Uma Thurman

Down a Dark Hall (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2020) It’s probably a good thing for Down a Dark Hall that I can say that I’ve had my fill of mysterious-boarding-school-for-rebellious-young-women stories after shrugging off Paradise Hills a few weeks ago. This way, we don’t have to confront this film’s shortcomings—we can just blame it on conceptual overdose and move on.  (…) OK, no, I can’t leave it like that. It’s not that Down a Dark Hall is actively bad—director Rodrigo Cortés is a professional, and he has all of the budget and technical support required to make the film a visually competent production. It’s in the story that fails to impress—a low-octane blend of mystery ending on something a bit dumb and predictable. It’s all darker and spookier than actively horrifying, but it does strike me that the audience for this film is probably teenage girls looking for thrills more than scares, and that’s fine. For everyone else, though, this is more of the same even when it’s trying to be different. There’s also a world of difference in how the film’s target audience is liable to perceive the heroine (ooh, she’s a rebel) compared to everyone else (eh, she’s not really likable). While it’s fun to see Uma Thurman play matriarch, the lead actress is bland and the rest of the film struggles to fill in the gaps left in its gothic atmosphere. At least Down a Dark Hall can be (barely) recommended for anyone willing to dip into the kiddy end of the horror pool.

Tape (2001)

Tape (2001)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2020) Part of the reason why I’ve warmed up considerably to Richard Linklater over the past few years has been to recognize that he’s very much an experimentalist—his films are rarely the same, and he has messed with enough unusual tones and structures that we can even see him as a playful filmmaker. In that vein, Tape makes perfect sense—it’s a one-location, three-character, real-time drama shot on videotape (although, thankfully, not from a fixed viewpoint). Based on a play, it watches as three “friends” get together in a hotel room, past secrets are revealed, and confessions are extracted. The image quality, having been filmed on a turn-of-the-century video camera, is nothing short of atrocious — but the intensity of the drama is high and the formal experimentation of the film is interesting. It’s clearly a formalist low-budget experiment, but one that’s somewhat successful (although sometimes better listened to rather than watched). Linklater stalwart Ethan Hawke stars, with Uma Thurman delivering a stripped-down dramatic performance alongside Robert Sean Leonard to complete the cast. As with most theatre-based dramas, the first half sets up the conflicts and the second half detonates them, with plenty of triggers, reversals and revelations. Tape, for all of its self-imposed limitations, certainly has an interest that goes beyond the formalist experiment.

Jennifer Eight (1992)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, March 2020) The 1990s were a good-to-great decade for thrillers, and while Jennifer Eight isn’t that good of an example of the form, it’s not without a strong atmosphere throughout. It does feature an interesting cast as well, what with a young Uma Thurman playing a blind woman targeted by a serial killer, Andy Garcia as a burnt-out police detective, Lance Henriksen as a policeman colleague and John Malkovich in a supporting turn as an FBI agent. The story has to do with the hunt for a serial killer, but as usual the film is more interesting for the details than the plot—the conclusion seems particularly disappointing in its rush to present something different. A touch too long at two hours, Jennifer Eight doesn’t really manage to wring all of the possibilities out of its premise and setting, but it’s a workable-enough thriller if taken at face value.

The Truth about Cats & Dogs (1996)

