it. A southern Gothic in which a young man is invited in a vast mansion by a man intent on hiring him to kill his wife, it’s a film with a kernel of potential. Despite the film’s low budget, it’s credibly set in the sweaty humid hurricane-prone atmosphere of Louisiana. The age-old setup has a warring couple making demands on the younger stranger brought among them—in the middle of a hurricane, in an old Victorian house, no less. The nervy sound design, with wind and thunder, is designed to keep up on our toes during it all. In the cast, Cage is Cage (although maybe not as intensely as we’d prefer), while KaDee Strickland shows some potential as a femme fatale and Kelsey Grammer is quite enjoyable as a southern lawyer in the framing story. Alas, those promising elements are eventually blown away, most notably during a scattered third act that keeps going long after the action should have been settled and in doing so breaks the time/space unity that thrillers should keep in mind. (It also introduces a different dramatic arc that is resolved very quickly afterward, and doesn’t do much except allow Cage to be shown with a different hairstyle.) Grand Isle’s production history suggests that the production ran out of money before shooting the last two days of filming, but I have a hard time imagining that even one more week would fix what’s flawed here. The only consolation is that if you didn’t like it, well, there are five other 2019 Nicolas Cage movies to help you feel better.