Year: 2007

  • You Kill Me (2007)

    You Kill Me (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) Independent comedy alert! This film will be quirky, off-beat and ultimately not that funny because the directory can’t make up his mind whether he’s going for the laughs or for indie street-creds. Same old story. The only question left pondering is; is it still interesting? Well, yeah. For starters, the premise has some kick to it, as a drunk assassin joins an Alcoholics Anonymous group to wean himself of some bad habits. There’s a hilarious scene in which the Anonymous part of AA truly comes into play. The film’s humour is of the very dry variety, quipped by a splendid Ben Kingsley, with pretty good supporting performances by Tea Leoni, Bill Pullman and one of the Owen brothers. Alas, the film can’t commit to either a crime drama or a romantic comedy, and so treads a middle ground that ends up satisfying no one. Dead bodies end up leadening the storyline with little positive impact. At least Winnipeg gets to play Buffalo and parts of San Francisco (!) and we get another good-enough independent comedy film.

  • Transformers (2007)

    Transformers (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) After years of laughing and pointing at everyone whose childhood was brutally violated by Hollywood’s nostalgia cash-grab, Transformers is my turn in the victim’s seat. Hence my divided expectations: I wanted to see big transforming robots fight it out on screen, but I also wanted to be able to scream and cry that this was a suck-fest. Thanks to Michael Bay, all of my expectations were fulfilled: The film does feature giant transforming robots fighting it out on screen, and it’s also one of the most disappointing action pictures of the year. At its best, Transformers is a mean and lavish techno-thriller in which humans do their best to fight against a robotic alien invasion. At its worst, it’s either a so-called comedy in which the robots have sub-moronic IQs, or a mish-mash of CGI without shape or coherence. Prepare to be dazzled and stunned in your seat as the film keeps flipping between best and worst. There is certainly a lot of money on screen. Unfortunately, the design of the Transformers themselves is too complicated to allow for a good representation of their heft and bulk: all we see are CGI moving pieces without any physical presence. This makes the chaotic action scenes even more difficult to follow: at time, the movement across the screen is meant to be the action, but all we’re left is an impressionistic idea of action without reference. I realize I’m sounding like an old crank when I say this, but trust me: Transformers grabs Armageddon‘s place as “Most obvious proof Michael Bay’s must stop chugging Energy Drinks”. Otherwise, well, the lowest-common-denominator comedy is painful, and the film can’t be bothered to keep all of its subplots straight. Too bad: one of the film’s most enjoyable element is a CGI-free performance by John Turturro as a man with far too many secrets. It all amounts to a pretty mixed summer blockbuster, one that will have as many fans as detractors for exactly the same reasons. I got to see my favourite toys duking it out on screen and I got nostalgic trauma out of it. Life is good.

  • Taxi 4 (2007)

    Taxi 4 (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) I swear, this series keeps getting dumber with each successive instalment. It wouldn’t be so bad if the action kept up with the plot, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here: The titular taxi gets a very small portion of the action, and most of the film is spent in comedic mode, sadly centred around the increasingly irritating character of Bernard Farcy. While it’s fun to see the characters of Samy Naceri and Frédéric Diefenthal settle in as fathers, the absence of Marion Cotillard is deeply felt and seems to send the film careening without any moral centre. While generally amiable, the film merely plays to a fraction of the first two entries in the Taxi series. The disappointment is palpable, and represents a second strike after the lacklustre Taxi 3.

  • Point of Impact, Stephen Hunter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1993, 569 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-56351-3

    It’s commonplace to say that movie adaptation are a chance to re-interpret the material to another medium’s strengths, but it struck me while reading Point of Impact that adaptations are also a form of wide-screen literary criticism. Everyone can read a book and complain about the lengths, the characterization, the ending and the hundred of other choices made by the authors. But who can actually do something about it? Who can authorize radical changes to a story that has already been published? When you realize that the audience for the most average Hollywood blockbusters is an order of magnitude bigger than even New York Times bestsellers, it’s no exaggeration that filmmakers can forever change the perception of a given story. Maybe even improve it, if they know what they’re doing. Have you tried reading Mario Puzo’s The Godfather lately?

