Year: 2007

  • Smokin’ Aces (2006)

    Smokin’ Aces (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) The little hyper-caffeinated action film has become a staples of winter movie-going and in these matters, you could do worse than Joe Carnahan’s long-awaited return to the screen after 2002’s Narc. This effort hims him juggling dozens of characters in an action film that owes as much to comic-book plotting than to straight-up criminal mayhem. Loosely stated, Smokin’ Aces is about dozens of paid killers converging on a hotel where a would-be prosecution witness is staying. With that many characters, it doesn’t take a long time before they clash together and start taking themselves down. The cheerfully chaotic nature of the plotting starts early and ends up past the point of ridiculousness (with a nod to Carnahan’s “Ticker” short film), but it’s a fun ride. Alicia Keys is particularly enjoyable as an assassin on the cusp of big decisions, and so is Ryan Reynolds as one of the few characters firmly committed to justice. The film’s best scene comes along with a hail of big-calibre bullets: It’ll thrill you just as it will make you deaf. While the build-up is better than the end result (a statement that also goes for the trailer versus the film), the film itself leaves a good impression, as long as all expectations are in check, and as long as you expect the right type of film.

  • The Queen (2006)

    The Queen (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) As someone without excessive affection for either Diana Spencer, Tony Blair or the entire monarchic system, I was surprised to discover some entertainment value in The Queen. Oh, it’s certainly nowhere to be found in either cinematography, special effects or action scenes: Perhaps the most damning criticism of the film is that it’s a movie-of-the-week written large, accidentally released in theatres. It aspires to quasi-documentary recreation, and scarcely anything more. As the story describes the aftermath of “Princess Diana”’s death on the Royals and Tony Blair, it also allows something like mutual respect to grow between the two after a rocky beginning. Ultimately, it’s the human element that forms the cornerstone of the film: The exceptional performance of Helen Mirren as the titular Queen is respectful and revealing. The rest of the players do just as well. If the film can often feel a bit long, it’s definitely headed in the right direction throughout. Not spectacular (and definitely overrated by contemporary reviewers), but reasonably good.

  • Carnival, Elizabeth Bear

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2006, 392 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-58904-0

    Even when authors make a spectacular entrance, it can take a while before they deliver books that can truly be called their own. For every William Gibson forever cursed with a first novel that can’t be topped there’s a Greg Bear whose breakthrough novel comes years after their debut. Even the most promising writers can take a while before shaking off their inspirations and set out in a territory of their own creation.

    It’s possible to say plenty of good things about Elizabeth Bear’s debut SF trilogy, but “original” would be stretching it: While competently imagined and vividly written, Hammered , Scardown and Worldwired often felt like good-quality remixes of ideas, genres and situations already familiar to genre readers. Good reading, but sometimes indistinguishable from so many other mid-list SF novels. Middle-of-the-pack material, with the added advantage of excellent characterization.

    Carnival is something else. Something better. It manages to find a place in SF tradition and improve on it.

    It finds a place in Science Fiction’s stream of feminist writing, though as a further argument rather than an imitation. As our two protagonists, agents for an unwholesome human hegemony, step on the planet of New Amazonia, we’re led to contemplate what could have very well been a creation of past feminist writers: a strong matriarchy in which weapons are practically mandatory and where males are either neutered or put down. But if you think Carnival is just going to be a tour of a strange new society, think again: There’s a strong thriller engine at the core of this novel, and it never stops purring. Our two protagonists have agendas that don’t necessarily mesh together, to say nothing of a thorny personal conflict between them. As if that wasn’t enough, New Amazonia thankfully isn’t a monolithic utopia where everything is aligned perfectly: factions-within-factions are at play to radically change the nature of its government, even as there may be an extra surprise or two buried in the planet’s alien ruins…

    The plotting gets complex at times, but Bear’s non-nonsense style does wonders at drawing the readers in, then keeping everything interesting even as the complexity of the political intrigue increases. Strong personal conflicts mesh with overarching social issues to produce not only a vigorous thriller, but a Science Fiction genre novel that acknowledges its predecessors while engaging into a sustained argument with them. Carnival works as an extension to the feminist utopia genre, while brining a degree of political complexity that allows us to look at utopian assumptions with a new light. You can almost hear Bear adding to the genre discourse with a well-placed “But it’s not so simple!”

    There are a number of good SF ideas thrown into the mix too: A radical solution to environmental problems; fascinating character names; matter-of-fact use of utility fogs; heavy-duty plague engineering; and so on. The alien presence on top of all that may be a bit too much, but it plays into the complexity of the story, and places the characters in difficult choices… which seems to be what Bear’s fiction is all about.

