Roger Spottiswoode

  • Turner & Hooch (1989)

    Turner & Hooch (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, March 2021) Coming toward the end of Tom Hanks’ first comedy-focused period, Turner & Hooch sees him paired up with a dog, in keeping with the trend at the time. He’s a policeman in a small city longing for a more exciting life, but the best he can do at short notice is getting saddled with the dog of a murder victim. A big, rough, ugly, drooling mastiff running roughshod over his carefully-organized life and apartment. Fortunately, there’s a murder case to solve, antagonists to defeat, and a cute veterinarian (Mare Winningham) to meet. In other words, you do have a good idea of where this is going, and the film does not disappoint expectations, although the ending is tweaked for a good cry. Hanks is a good sport about it all and his persona is very much in-line with his other films of the 1980s—but there’s only so much he can do with such conventional material. Turner & Hooch is not unpleasant to watch (I remembered the opening scene from a previous viewing decades ago, for instance), but it’s not a film built for maximum comic potential if you’re not in the target audience for wacky ugly dog antics. Looking at the film’s production history, I see that there’s finally confirmation that the original director, Henry Winkler, was fired thirteen days into the production due to conflicts with Hanks (really!?!) and that’s how Roger Spottiswoode ended up credited as director. No matter the off-screen drama, that result on-screen is somewhat innocuous, and certainly more intended toward kids than the rest of the family.

  • Shoot to Kill (1988)

    Shoot to Kill (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) While Shoot to Kill doesn’t really manage to get above its B-movie intentions, it does have a few things going for it. The most obvious one is the setting, as this criminal chase thriller takes us far from the urban skyline of San Francisco all the way up north to the Rockies, eventually crossing the border into Canada and finally ending in Vancouver. The Canadian content doesn’t stop there, as Shoot to Kill is an early effort from Ottawa-born director Roger Spottiswoode. The unusual nature of the film’s setting is bolstered by interesting casting, whether it’s a rare late-career role of Sidney Poitier, Kirstie Alley looking her best, or Bart the Bear doing his usual thing. The least one can say is that Spottiswoode manages to put all of the ingredients together competently: Shoot to Kill moves forward steadily, does well with its budget and comfortably executes the buddy-movie thriller template it’s given. It’s certainly watchable, even if it falls into the glass-half-full-or-half-empty neverland of middle-of-the-road films that are both better and worse than they could have been.

  • Terror Train (1980)

    Terror Train (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) The early 1980s were thick with slasher horror films, in which one psychopath took on a dwindling number of teenage characters. One of the more unusual of these was the Canadian co-production Terror Train, which set the murders aboard, well, a train. A teenager-filled train travelling during winter (this was filmed near Montréal), which severely limits the option of stopping the train. Jamie Lee Curtis once more stars as a screaming young woman fighting back against homicidal evil, but the draw here is the restrained setting, the stylistic experimentation from director Roger Spottiswoode and the thematic emphasis on magic, featuring none other than David Copperfield as a magician entertaining the teenage audiences. (Yes, he gets killed at some point.)  Despite those few points of distinction, Terror Train itself isn’t particularly fun or entertaining to watch: it quickly falls into the same boring morass of murder sequences, each death being slightly more annoying than the last. By the end, we’re just relieved that even at barely more than 90 minutes, it’s over and we can watch something else.