Tom Hanks

  • Cloud Atlas (2012)

    Cloud Atlas (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) At a time where big-budget filmmaking seems to retreat in familiar narrative structures and a complete lack of daring, Cloud Atlas comes as a welcome break from the usual.  Clocking in at nearly three hours, it features six loosely-linked narratives spanning centuries and several known actors playing different roles in each story.  Heralding the return of the Wachowskis siblings to the big screen after a few quiet years (they co-direct three of the six stories, with Tom Tykwer directing the remainder of the film), Cloud Atlas is big, ambitious and offers things that cinema doesn’t often get to showcase.  It is, in many ways, a singular movie experience, and one that deserves to be contemplated rather than simply liked or disliked.  As an adaptation of David Mitchell’s sprawling novel, it’s an excellent, even audacious re-working: the film’s structure works in ways that the novel couldn’t, and still ends up a fiercely cinematic work.  Most of the actors playing multiple roles seem to have a lot of fun, with particular notice to Tom Hanks (who gets to tweak his usual good-guy persona), Halle Berry (who gets one of her best roles yet as a 1970s journalist), an often-unrecognizable Hugh Grant, as well as gleefully multifaceted Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving –who even gets to play both assassin and nurse. (Some roles don’t work as well, such as when actors get to play outside their ethnicity or gender, but that happens.) The six stories interlock in subtle ways, suggesting both reincarnation of personalities and malleability of interpretation once truth becomes fiction.  For all of the good things about Cloud Atlas, it’s almost too easy to forget that this is not an easy or even completely successful film: You have to give it at least 30 minutes for the six stories to earn narrative interest, and there’s a sense that the film is definitely not tight or focused: it often appears to run off on tangents and forced similarities, and certainly will not please anyone looking for solid links between all elements of the picture.  Still, for jaded moviegoers, Cloud Atlas is as close as it gets to a truly new experience within the big-budget framework: it tries many new things, succeeds spectacularly well at some of them and leaves hungry for a bit more.  I could go on, but the film is too big to be adequately described within the constraints of a capsule review.

  • The Bonfire Of The Vanities (1990)

    The Bonfire Of The Vanities (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2008) This movie was critically lambasted upon release, but if it’s not quite a success, it’s not the disaster that some reviewers have reported. As an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel, it manages to hit most of the high points of the novel, and if Wolfe’s prose can’t be fully adapted to the screen, it finds an appropriate counterpart in Brian de Palma’s swooping direction and ambitious cinematography. The long continuous opening shot is a small marvel of the form, while other sporadic flourishes keep things hopping along. Things aren’t as slick regarding the script, which does an intriguing job re-casting Wolfe’s story into a satiric comedy mold, but falters in the film’s second half with a number of limp scenes that don’t advance the story as efficiently as they should. It’s too bad that the manic quality of the original is only half-finished here. The result isn’t terrible, but it certainly could have been better. The first-generation DVD, regrettably, doesn’t include any supplementary material about the film, which is a shame given that an entire book has been written about the film’s troubled production.

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, August 2021) After enjoying TCM’s podcast adaptation/update of Julie Solomon’s The Devil’s Candy, which offers four hours of material on the making of The Bonfire of the Vanities, the mandatory next step was to watch the film itself. (Actually, I watched it between the sixth and seventh episode – the best possible timing considering that the seventh episode opens on the first public showing of the film.)  Once again, a rewatch had me protesting that the result wasn’t that bad, even enjoyable. Oh, it’s clear that as a film, The Bonfire of Vanities falls considerably short of its potential. The dark cynical humour is mishandled and neutered by a final speech that shouldn’t be in the film. It’s miscast from top to bottom – Tom Hanks is not bad in the last third of the film when he’s free to play up his comic persona, but he’s really not the right choice for playing a high-powered adulterous stockbroker. Melanie Griffith has never been much of a draw for me, so her casting as an irresistible femme fatale is wasted. Morgan Freeman’s not bad, even when saddled with the film’s most awkward dialogue. Surprisingly, I found Bruce Willis to be the most watchable, but only when he fully plays into the quasi-noir role of the crumpled journalist working hard for his bylines. (This is not, however, the character in the book.)  Visually, the film is far better than its script – The first ten minutes overpromise a film that’s not to be found later on, as a magnificent overhead shot of New York City leads to an astonishing steady-cam shot and then to the memorable image of Tom Hanks dragging his dog off to a sodden walk (and a misguided phone call that triggers everything that follows). Narratively, you have enough to keep viewers invested, but there is often a clash between the original intentions of author Tom Wolfe and the neutered execution that Brian de Palma ends up delivering. Part of it is clearly due to an attempt at mainstream filmmaking – I don’t think that major studios were ready back in 1990 to bet the bank on a highly cynical work, at least not as much as today. You can see the compromises all the way through, even as the atmosphere of a New York City divided along racial and class lines is still quite pertinent as long as you ignore the Bronx caricatures. It’s frequently (but intermittently) funny, at least enough to keep the film from being dull. I strongly suspect that The Bonfire of Vanities’ reputation partially comes from overinflated expectations considering the success of the original book, partially because entertainment pundits were (and are) always looking for a fall-from grace story from Hollywood, and partially because the gap between that the film aimed for and what it achieved is so visible. As someone who routinely watches near-unwatchable cinematic tripe made with only a fraction of The Bonfire of Vanities’ assembled talents, the circa-1990 hyperbolic pans of the film are embarrassing for those taking the potshots: The Bonfire of the Vanities is misguided, disappointing, even a case study in how even the best intentions can go wrong in such a complicated production as a Hollywood film, but there’s more than enough here to make viewers happy – even its problems can be entertaining once you get into them.

  • The Da Vinci Code (2006)

    The Da Vinci Code (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2006) This film is as critic-proof as they come, what with its built-in audience, puffed-up controversy and all-star cast and crew. No matter what anyone say, it’ll make zillions and find a modest place of some sort in film history. Stripped of the hype, though, it’s no surprise to find that The Da Vinci Code is merely an average thriller, competently made but hardly innovative. In many ways, it’s fitting that two of the blandest (but competent) Hollywood stars of the moment, director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks, would help in delivering the epitome of mass-market cinema entertainment. Perfectly blending French and American cinema, The Da Vinci Code delivers endless conversations rudely interrupted by car chases and modest gunfights. Of the actors, only Ian McKellen is any fun at all as a mischievous historian with a flamboyant streak: Tom Hanks, Paul Bettany, Jean Reno and Audrey Tautou are wasted in roles that either don’t suit them or are cut short without much conclusion. But the film’s most distinctive trait is how it alternates between talky exposition and very average thriller episodes. To be fair, the book was just as bad, except that the roughshod charm of Dan Brown’s clunky-but-earnest prose had a forward rhythm of its own. I expect a huge number of academic papers to be written on the adaptation of this story from one medium to another, especially when you consider that the book seems faster-paced that the film. While the critical knives had been drawn in anticipation of this film, the end result in no way deserves a critical savaging: in most aspects, it’s perfectly serviceable, with a tiny thrill of irreverence considering the subject matter. I’ve seen both better and worse this week. In the end, most people will find this film to be a mirror of their own expectations: Fans of the book will be pleased, curious film-goers will be satisfied and literary critics will find another reason to call Dan Brown the Anti-Christ. Now that’s entertainment for everyone!