    Point of Impact was finally adapted to the big screen in 2007 as SHOOTER after fourteen years on bookshelves. Director Antoine Fuqua transformed Stephen Hunter’s potboiler thriller into a decent action/adventure film that wasted little time and delivered the expected thrills. But it wasn’t a transparent adaptation: a number of details were updated, simplified or changed, and it can instructive to study what has been changed, and why.

    The basic premise remains the same: a retired top sniper called Bob Lee Swagger is called back in service to counter a possible assassination plot against the president of the United States. Unbeknownst to him, his counter-sniping groundwork ends up forming the plan for a true assassination, and he is framed for the attempt. Running for his life, Swagger has to uncover those who played him, clear his name and take revenge. Both the ex-wife of his deceased partner and a disgraced FBI agent end up playing a parts in the events that follow.

    One of the most dramatic change from the book to the movie has been the update of all temporal references. In the 1993 novel, Swagger was a retired Vietnam veteran tied to a plot linked to Central America. In the 2007 film, Swagger is a recent veteran of dirty little wars in Africa, which also ends up being a part of the overall true conspiracy. In order to be played by Mark Wahlberg, SHOOTER’s Swagger is younger, and the events of his personal history have been compressed to only a few years of back-story. Also much younger is sidekick FBI agent Nick Memphis: In an effort to streamline the film, a fairly important subplot about a botched hostage rescue attempt and its consequences has been excised from Memphis’ history, with little adverse consequences.

    Also simplified are Point of Impact‘s main claim to fame as a thriller: Its detailed and lucid description of the art of sniping. Hunter has obviously done his homework in studying the field of precision shooting: The novel is crammed with details about the rifles, the techniques and the shooters themselves. One of the blurbs on the back cover of the paperback edition of the book says that “Stephen Hunter has done for the rifle what Tom Clancy did for the nuclear submarine” and they’re not kidding: Point of Impact is mesmerizing in no small part thanks to the slew of references, lore and little quirks about this specialized field, and the result will certainly appeal to all techno-thriller fans. Perhaps inevitably, this aspect of the novel isn’t carried over to the film, something that will benefit readers tackling the novel after being impressed by the movie.

    One area in which the film does complicate matters is in describing the conspiracy facing Swagger. The Clinton-era book limits itself to rogue elements operating at arm’s length from the government’s intelligence agencies. In the film, reflecting the prevailing winds of the Bush administration, the conspiracy is far more pernicious as it reaches up to the Senate and diffuses loosely in the American “military-industrial” complex. The book ends up with a decisive victory; the film, with a quixotic revenge fantasy.

    But the film at least has the good sense to wrap the action quickly, boiling down a length courtroom epilogue into a short, sharp and hugely enjoyable confrontation in an FBI briefing room. The main point is the same, but it’s handled far more efficiently.

    And that may end up forming the epitaph of every competent adaptation: “Faster, more efficient, more intense” is what’s needed to boil down a satisfying 550+ pages novel into a movie that fits within two hours. If you’re worried about the movie’s simplification, stop hyperventilating: the book is still available, and it’s very entertaining even for those who have seen the movie.

    [August 2007: Black Light is not just a sequel to Point of Impact, but also to Hunter’s Dirty White Boys. Bringing together events and characters from both books, Black Light is smaller in scale and more intimate in tone. Here, the conspiracies take place on a rural level, involving secrets buried for decades. Swagger is once again teamed with a younger, less knowledgeable partner and their quest for the truth takes them in unexpected places as the twists keep piling up. While it’s pleasant to see so many red herrings and plot complications, the conspiracies-over-conspiracies that end up defining daddy Swagger’s death also stretch credibility, even as they allow the book to go back to the sniping theme of the original. Fortunately, Hunter’s prose is readable, the characters have their own appeal (even the antagonist is a likable operator), and no one will feel cheated by the ending. More sniping tactical tricks will appeal to fans of the first volume. On the other hand, it is a bit of a let-down after the large scale of Point of Impact, and is best reserved to fans of Hunter’s entire body of work.]

