Michael Douglas

The American President (1995)

The American President (1995)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, April 2019) At this point in American history, the idea of a likable, virtuous, law-abiding president is the stuff of comforting fantasy, so here’s The American President to remind us of what that was like. This rather charming romantic comedy takes on the premise of having a widowed president woo a lobbyist. Written by Aaron Sorkin, the film can certainly be seen as a dry run for The West Wing—voluble, clever, and idealistic at once. (Checking the film’s original English-language quotes, it’s obvious that the film loses something in translation.)  Even though other movies and shows have mined the same terrain since 1995, The American President still provides an interesting glimpse at the heart of a presidency, and doesn’t forget to tackle the more honest aspects of the power dynamics of a relationship between the president and a citizen. A great cast anchors Rob Reiner’s straightforward direction: While Michael Douglas gets to play the president opposite Annette Bening’s fiery lobbyist, the film can also count on Martin Sheen (I told you it was a West Wing dry run), Michael J. Fox and John Mahoney. The American President is a good movie, but the current political context makes it even better, with its romance being as idealistic as its political nature—presupposing a president of good moral character and a concerned effort to curb emission gasses. It is a bit disheartening to hear a film nearly twenty-five-year-old tackling things that really should have been done back then. But when it comes to escapism, Hollywood does it best.

The War of the Roses (1989)

The War of the Roses (1989)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, March 2019) There’s a good reason why The War of the Roses is often brought up, decades later, in conversations about dark comedies: As a story of a warring couple, it will make most people’s divorces look positively tame in comparison. Featuring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the warring couple in their third outing together, it’s directed with devilish glee by Danny DeVito—who also gets a good role as the film’s narrator. It’s clearly not a laugh-a-minute comedy, but the film does an admirable job at controlling its tone (always an issue in dark comedies) as things simply get worse and worse with no upper limit. By the morbid ending, it’s not as if we haven’t been prepared for it. Douglas and Turner were arguably at the height of their own respective fame by the time the film was made, and there’s an interesting aspect to the film capturing those performances at that time. The obvious caution here is that The War of the Roses may not be a film to be watched at anyone at any time—although, ironically enough, it may be most suited to those in the middle of a divorce themselves as a reminder of how bad things can get.

The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2019) Following up on Romancing the Stone barely a year later, The Jewel of the Nile once again teams up Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (and Danny DeVito) for a comedic adventure far away from home. Heading for the Middle East rather than South America, the characters soon find themselves embroiled in a revolution against a despot, and trying to work out their marital issues along the way. This straightforward adventure is powered by Douglas and Turner’s charm, as they bicker and reconcile over the course of the film. While generally tepid, the film does hit a high mark during an escape sequence featuring a land-bound F-16 jet. Perhaps unfortunately, the plot doesn’t do as much as it promises early on in exploring the fantasy/reality frontier that comes naturally by having a novelist in a lead role. In some ways, the film is about rerunning a romance with a bit more information about each other, belying the theory that you shouldn’t make a romantic sequel because everything has been said the first time. In that context, The Jewel of the Nile doesn’t stand by itself, and greatly benefits from having seen Romancing the Stone (a generally stronger film) not too long beforehand. It’s watchable enough, but not a great or even good movie.

Coma (1978)

Coma (1978)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2018) Michael Crichton became a contrarian cuckoo in his last few years, but even that sad brain-eating epilogue shouldn’t distract from an amazing career in which he wrote best-sellers, created hit TV shows, coded computer games, won a Technical Achievement Academy Award (!) for budgeting and scheduling innovations (!!) and, oh, directed half a dozen big-budget movies. Movies like Coma, showing his knack for technical medical drama coupled with solid storytelling abilities. While it’s not required to praise Coma beyond its own goals as a straightforward thriller, Crichton’s film does manage to be effective. Based on nothing less than one of Robin Cook’s early novels, it’s a blend of medical drama, high-tech investigation, conspiracy thriller and woman-in-distress drama. Genevieve Bujold stars as a doctor who becomes suspicious of mysterious coma cases at her hospital, with some good supporting performances by Michael Douglas and Rip Torn. (Watch for Ed Harris in his first film role as a technician.) While the film can’t escape a certain seventies stodginess, it’s this very same atmosphere that makes the film more interesting than expected today—Coma has emerged from the last thirty years as a period piece rather than a dated one, and it’s seeing things like Douglas in a full beard that makes the film rather entertaining to watch. Even the high-tech gloss of the film, at times ridiculous, is now rather charming. Not an essential film, but not an uninteresting one either.