    All in all, it adds up to a very satisfying novel; either Bear is breaking through to a superior level, or my brain is calibrating itself to what she’s doing. Either way, I’m buying a copy of her upcoming Undertow as soon as it comes out.

  • Night At The Museum (2006)

    Night At The Museum (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) See Ben Stiller mug for the camera! Mug, Ben, mug! Oh, no, now here comes Robin Williams! Mug, Ben, mug, Robin! Now here are dinosaur-shaped special effects! And Egyptian warriors! And cowboys! And romans! And monkeys! Wow, that’s whole lot of stuff! But who can’t stop mugging? It’s Robin! It’s Ben! This is a kid’s movie, because it hits adults over the head until they’re as dumb as kids! Yaaay, dinosaurs! Yaaay, monkeys!

  • Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

    Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) This flip-side to Flags Of Our Fathers is a better film in most respects: the structure is tighter, the characters are more interesting, and there’s definitely more dramatic tension amongst a band of soldier historically fated to lose. The film, taking place almost entirely in Japanese, nevertheless feels immediate and relevant: Director Clint Eastwood was able to accomplish a film that transcends linguistic borders without even seeming to. The battle of Iwo Jima is fascinating regardless of which side gets the spotlight, but there’s an extra dramatic dimension in seeing it from the “other” point of view. The historical recreation is impressive and so are some of the scenes. What I really would like to see, though, is a mash-up between Eastwood’s two Iwo Jima films, an action-oriented war film presenting a look at the battle from both sides, wrapping up in under 90 minutes.

  • The Last King Of Scotland (2006)

    The Last King Of Scotland (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) The “African thriller” sub-genre picks up another good entry with this dramatic version of Idi Amin’s reign of terror. Here, a young Scottish doctor stands in for an audience both fascinated and then repelled by Amin’s garrulous charm and utter lack of conscience. The protagonist’s gradual descent into Amin’s madness is reflected in the visual tones of the film, which gets darker and darker as the film advances. This isn’t the only subtle trick played on us: The camera gets noticeably more jittery whenever Amin’s on screen, almost as if the power of the character couldn’t be contained on mere film. (Forrest Whittaker’s turn as Amin is hypnotically compelling, a sure case for an Academy Award nomination.) It all adds up to a small but very effective film, one that manages to use fiction to give us a glimpse at the truth.

  • El Laberinto Del Fauno [Pan’s Labyrinth] (2006)

    El Laberinto Del Fauno [Pan’s Labyrinth] (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) Guillermo del Toro may not make masterpiece after masterpiece (Hellboy, anyone?), but he’s consistently fascinating in what he can turn out. His habit of alternating between glossy Hollywood movies and more personal films seems to be good for him in both directions: His Hollywood films are quirkier and more interesting, whereas his home-grown films are slicker than ever. So it is that Pan’s Labyrinth is unmistakably a successor to El Espinazo Del Diablo: The children-in peril motif is back, and so is the historical framework and the humans-are-the-monsters theme. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about the film is its mixture of an adult theme with a childish perspective: There an ambiguity to the story that contributes to its impact rather than obscure it: its most likeliest explanation is also the cruelest.. Otherwise, there little to say about the slick polish to the film, the excellent acting and the sensibility of the special effect. Del Toro may mis-step when drawing villains (defining them with the crudest elements), but the rest of his script is sure-footed. Where the film may lose a few viewers is in how, for a while, it’s not clear if it’s a film for kids or featuring kids: by the time the film settles the question, the younger members of the audience may have irreversible nightmares. Good for them.

  • Fuel Injected Dreams, James Robert Baker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Onyx, 1986, 322 pages, C$4.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-40027-5

    Dead authors rarely get reviewed. That’s how it works, and I’m no exception. While some scholars prefer a stable corpus, I’m like most readers: I love to splash into the boiling hot-tub of contemporary literature where reputations are made, new authors appear all the time and no one knows if the next novel will be a dud or not. Most of the books I review are books I buy from the bookstore, which usually implies a still-breathing author.

    But there are exceptions. Used book sales. Premature deaths.

    The world lost a heck of a writer when James Robert Baker committed suicide in 1997. Boy Wonder still figures on my top list of Hollywood novels: An angry, hilarious, knowing and over-the-top satire of the film industry, it’s as mean-spirited as it’s liberating. For years, I looked for a copy of his earlier novel Fuel Injected Dreams, hoping for much of the same. I finally lucked out… at a used-book sale.