  • Talk To Me (2007)

    Talk To Me (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) This fictional biography of a fast-talking radio personality can’t completely escape the usual problems and issues of multi-decade narratives “adapted from a true story”, but it’s good enough not to matter much. Don Cheadle is at his usual excellent self as Petey Green, a black ex-convict who manages to get a talk show in the Washington DC area. But it’s Chiwetel Ejiofor who continues his string of exceptional roles as ambitious manager Dewey Hughes: he’s got a terrific couple of scenes (including a wonderful speech around a pool table) and gradually emerges as the true protagonist of the story. The rest of the cast is just as good, though Taraji P. Henson earns particular attention as the third essential dramatic player. The historical re-creation is believable, and the terrific soundtrack does much to sustain the atmosphere. While the third act is problematic in the way that most docu-fiction third acts usually are (with the requisite drugs subplot and the lull in-between early success and redemptive conclusion), Talk To Me eventually pulls itself together to deliver a fitting epitaph to Green. Watch it for the actors, for the look at a piece of American black history and for the laughs.

  • Sunshine (2007)

    Sunshine (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) Is there something about “restarting the sun” plots that poison scripts? First Solar Crisis, now Sunshine, and not a good movie in the bunch. Though promising and with strong visuals, the latest Danny Boyle film succumbs to the stupid camera work that plagued 28 Days Later and the even sillier script that never works as well as it thinks it does. The first mistake of the film is to pretend that it’s a hard-SF film without quite understanding how science works: Consequently, we’re stuck with bad geometry, unexplained artificial gravity, oxygen deprivation despite a cargo hold the size of a warehouse and tons of other small details that keep bothering viewers who pay attention. It gets worse with a plot inspired by Murphy’s Law and a tiresome third-act monster-movie finish. It’s not as if the film is entirely worthless: There are some terrific visuals here and there (the Sun itself is almost a featured character), and some of the tension between human characters leads to excellent scenes. But in the end, the film devolves in shaky-cam silliness and interminable pretension: Every character death is saluted as a sign that the end is that much closer. Frankly, I’d rather have no science-fiction films at all if the alternative is Sunshine.

  • The Simpsons Movie (2007)

    The Simpsons Movie (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) Longest. Episode. Ever. Not that this is a bad thing if you’re a Simpsons fan: The movie faithfully replicates the feel and humour of the TV show, and seldom lags despite the length. A few concessions are made to the big-screen format: some context-specific jokes are hilarious, the animation is quite a bit better (including several CGI-boosted sequences) and the jokes are slightly more risqué than usual. (Nothing much: some nudity, rude gestures and less-mild swearwords barely bring this to a PG-13.) Otherwise, the usual plot tangents just take longer to resolve and the stakes are significantly higher than usual. Was it necessarily worth seeing in theatres? Well, you probably answered that question by yourself by the time you read this, but yeah: I had a good time despite the most annoying talk-backer ever heard in a theatre, and that’s almost all you need to know about it.

  • Under my Roof, Nick Mamatas

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Soft Skull, 2007, 151 pages, C$15.95 tpb, ISBN 978-1-933368-43-6

    Nick Mamatas has long been known for being an iconoclastic Internet personality, and his fiction is no different. Would you , for instance, expect his latest novel to be a young adult novel promoting the joys of home-built nuclear weaponry and secession from the United States?

    Well, maybe. After all, Mamatas’ first novel-length book was Move Under Ground, a horror-story retelling of Kerouac’s On The Road featuring elements of the Cthulhu mythos. After that, no one can really predict what Mamatas will write next.

    Suffice to say that the subject matter isn’t the only difference between Move Under Ground and this new book. From the dense Kerouac pastiche, Mamatas switches gears to deliver a chatty first-person narration from a telepathic twelve year-old (he’s not smart; he just reads smart people’s minds). The first chapter is a little gem as young Herbert Weinberg describes how his father manages to build a home-made atomic bomb from dumpster-diving and mail-order material. (I’ve been lucky enough to hear Mamatas read the first chapter at a Chicago event; it was hard not to imagine his voice narrating the rest of the novel.)

    It’s a good start, but the rest of the book quickly heads in meatier territory. Now equipped with a nuclear deterrent, the Weinbergian household declares independence from the US and, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, eventually finds traction for its claims. The US government, not to mention Herbert’s mom, don’t find this funny or acceptable: the rest of the novel is concerned about Weinbergia’s attempts to remain independent, Herbert’s efforts in making sense of the situation and the reader’s delight in finding where Mamatas is taking the novel.

    To say that it’s meant as satire is to understate the tone of the novel. But there’s a real message under each joke, and Under My Roof goes much farther than expected in its exploitation of its theme. Nationhood, suggests Mamatas, is a consensual illusion. It just takes a few denials to put it at risk. And if that’s subversive, well, why not?