The China Syndrome (1979)

The China Syndrome (1979)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2017) Few movies ever reached topical relevancy as definitively as The China Syndrome, released barely twelve days before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident brought the film’s themes to the forefront of the public discourse. Nowadays, The China Syndrome still plays well, largely because it’s a solid thriller with a capable trio of lead actors. What viewers may not remember (or expect) from the film is how it acts as a great primer on newsgathering in the late seventies, with Jane Fonda playing an ambitious reporter, helped along by a cameraman/technician (a dashingly bearded Michael Douglas, who also produced the film), inadvertently records evidence of a dangerous incident at a nuclear power plant. Trade details aside, the film soon moves into solid conspiracy thriller territory as the characters do their best to go public before the incident reoccurs. The ending is dark, but not quite as bleak as I remembered it. Jack Lemmon anchors the conspiracy angle in reality. Convincing procedural details, either from the TV news angle or the operations of the nuclear reactor itself, keep the film grounded in the required realism. While the film’s surface sheen is clearly from the late seventies, The China Syndrome itself hasn’t aged all that much, and you could indeed imagine a remake that wouldn’t have to change much in order to remain relevant. Still, the 1979 version remains both compelling and reflective or its era. It is well worth a look.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Romancing the Stone (1984)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2017) If ever you’re in the mood for an action comedy in which a romance author finds adventure and love in South America alongside a dashing rogue, then Romancing the Stone should be your first pick. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it relatively well thanks to the lead actors and director Robert Zemeckis’s knack (even at that early stage of his career) for executing complex projects. Here we go from New York City to Colombia, evading government forces, drug lords and criminals along the way. Michael Douglas is quite good as the dashing adventurer, reminding us of his younger leading-man days. Opposite him, Kathleen Turner is not bad as a writer thrust in a series of adventures, loosening up along the way. There is nothing particularly novel to what Romancing the Stone is trying to do, and it can occasionally be annoying in how it goes about it (most notably in presenting the bumbling criminals who are supposed to be one of the two main sets of antagonists) but it does manage to become the adventure film it wants to be, with a good helping of comedy and romance to go along with the thrills. It occasionally fells long, and some of the limitations of 1984 filmmaking do show up from time to time, but Romancing the Stone remains mildly enjoyable even today.

Basic Instinct (1992)

Basic Instinct (1992)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second viewing, On TV, March 2017) I definitely remember seeing Basic Instinct a long time ago (in French, given that I remember the crude final lines as the ridiculous “… comme des castors”) but I’d forgotten enough of it to be mesmerized by a second viewing. Even today, it remains a pedal-to-the-metal borderline-insane thriller, rich in violence and a degree of eroticism seldom matched since then. I ended up watching the unrated version (on a basic-cable movie TV channel … go figure) and it features three of the most graphic sex scenes I can recall from a Hollywood film—the Jeanne Tripplehorn scene alone is worth the watch. Not that the rest of the movie is dull—under the combined daring of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven, the film cranks up nearly every single exploitative dial to eleven. It throws in a car chase on twisty backroads because, well, why not? It throws another car chase through downtown San Francisco because, again, why not? When bisexuality and murder are the most ordinary elements of the story, that’s not even getting into the twisted psychos-sexual games played between the two characters. Michael Douglas is in peak form as a risk-addicted policeman, and while Sharon Stone is still remembered for the ice-cold danger she projects, I had forgotten how her character is balanced by some cute impishness. The interrogation sequence has been parodied endlessly, but remains no less effective today in seeing a lone woman defy half a dozen alpha males by sheer (or not-so-sheer) chutzpah. Basic Instinct is pure wilful exploitation, and that’s why it’s so remarkable. The murder mystery is almost besides the point—something that the double-ending practically dies laughing about. I still think it’s far too bloody … but that’s part of the film’s twisted fun. Morally reprehensible yet slickly executed, Basic Instinct almost looks even better twenty-five years later.

Fatal Attraction (1987)

Fatal Attraction (1987)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, December 2016) Both hilarious and a bit terrifying, Fatal Attraction’s story of adultery gone horribly wrong still rings as a cautionary tale thirty years later. Peak-era Michael Douglas stars as a lawyer who starts an affair with a dangerously obsessive woman (Glenn Close, more scary than sexy even in lingerie) and nearly loses everything in the process. The rather endearing term “bunny boiler” comes from this film, along with a substantial amount of reactionary emotions. Is it an anti-feminism tale, or the kind of story that men tell themselves in order to keep themselves in check? Who knows—what’s for sure is that this is as pure an erotic thriller as Hollywood was capable of turning out back then (I don’t think it can do anything like this any more)—the early sex scenes definitely have some heat to them, and the latter suspense moments do get ridiculously intense. With time, the lines that the movie draws for itself become blurry—a modern take would probably empathize more with Close’s characters. But, of course, such a modern take would quickly fade away—the point of Fatal Attraction’s enduring popularity is that it is extreme and black-and-white and scary and cautionary. Otherwise, why bother … and shouldn’t Hollwyood take note of that?