    Taking on the rock-and-roll music publishing industry through the lens of a disillusioned radio DJ, Fuel Injected Dreams steps on the accelerator from the first few lines and seldom lets up. Protagonist Scott Cochrane’s narration is fuelled by bitterness and illegal substances. He has never quite been able to forget the one lost love of his life, and seems determined to hasten his own exit through the usual sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll regimen. The first few pages read as if Hunter S. Thompson had remixed the familiar litany of Hollywood venality. The rest of the novel is just as intense.

    Because Cochrane is about to stumble upon something everyone wants: an interview with Dennis Contrelle, a legendary music producer turned recluse after a string of classic hits. Without quite knowing why, Cochrane befriends Contrelle and ends up with what he thinks is a new single. But it’s not, and it sets in motion a series of events that reach back to Cochrane’s own teenage years. Could it be that he will finally learn the truth about his lost love’s sudden disappearance?

    If that sounds sweet, let me disabuse you of that notion: One of Baker’s writing quirks is excess. If there’s a way to fit graphic sex and dripping violence in the story, Baker will find it. The result is a pedal-to-the-metal succession of shocks and twists, anticipating Chuck Palahniuk and Quentin Tarantino’s work by a few years and delivering a reading experience quite unlike another. Perhaps the one saving grace of Baker’s work is that it’s genuinely hopeful: otherwise, the bleakness and morbid obsession of his prose would be nothing but a freak show of burnt characters and violent excess.

    Fuel-Injected Dreams is a case in point. While it starts reasonably well, it eventually turns into one of those novels where characters don’t die despite grave wounds, where the protagonist spends half the novel on the run from the authorities, to say nothing about the natural disasters, necrophilia, betrayals and media hysteria so prevalent in those situations. Oh yes, you will remember bits and pieces of this novel for a long time.

    The writing is what ties it all together, of course. The narrator may start off sounding as the most jaded deejay in the history of radio, but that’s just illusion: it doesn’t take too many paragraphs for the veneer to crack and show his true nature as a moping romantic. Baker is capable of harnessing this desperation and channel it into a course of action that seems as inevitable as it is extreme. As a romantic thriller, this book crackles with forward narrative power. By the time the narrator heads to his high school reunion with a runaway bride and a gun, you can almost anticipate the fireworks.

    This being said, the novel will appeal even more to those with a good grounding in sixties and seventies rock-and-roll: I could catch a number of offhand references to California pop music bands and fill the rest with what I remember from music of that era, but those with better memories of the period will probably get a lot more out of the in-jokes, atmosphere and musical references.

    But even for those who can’t remember the sixties on account of not having been there, Fuel-Injected Dreams is a high-octane romp through a chaotic slice of South California life. At times apocalyptic and disgusting, romantic and hilarious, it’s a highly enjoyable read and a reminder of what remains when great writers leave too soon.

  • The Good German (2006)

    The Good German (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) Steven Soderbergh strikes out as often as he hits home run, but The Good German ends up being a solid triple: not quite what we’d expect, but not a bad effort. There’s something lovely about his intention to direct a film as if this was 1945, with limited camera tricks, luscious black-and-white cinematography and classical staging. But this intention eventually clashes with the harsh language, explicit scenes and darkening geopolitics that eventually come to dominate the film. Though the clash is deliberate, it’s not entirely successful: Ironically, I think that the bitter denunciation of American post-WW2 power plays could have played well had the film toned down the more superficial language, sex and violence. More subtlety would have gone a long way… exactly like it did back then. Otherwise, George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are successful in roles seemingly tailored for them, while Tobey Maguire looks like he’s having a lot of fun as a repellent character far removed from his usual goody-goody heroes. Not a bad film, but certainly a let-down in how it does so many things right only to be defeated by the few things it does wrong.

  • Dreamgirls (2006)

    Dreamgirls (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) The post-Moulin Rouge! resurgence in movie musicals has been good for adapting Broadway plays to the big screen, and Dreamgirls is the latest to make the transition. As with the other ones, Dreamgirls is an effortlessly enjoyable piece of work, with a good mixture of drama and song and humour. Well, ok, not too much humour: Following the template of Motown’s history, Dreamgirls does the usual VH1 biography scenario and manages to shoehorn a happy ending in there anyway. Beyonce Knowles and Jamie Foxx may be the film’s putative stars, but most of the attention goes to Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson in scene-stealing roles. Otherwise, the other highlight of the film is the “Cadillac Man” sequence, destined to be replayed in high-school classrooms whenever the subject of cultural appropriation comes up. Otherwise, well, there isn’t much to say: The film may not be the Oscar powerhouse everyone was expecting, but it’s good enough and “good enough” seems to be the rule for the new musicals.