The Truth about Cats & Dogs (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2019) If, somehow, Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired The Truth about Cats & Dogs is still watched by future generations, I’m reasonably certain that it will continue to unite audiences around one single common takeaway: It makes no sense to feature mid-1990s Janeane Garofalo as the “unattractive” woman. Any romantic comedy that even tries it should be laughed out of the room. This being said, I suspect that there’s still a good future left for this nearly-twenty-five-year-old romantic comedy. It’s cute, charming, generally unobjectionable, features animals and a sunny California background. Oh, and a young Uma Thurman as the “attractive” one, at least compared to Garofalo. The mid-1990s sheen of the film is pleasant, especially when multiplied by the unthreatening conventions of the era’s romantic comedies: If Hollywood history is any guide, there will be a greater timelessness for those movies than grittier, more depressing fare. This being said, let’s not overstate things: The Truth about Cats & Dogs is more an exemplar of the romantic comedy genre than a specifically good movie by itself. Garofalo herself has semi-disavowed the film in recent years, in keeping with her more intellectually ambitious persona. Still, it’s fun and breezy and not every movie has to be a hard-bore denunciation of current social ills.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2018) On the one hand, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is an imaginative, clever, exuberant fantasy film. On the other, it’s the kind of film that appears severely limited today by circa-1988 technology: it swings for the fences, but doesn’t have what it takes to pass muster today. It’s also a story of the one-thing-after-another variety, meaning that the picaresque structure may not feel as if it’s tied up together. Still, it’s good fun to see John Neville justifiably hams it up as Munchausen, along with such notables as Sarah Polley, Jonathan Pryce, Uma Thurman and Robin Williams in grander-than-life roles. The fantasy between reality and fantasy here is thin, and I’m not too sure that it makes the most out of this quality. Still, as part of Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination” after Time Bandits (which I didn’t like all that much) and Brazil (which is an all-time classic), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen ranks as a solid, um, average. I like what it’s trying to do, I appreciate that it was almost impossible to accomplish back then, but I’m not all that enthusiastic about the results.

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2017) I’m not always a good audience for period drama, but Dangerous Liaisons is something else. At times, and at first, it feels like top-class smut, as two obscenely wealthy members of the French aristocracy scheme the seduction of innocent women for nothing more than carnal stakes. There is quite a bit more nudity than expected (especially from Uma Thurman) and the dialogue is first-class. Behind the fine manners, elaborate costumes and lavish historical recreation lies a pitch-black comedy of cynical matters. John Malkovich are Glenn Close are superbly reptilian in their power games—Malkovich in particular is perverse in the best sense of the word. Familiar faces abound, including baby-faced Keanu Reeves and Peter Capaldi in minor roles. But what begins as comic debauchery soon turns to more serious matters, and by the time Dangerous Liaisons ends with death and dishonour, the ending has been amply set up by the journey. Knowing the origins of the story as an epistolary novel turned into a theatre play and then a film, the big-screen adaptation proved adept in incorporating the best elements of its complex DNA—letters end up being essential plot devices, the razor-sharp dialogue is as good as it gets, and the film manages to achieve a few authentic purely cinematic moments, either during the opening “dressing up for war” montage, or the ending sequence collapsing cause and effect of three separate scenes. Unusually for a historical drama, Dangerous Liaisons is fun to watch—either aghast at the character’s actions, or nodding along as those awful people get their comeuppance at the end.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theatres, February 2010) The trailer for this film was unremarkable, so it’s a small surprise that the film itself proves just fine.  No in terms of plotting, which blends “kid with a fantastic origin” with “quest!” and explicitly takes on the good old plot-coupon approach to second-act plotting.  Not in terms of verisimilitude, when some of the dumbest material actually makes it on-screen in what looks like a summer camp that no one would enjoy.  No, the chief saving grace of this adaptation of the first Percy Jackson & The Olympians book is in the way it adapts Greek mythology to a modern-day context.  Part of this package are seeing a bunch of known actors in small roles: While Pierce Brosnan is OK as centaur Chiron and Sean Bean is credible as Zeus, it’s Uma Thurman as a leathery Medusa and Rosario Dawson as luscious Persephone that get all the attention.  They are barely enough to make us ignore more fundamental details about the film’s world-building, and how it doesn’t exactly hang together gracefully.  It’s a good thing that it’s Chris Columbus who directs the film, because it makes the clunky first-act plot similarities with Harry Potter easier to dismiss.  But then again, the fun of the film is in the details, not the overall plot.  A few good action sequences, complete with top-of-the-line special effects, finish off a package that is, all things considered, a bit better and more fun than anyone would have thought.