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, July 2015)  For all the flack that 2000-2010 Matthew McConaughey has received for his lengthy string of undemanding roles in romantic comedies, it’s easy enough to forget that he was really, really good at it.  Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is as good a showcase for him in that mode as any of the other films in that sub-genre.  Here, A Christmas Carol crashes into rom-com conventions as McConaughey plays an unrepentant womanizer taught the error of his ways via three helpful ghosts on the eve of a wedding.  As with many films trying to mix familiar genre premises with high-concept premises, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past works best as its wildest (the scene where the protagonist meets his past girlfriends “in bulk” is the highlight), and worst when it’s saddled with obligatory emotional beats, or realise it actually has to deliver a romantic payoff beyond the jokes.  So it is that the film is an inventive delight when McConaughey acts as a bad-boy or when the ghosts take him through a tour of his romantic life.  It’s not so enjoyable when it has to go through the motions of the typical foreordained romance, or the dramatic scaffolding required to get to the triumphant ending.  But the film does make an impression: Emma Stone is nothing short of hilarious in a pre-stardom role, while Michael Douglas is slick-smooth as the kind of mentor every mother warns her son about.  Noureen DeWulf, Anne Archer, Lacey Chabert and Robert Forster also make good impressions in smaller roles.  Still, the script is a bit hit-and-miss as its better moments are saddled with more obvious ones.  In other words, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past should have been a bit better with the elements at its disposal, and occasional signs that it’s capable of much better.  But even as it is, it’s an impressive showcase for the kind of persona that Matthew McConaughey enjoyed in his rom-com heyday.

A Perfect Murder (1998)

A Perfect Murder (1998)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, June 2015) Some good movies just slip by unseen, but the beauty of endless reruns is that sooner or later, they come back.  So it is that I was able to catch up on old-fashioned thriller A Perfect Murder, adapted from classic Hitchcock thriller Dial M For Murder but more than good enough on its own.  The first few minutes all pile up the mini-revelations, as a woman (a young-looking Gwyneth Paltrow) is revealed to be having an affair with a man who is further revealed (by her husband, no less) as being a career con artist who’s probably up to no good.  A deal is made; money for murder for money, the husband paying the con man to get rid of his wife so that her inheritance can shore up his bad investments.  It’s already twisted, but there’s more to come, with murder and suspense aplenty.  Michael Douglas can play the wealthy heavy like no others, while Paltrow looks suitably vulnerable as the heroine of the film.  Director Andrew Davis keeps things moving, the film has that pleasant mid-nineties sheen and the suspense sequences do have a classic quality to them despite the odd eruption of blood.  It amounts to a decent time, perhaps a bit overlong but not outrageously so.  A Perfect Murder remains a thriller in the classical mode, and that’s not an inconsequential advantage at a time where we seem to have moved a bit too much beyond the classical.

Beyond the Reach (2014)

Beyond the Reach (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on Demand, June 2015)  Michael Douglas may be getting older, but can still play a terrific villain and while Beyond the Reach will forever struggle to be seen by more people, it does offer Douglas in fine form as a rich man convinced that the rules don’t really apply to him.  When a hunting trip turns sour and a man is killed by accident, the antagonist and his hunting guide come to engage in a deadly game.  Jeremy Irvine is ordinary in the role of the poor hunted protagonist, but it’s hard to hold his own against a splendidly magnificent Douglas.  Otherwise, Beyond the Reach features good cinematography of the Mojave Desert. (We can almost feel the heat coming from the screen.) It ridiculously falls apart at the end, with a coda as ludicrous as it seems detached from the rest of the film.  The direction is occasionally off, especially at the beginning –almost as if director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti couldn’t figure out if he was going for an indie drama or an escapist thriller.  There’s a fine line between stripped-down and enigmatic, and Beyond the Reach initially doesn’t quite know where it is.  Things get better once our two main characters are in the desert and money faces down wit.  It almost certainly could have been better, but in the meantime there’s always another fine Douglas performance to behold.

