Thomas Haden Church

  • Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

    Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) There’s a curious absence of anything interesting to say about Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. Yes, it’s a spinoff from the then-popular Tales from the Crypt TV show, which updated Creepshow-style macabre humour. But once you get past this pedigree and overly cute framing device, there isn’t much left to talk about. The story has something to do with a good-versus-evil fight coming down to a New Mexico boarding house, the good sealing the house against Evil, but Evil tricking people inside the house into doing its bidding. It has early roles for Jada Pinkett (not yet—Smith), Thomas Haden Church and CCH Pounder, although it’s a bald Billy Zane who steals the show as velvet-voiced Evil. Otherwise, though, this is strictly formulaic stuff, with very little in terms of writing or direction to distinguish itself from many very similar horror movies from the 1990s. The bulk of Demon Knight mercifully drops the Cryptkeeper’s pun-overloaded patter, but doesn’t replace it with anything more interesting. The pacing isn’t particularly fast-paced (there’s a good 45 minutes in which nothing much happens, in the interest of padding this to a feature-film length), the tone is bland and the gore effects are unremarkable by the standards of the genre. It does raise the question as to why anyone would want to watch this, and the answer may be familiarity: Demon Knight is a comfortable kind of horror film, the likes of which you can leave running without paying much attention to it, knowing where it’s going and how it’s getting there.

  • The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)

    The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) On paper, there is nothing about The Peanut Butter Falcon that would make me like the film. It’s about a protagonist with Down’s syndrome who escapes from a Southern US placement home in order to go to a wrestling training school. Barely functional in society, he meets a small-time crook on the run, and they soon start to rely on each other, as both social workers and vengeful hoodlums are looking for them. Add to that the naturalistic gritty filmmaking style and it not only sounds like anything I’d enjoy, but it should be fit to send me running for the exits. And yet, even from its first few uncomfortable scenes, The Peanut Butter Falcon does manage to be more interesting than expected. There’s a genuine rawness to Zack Gottsagen’s performance, and a solid leading role for Shia Leboeuf, as well as a good supporting turn for Thomas Haden Church. The sense of place of the Southern US is astonishing, and the story does often allude to Huckleberry Finn in its travels down the river. The film does earn its emotional beats later in the third act, and the result is surprisingly likable, especially as it reinforces its themes of reconstituted family. I’m often more impressed by directors that can make watchable material from unappealing premises than those who do well with surefire starting points, and on that metric, writers-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz have done quite well here.