  • Children Of Men (2006)

    Children Of Men (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, January 2007) For a Science-Fiction fan, this film is a bit of a mess: The science is implausible, the background details are badly integrated with the world, and the structure feels off, especially toward the end. But this is a great film despite its weak SF elements. From a directorial standpoint, Children Of Men is a tour de force, combining savvy film-making with extraordinary visuals. At least three long continuous shots bring back some of that old “how did they do that?” magic while doing a tremendous job at drawing us into the story. Clive Owen is a solid protagonist, but everyone else holds their own in a finely crafted film. It’s a shame, though, that the extrapolation is so weak: The sterility problems are too sudden, too all-encompassing (and don’t hold your breath for an explanation, because it’s not that kind of film) to be credible, and elements of the technology shown in the film seem inconsistent with each other, not to mention difficult to reconcile with the “we don’t know why everyone’s sterile” statement. Oh well; at least the film is far better than the book when it comes to its SF elements, for which we can only be thankful. (And it’s hardly alone in being a “good SF movie” despite weak SF elements: In 2006, only A Scanner Darkly and The Prestige also earn that distinction.) Cinematic dynamite: don’t miss it.

  • The Armies of Memory, John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2006, 429 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-30330-2

    Mmm. Crow. Delicious.

    Reviewers make mistake. It’s part of the so-called job description. Most often, reviewers (indeed, readers) screw up because of a lack of information. Say, when they criticize a book’s ending without knowing that another volume is on the way. Readers wondering about my bias toward single volumes should realize that it’s only one way of lessening my chances of screwing up.

    But accidents still slip through, and my disappointed review of John Barnes’ Earth Made of Glass was one such accident. It wasn’t before reading The Merchants of Souls that I realized my mistake and vowed to do better. This reevaluation is further confirmed by The Armies of Memory, a fourth volume that does exactly what fourth volumes should do: Deliver a decent story, show the evolution of the characters and upset the series’ status quo.

    The star of the story is still Giraut Leones. Officially, he has become a wildly popular artist. Privately, he’s still a covert operative for an agency designed to keep the peace in the known human universe. Giraud, now 50, has matured considerably since his introduction as a young adult in A Million Open Doors. His artistic notoriety is unsurpassed, and his covert job responsibilities now include overseeing a team of operatives.

    Meanwhile, the imagined universe of the series has become lived-in: the AI uprising in the previous volume has had a number of social consequences (Giraut likes to belittle his servant AIs; the government is making an effort to take people out of the VR box) and new forces are emerging. Giraud even has the dubious privilege of seeing events of his own life turning into popular mythology, as the teachings of a man he knew are fuelling a growing religion. Worse yet are the repeated assassination attempts he is deliberately courting, as a way to flush out the opposing forces rising up against the government he’s protecting.

    But occasional shootouts with crazed assassins are about to lose their interest when Giraud realizes another party out there is trying to reach him: Someone sent by a sliver of humanity that lives outside known space. Apparently, they’ve seen something out there, and they need help. What is this threat… and what will Giraud do to reach an agreement between all parties?

    The problem with series fiction is usually that it gets stuck in a pattern. In an effort to provide “more of the same” to the readers of the series, characters become unchangeable, plots are recycled and nothing ever changes. But not here: The biggest strength of The Armies of Memory is not only to show how much the protagonist and setting of the series have changed since the first volume, but to genuinely upset the dynamics of the series, pushing some earlier assumptions to their logical end, twisting things so that villains espouse laudable motivations and readers must face new layers of complexity. It’s not as much showing the readers that everything they know is wrong: it’s a process of peeling apart layers of information, even when we thought that all the elements had been revealed. I’d love to tell you more, but this book is good enough to be read unspoiled, especially if you’re already familiar with the series. A warning, though: Barnes always includes a bit of horror in his stories, and this volume is no exception.

    Barnes’ writing has seldom been better, and his description of Giraud is layered with meaning: Giraud’s been with Barnes since 1991, and this evolution is showing in how the character has been tempered from his early origins. As Barnes gets older himself, Giraut gets better, subtler and funnier. The gadgets of the Thousand Cultures universe surrounding him are explained but also weathered: the once-miraculous springers are now commonplace, and the once-vivid AI threats starts receding in the background once more.

    What’s unfortunate is that the book does end on a bit of an abrupt note. Fortunately, I have learned my lesson and checked my facts: a fifth volume in the series is forthcoming. It remains to be seen how many extra twists and turns Barnes can cram into his established universe. He has written good and bad books, but the sequence in which The Armies of Memory is already taking place as his signature piece. It’s already more than a loose string of sequels: It’s a living, breathing, evolving epic, once that leverages to potential of separate books, exploits SF tools as they should be and delivers decent entertainment on top of everything else.

    Mmm, crow. Delicious.