Vincent D’Onofrio

  • The Salton Sea (2002)

    The Salton Sea (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) There’s a neo-noir sensibility to The Salton Sea that is not necessarily apparent from its first few minutes, considering that it begins with a surprisingly funny explanation of where meth comes from and the curious community that forms between junkies in a crack-house. But as the lead character tells the audience, we haven’t heard the entire story and should wait before judging. Things get kicked in second gear soon after, as a visit to a not-so-friendly neighbourhood drug dealer leads to the protagonist calling the police as an informant. There’s clearly another narrative at play, especially when our protagonist starts thinking about his past life as a jazz musician. Plot-heavy but stylishly directed, The Salton Sea proves to be an auspicious feature film debut for director D. J. Caruso, who would go on to direct an uneven but intriguing corpus of thrillers. It stars Val Kilmer in one of his last good leading roles before a lengthy eclipse (though there’s an interesting link to be made here between The Salton Sea and the following year’s Wonderland, both set in the Los Angeles underworld), and features Vincent D’Onofrio in a usually creepy turn. The plot twists and turns and twists some more with a few happenstances thrown in for good measure, but eventually settles for a satisfying conclusion. The Salton Sea probably works better now than it did upon release — its hodgepodge borrowing of other films and showy style have grown a bit less unusual, and the film no longer labours under the shadow of Tarantino. It’s not a bad watch, but it does make one yearn for the late career that Kilmer never had.

  • Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

    Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2019) Despite what you may think, Adventures in Babysitting isn’t a John Hughes film. On the surface, it sure looks like one: The story goes from the Chicago suburbs to the big city itself with middle-class teenage protagonists getting embroiled in adventures in the big city à la Ferris Bueller, alludes to cartoonish villains of Home Alone vintage and spends a significant amount of time making its characters grow up in absentia of any parental supervision … like much of the Hughes oeuvre. But it’s a Christopher Columbus film made from a David Simkins script, and the differences do start to become obvious once you look closer. It tries to have a broader appeal than Hughes film with protagonists going from 8 to 18, is far less structured in its one-thing-after-another approach. (Call it a “picaresque journey through 1987 nighttime Chicago, sanitized for family entertainment”) and it doesn’t hit the sentimentalism as hard as Hughes does. (But do remember that Columbus and Hughes would soon collaborate on 1990’s Home Alone.)  The result, spearheaded by Elisabeth Shue with noteworthy early roles for Vincent d’Onofrio and Penelope Ann Miller, is a bit scattered but amiable enough: it’s not trying to make a grand statement, but the way things quickly spin out of control from a simple premise is amusing enough. Clearly geared toward family entertainment, Adventures in Babysitting remains watchable even thirty years later—there’s some timeless material here about teenagers getting away with awesome thrills while their parents aren’t looking in their direction, and just enough excitement without falling into danger.

  • Dying Young (1991)

    Dying Young (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) A good old-fashioned weeper, Dying Young is built on a premise that has been made before (Dark Victory, gender-switched) and after (Me before You)—it’s an entirely unsurprising caretaker-falling-in-love-with-a-dying-person film, executed with very 1990s style and period-appropriate stars. Clearly relying on its star power, the film features Julia Roberts as a nurse and a then-slim Vincent D’Onofrio as the ailing patient. In terms of plot, that’s pretty much it—it goes through the motions of its predictable plotting, but slowly enough that you start being exasperated at both the speed and the obviousness of it all. Both actors are worth a look, though: D’Onofrio has some good material to rely on, and circa-1991 Roberts, fresh off her meteoric breakthrough role in Pretty Woman, was spectacular to behold. Unfortunately, the movie really isn’t as good as its actors—despite good production qualities, it feels on autopilot from beginning to end, especially if you’ve seen any of the many similar movies. The soundtrack will feel very familiar to those of us who were 16 in 1991. Otherwise, there’s really not much to say about Dying Young—it’s almost exactly what the plot summary tells you.