Terrence Howard

  • The Best Man (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Writer-director Malcolm D. Lee seldom gets any respect—he may be Spike Lee’s cousin, but his work over the past two decades has largely been in the comedy and romance genre, and despite his strong all-black-cast films delivering copious entertainment, he flies well under the radar of most commentators. His debut film, The Best Man, does showcase him at his best—efficiently managing a great cast for an ensemble romantic comedy that is both familiar and matter-of-fact in its unconventionality. Featuring a cast of upwardly-mobile middle-class black characters, it’s a film that otherwise plays along familiar lines: long-buried secrets suddenly emerging over a short momentous period, as a book written by the best man of an imminent marriage blows open affairs and lust in a small group of friends. (As with most other movies about writers, our “novelist” character can’t imagine his way out of a short story and has to write an autobiographical novel. Why he thought this would go undetected is beyond the scope of the film’s logic.)  The story pretext may be thin, and some of the scenes may feel lazy, but The Best Man is indeed at its best when it indulges in the interactions between its characters. Taye Diggs is not bad as the not-so-secretive writer protagonist, but most of the film’s attention goes to Terrence Howard in his breakout role as an unrepentant womanizer, and Harold Perrineau as a man trying to escape his domineering girlfriend. On the distaff side, The Best Man is an embarrassment of riches, with Nia Long and Sanaa Lathan competing for the protagonist’s attention, Monica Calhoun as the sweet bride-to-be with a secret, and Regina Hall’s short but striking debut as a lap dancer. The pacing of the film goes steadily forward, and even the largely useless flashbacks to the characters’ college years don’t break up the flow too much. It all culminates in a warm but honest reckoning in which no characters hold a grudge as they look forward to the future. Which includes a sequel, The Best Man Holiday.

  • Awake (2007)

    Awake (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, December 2020) The hook to Awake is as terrifying as it is simple: What if, during open-heart surgery, you remained awake and heard… the doctor plotting to kill you? Of course, getting to that point requires a few specific circumstances that the film is happy to set up: Young billionaire, hot girlfriend, heart-surgeon friend and domineering mother – all the ingredients for a wild thriller. To its credit, Awake understands that it’s completely preposterous, and goes even further into the madness: not content with having the character awake during his own open-heart surgery, it goes for astral projection and lets him roam the corridors of the hospital during the surgery, free to collect the clues that will explain what’s going on. Then things get kicked up another melodramatic notch, as some people realize what is going on and try to save the billionaire from a murderously conceived operation. Awake ends far closer to fantasy than to medical thriller, but it’s not a terrible ride after all. Sure, there are plenty of plot contrivances and slack moments and some annoying mid-2000s directorial tricks. But it keeps viewers’ attention throughout, and can benefit from an interesting cast, whether it’s Hayden Christensen as a billionaire, Jessica Alba as his new wife, Lena Olin as a mother more complicated than at first glance, or Terrence Howard as a heart surgeon. Awake is not that good of a movie — but it’s fun, and I’ve seen far worse mediocre ones.