And so it Goes (2014)

And so it Goes (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on Demand, January 2015)  The modern drive to transform movies into non-stop spectacles means that middle-of-the-road character-based comedies such as And so it Goes are often forgotten among so many other viewing choices.  And that’s too bad, because they often offer satisfying acting performances by well-known names, gentle humor, quiet pacing and heartwarming conclusions.  There isn’t, to be clear, anything new or challenging in And so it Goes: Michael Douglas stars as an embittered real-estate agent drawing back into his shell after a series of setbacks.  Fortunately, there’s Diane Keaton as a lounge singer widow to draw him out of his shell, alongside a number of other supporting characters including an estranged granddaughter.  We all know where that kind of story is going, and that’s part of the charm.  Veteran director Rob Reiner isn’t interested in flash, and the unspectacular result might have been better, but it goes down nicely given appropriate exceptions.  The focus of And so it Goes on older leads, addressing similarly-older audiences, is not a bad change of pace, even though there’s a pervasive feeling that the film should have been quite a bit more than what it is.  

Last Vegas (2013)

Last Vegas (2013)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on Demand, February 2014) Hollywood is growing old alongside a significant proportion of its audience, so it’s not surprising to find more and more movies aimed at older audiences. Suffice to say that Last Vegas is at least better than The Expendables series is confronting how yesterday’s superstars can go gently into semi-retirement. Focusing on four older men coming to spend a wild weekend in Vegas to celebrate one of their own’s nuptials to a (much) younger woman, Last Vegas soon turns to debauchery of a gentle kind, winking in The Hangover‘s direction without quite committing to such outrageousness. It’s sort-of-hypocritical to see stars like Michael Douglas and Robert de Niro (both of whom married significantly younger women) espouse the rightness of marrying age-appropriately, but when the object of their affection is the astonishingly good-looking Mary Steenburgen (still seven years their junior, one notes), it’s hard to complain that much. It helps that the film has a middle-of-the-road comic sensibility, amusing without being outrageous, and carefully pacing its development to gently lull viewers to a surprise-free climax. Kevin Kline and Morgan Freeman provide able supporting performances in filling an aging brat-pack. De Niro sort-of reprises his tough-guy persona (De Niro scholars are already talking about the self-referential second half of his career), Douglas oozes a slightly-oily charm, Kline does fine comic work, while Freeman is fun just being Freeman. Director Jon Turteltaub faithfully directs a decently-structured but timid script, and Vegas’s attractions do the rest. Last Vegas doesn’t amount to much, and that’s probably the point: this is mass-market comedy aiming older, and there’s no need to be bold or outrageous when nostalgia and gentle chuckles will keep the target audience happy. So it goes that the film is light entertainment, almost instantly forgettable but decently pleasant while it plays.

Behind the Candelabra (2013)

Behind the Candelabra (2013)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2013) In the hands of HBO and Steven Soderbergh, made-for-TV movies clearly aren’t what they used to be: Here, with Behind the Candelabra, we get nothing less than two top-notch actors delivering a love story set against the flamboyant backdrop of Liberace’s career.  Michael Douglas is a surprisingly good Liberace (embracing the skill and the generosity but also the pathos of the man), while Matt Damon plays Scott Thorson, the (much) younger man who was his lover between 1977 and 1981.  (If the film has a flaw, it’s that Matt Damon is considerably older than Thorson was at the time –this softens much of the tension that an accurate portrayal of the story would have given.)  The doomed love story may be predictable, but it’s well-executed to make it dramatically interesting.  The two main actors are also fearless in their performances, openly embracing (and demonstrating) the romantic relationship between their characters, but there are plenty of scene-stealing cameos elsewhere in the film, whether it’s Dan Aykroyd playing a mousy manager, or Rob Lowe’s plastic-faced surgeon/dealer.  From a directing standpoint, Soderbergh delivers his usual brand of audience-riling iconoclasm, making the most out of his budget and crafting a film that’s more engaging than many of his last few colder efforts.  But the star of the show, frankly, are the set dressers, makeup artists and costume designers that bring to life the famed excess of Liberace’s work and personal life.  The camera moves through a lavish re-creation of Liberace’s homes, dwells on his spectacular stage outfits and convincingly recreates his performances.  It’s -to take up a theme of the film- a grand show, and it’s easy to just enjoy the film for its moments of comedy and pure surface sheen.  There’s more to Behind the Candelabra, of course: a reflection of that type of content that TV (well, HBO) audience are willing to embrace, a bit of a late screed against the unfairness of repressing one’s sexuality, a look at the way the rich and powerful can sculpt other people… this is a Soderbergh film, after all, and there’s a bit more behind the surface. So it is that we’ve come to this: A pretty good film, with big-name stars and impeccable technical credentials, delivered by TV.  Given that I’m an HBO subscriber, I can only applaud this.

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?