Randy Quaid

  • Bound for Glory (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) By all rights, Bound for Glory should have been more interesting. As an (admittedly very fictionalized) biography of Woody Guthrie, a very interesting figure at the intersection of American history, labour activism and entertainment, it’s clearly given the big-budget treatment. (It was reportedly the first film to use a Steadicam.)  The cast is striking even today, with David Carradine in the lead role and Randy Quaid in a supporting one. It comes with an illustrious pedigree, having been nominated and several won Academy Awards—among other honours. On paper, the one thing that gives me pause is that it’s directed by Hal Ashby, a director with more hits than misses as far as I’m concerned. (Not that this is a widely shared view—Ashby remains a favourite of New Hollywood fans… which I’m not.)  And indeed, it doesn’t take much until the brown-gray execution of Bound for Glory sucked all of my interest in the picture, with a slow pacing and cinematography taken straight from the Great Depression illustrated by the film. You can’t even try to explain the lack of interest by an overly faithful adhesion to facts, as even a cursory look at Guthrie’s biography shows numerous instances of fictionalization. I gradually become disengaged throughout the film’s gruelling two-and-a-half-hour running time, only perking up (or waking up?) once the classic “This Land Is Your Land” made its climactic appearance. Bound for Glory has a dull execution of a fascinating topic, and that makes it even more frustrating.

  • Dreamscape (1984)

    Dreamscape (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, October 2019) I remember bits and pieces of having first seen Dreamscape as a teenager, but I clearly remembered only the best part of it—the oneiric third act, and the wham-shot of the climax. As it turns out, there is more than that to the entire film: a thriller in which (decades before Inception), scientists use parapsychological mumbo-jumbo to justify someone entering another person’s dreams and manipulating them to good or ill effect. A young Randy Quaid makes for a likable hero, a psychic reluctantly recruited into a secret program while Kate Capshaw is the heroine. Christopher Plummer (evil) and Max von Sydow (good) provide supporting performances as the ones pulling the strings. The result is far more inventive than many other movies of the period, and remains surprisingly entertaining. There are weaker moments, of course: a dream seduction scene has become uncomfortable today at an age where consent must be fully informed, and Dreamscape becomes ordinarily dull in its third quarter as it focuses on conspiracy shenanigans rather than the premise of entering dreams. Special effects are employed effectively even if limited by mid-1980s technology. I’d ask for a remake, except that we already had one with the superlative Inception. It remains quite a fun film, though, especially if you approach it as just another B-grade 1980s SF movie.