Mike Nichols

  • Regarding Henry (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) You don’t watch Regarding Henry for the plot. From a very early point, you’ll be able to recognize and anticipate everything that’s going to happen, the middle-class values it espouses as being obvious and the sub-threads that will illustrate that thesis. Even in execution, this is the kind of film that shouts its foreshadowing, leaves no emotional trigger unfired and takes forever to get to its most obvious plot points (“Ritz!”). It is close to the epitome of a very specific kind of Hollywood drama that passes off bromides as earth-shattering revelations, treats lower-class people as likable tools for the middle-class and hypocritically seems to reject the ideology of the super-rich as aggressive. In a few words, the plot has to do with a super-powered high-class lawyer with no morals who is shot in the head during a convenience store robbery and then, thanks to amnesia, has to rebuild himself from the ground up. You will not be surprised to see the new him be disgusted at the old him, or actions related to that shift being Regarding Henry’s climax. Casting Harrison Ford in that lead role is both a coup and a curse—1991-vintage Ford could project confidence-becoming-arrogance like few others, and his very reserved acting style serves him well in the lengthy middle part of the film, where he’s a catatonic mute gradually learning everything again. It’s in the later part of the film that Ford’s acting limitations become more obvious—but by that point we’re supposed to be deeply invested anyway. Annette Benning does have a more challenging role as the wife undergoing her own trials as her husband rebuilds himself—and she does look great in a curly red hairdo. But while very little of the film’s description so far may seem appealing, it’s a measure of veteran director Mike Nichols’ expertise (working from a script by J. J. Abrams—yes, that J. J. Abrams—who also has a small role here) that the film feels rather watchable throughout. Despite fundamental flaws that would have toppled a more cynical approach to the film’s direction, Nichols makes Regarding Henry work, somehow, even when he’s slumming. It’s far too manipulative to be anything but adequate, but at least it rises to that level—which wasn’t necessarily a done deal had anyone else had helmed it. It’s clear that a better script would have featured more interesting justifications about the ideology of the super-driven Manhattan lawyer, or how the child is the father of the man (all over again) or believable dramatic arcs for people surrounding the protagonist or, well, anything better than the Ritz thing. “Watchable” may not feel like much of a compliment, but considering where Regarding Henry started from and the multiple hurdles it throws in its own path, it will have to do.

  • Wolf (1994)

    Wolf (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) Jack Nicholson plays a mild-mannered book editor who becomes a werewolf in romantic horror Wolf and, well, that’s really all you need to know. Now, I’m not going to suggest that Wolf is your run-of-the-mill Hollywood film — helmed by Mike Nichols (in an atypical choice given his filmography) and co-written by Elaine May (making this a reunion between a legendary creative pair), it’s a blend of very light horror with romance, drama and some comedy as well. It doesn’t really all fit together, but the attempt is both more restrained (in horror) and more ambitious (in drama) than what used to be shown in the mid-1990s — although considering the evolution of genre-crossing since then, the premise may be less special nowadays. Michelle Pfeiffer does add a lot, as does James Spader as the antagonist, but this is really Nicholson’s occasion. It does get silly from time to time—watching near-sixty-something Jack hunt a deer with his new lycanthropic powers can’t be otherwise—but Nichols’ sure-footed direction helps ground the film where a less-experienced director may have flopped. For a long-time Science Fiction reader such as myself, there’s a big surprise in the editorial boardroom scenes — the shelves behind the characters are filled with early-1990s Tor hardcovers, many of which I have on my own shelves. The Tor logo is immediately recognizable on the book spines, and Tor founder-publisher Tom Doherty is credited at the end of the credit, most likely for lending use of his offices as a shooting location — although it’s arguably even weirder to see the inside of Los Angeles’ famous Bradbury building being used to portray a Manhattan-based publisher. Still, back to the basics: Wolf isn’t particularly memorable or striking, but it does have just enough weirdness to it to make it a decent watch even today. It’s not quite “the same boring werewolf movie” it could have been even if it doesn’t quite manage to become something special.

  • Working Girl (1988)

    Working Girl (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) Now there’s a strong contender for the title of the most 1980s movie ever. Working Girl came at a time when Hollywood seemingly couldn’t get enough of Manhattan’s Wall Street ambience, in between Wall Street and The Secret of my Success and Baby Boom and many others released in barely a three-year span. Unlike many of those, however, Work Girl clearly has (from its title onward) a clear idea that it wants to talk about class issues in the United States, especially when the Manhattan office environment can be used to put the very poor right alongside the very rich. Director Mike Nichols approaches the topic with two ideal actresses at each pole of the story: Melanie Griffith as the heroic low-class girl whose smarts exceed those around her, and Sigourney Weaver as her high-class, low-morals opposite. The opponents having been defined, the rest is up for grabs: the job, the prestige, even the boy-toy (Harrison Ford, good but not ideal—the role is funnier than he is) will be given to the winner. Good performances abound, with some surprising names (Joan Cusack! Alec Baldwin? Oliver Platt!! Kevin Spacey as a lecherous pervert?!) along the way. Still, this is Griffith and Weaver’s show. Only one of them shows up in lingerie, though. Now, Working Girl is not a perfect film—it does use a few shortcuts on the way to a sappy romantic conclusion, and it bothered me more than it should that the characters would assign so much importance to the idea as having value—in the real world, execution is far more important, but it doesn’t dramatize so well. Still, that doesn’t take much away from Working Girl as class conflict playing out in late-1980s Manhattan. It’s not a complicated film, but it is very well crafted. (One more thing: Weaver’s character’s name had me thinking of evil Katharine Hepburn, which led me to think about how the two women looked like each other, which had me thinking about how they could have switched many roles, which had me thinking about Katharine Hepburn as Ripley in Aliens. Hollywood, if you’re listening, I know you have the CGI and lack of morals to make this happen.)

  • Postcards from the Edge (1990)

    Postcards from the Edge (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2018) There’s quite a bit of metafictional context about Postcards from the Edge that make it a fascinating movie for those steeped in Hollywood history. For one thing, it’s not just a movie about a Hollywood actress with addiction issues trying to get back on the right path despite the domineering influence of her mother—it’s also adapted from an autobiographical novel from Carrie Fisher that many saw as a roman-à-clef about her relationship with her own mother Debbie Reynolds. (Fisher herself maintained that it was a novel for a reason, but there are substantial differences between the inward-driven, stylistically experimental novel and the far more conventional film whose script she adapted herself.) Taking all of this rich material and giving it to seasoned actors’ director Mike Nichols seems like a natural fit, even more so when he’s able to count on an impressive gallery of capable actors, staring with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine in the central mother/daughter roles. I don’t particularly like MacLaine in general, but she’s quite good here and Streep has seldom been as funny as in this role. The Hollywood satire circa 1990 is likely to remain more interesting than the familiar dramatic material, but there’s enough here for everyone—including musical numbers. Postcards from the Edge is almost a piece of Hollywood history the more you know about the business and the history, but it’s strong enough to be interesting even to casual viewers.