    Still, it’s possible to read through the novel and not think about the deeper issues: the prose is deceptively easy, and the pacing just keeps going. I’m not so fond of the last act (which seems to diffuse the narrative build-up and then scatter in multiple directions), but Mamatas is a writer who seems to spend a lot more time thinking about prose than about plot: complaining about the structure of the book is missing the point of it.

    It’s not as if there isn’t much more to enjoy. Mamatas credibly describes the mechanics of nuclear secession, imagining the media circus, practical issues and political repercussions of such an event with wonderful small details and plenty of quick jokes. Much like the Atkins diet, secession quickly becomes a popular fad and narrator Herbert is in the middle of the attention storm. Given everything else going on, will he have time to grow up?

    There’s a lot to like about Under My Roof, from the narrator to the satire to the understanding that Mamatas can write whatever he wants and it’s going to be worth reading. What are you waiting for? Under My Roof is short enough to be read in one lazy sitting, and it’s going to stick in your mind. If you’re really smart, you’ll even lend it to the brightest twelve-year old you know, and see what he does with it. Just don’t lend him your credit card, and start paying attention if he goes out and purchases a garden gnome.

  • Ratatouille (2007)

    Ratatouille (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) After a temporary half-eclipse with Cars, the Pixar team returns in full force with an unbelievably slick film about a gourmet rat and the pleasures of gastronomy. An unlikely mixture, but one that works well: through a mis-matched pair of protagonist who each need something from the other, we’re able to explore the inner workings of a French restaurant. But as usual for Pixar’s best offerings, there’s a lot more under the surface here: Terrific comedy, strong details, sweet romance, superb action scenes, heartfelt moments (including a number of epiphanies, a rare-enough emotion in movies) and exceptional characterization. None of it would be possible without a solid script that allows itself third-act curveballs (it’s not over until it’s really over) and some of the best computer animation ever seen so far. Pixar takes pain to make it appear as easy as they can, but there’s a lot of sophistication under the surface. Witness, for instance, the cleverness in which the photo-perfect food and backgrounds are integrated with the more stylized human and rodent characters: It allows identification and sympathy for the cartoons, while immediately exploiting all we know about food and the physical world. There’s a neat bit of synesthesia at play during some of the sequences, and very clever use of imaginary characters as an expository device. But the mechanics are there for a good reason, and the result is nothing short of a movie-long delight. Funny, thrilling and effortlessly accessible, Ratatouille, like director Brad Bird’s previous The Incredibles, immediately vaults to the top of this year’s list of films.

    (Second viewing, In theatres, July 2007) Worth seeing a second time? Certainly! Freed from the constraints of the story, I’m left to enjoy the flawless slapstick animation, the details of the photo-realistic backgrounds, the way the filmmakers set up the shots and the reaction of the crowd around me. A few flaws appear (I’m not too thrilled at who says the line “That’s bad juju”, or the dumb line “I hate to be rude –but we’re French”. After all, you seldom hear “I hate to be the immature product of a delusional capitalistic imperialist society –but we’re American”), but they’re really minor things: The film holds up in every aspect, sign of the meticulous care in which it was fashioned. Ratatouille confirms its place in the yearly Top-10 list, and makes a serious contender for best-of-the-year honours.

  • Nitro (2007)

    Nitro (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) You can make a film that deals with touchy ethical issues and you can make fun action movies. Just don’t try to blend them together, otherwise you’ll piss off the audience that’s there for what the marketing campaign promises. The problem with Nitro, surprisingly enough, isn’t with the action scenes: Despite the typically minuscule budget of French-Canadian films, the filmmakers work wonders with what they’ve got, and know how to move the camera for a decent amount of tension. An underground racing sequence inspired by The Fast And The Furious is the film’s best moment, complete with a brutally enjoyable fight with nitro bottles. Other chase sequences later in the film do well, including a spectacular parkour sequence through a low-rent Montréal neighbourhood. Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge more than holds his own as a credible action hero with believable emotional depth. But the film fatally missteps in the dramatic structure that holds the action scenes together: a bad ethical choice by the lead character forever erases any sympathy we would hold for him, and the web of issues surrounding him does little to raise the stakes. It doesn’t help that the script goes awry in other various ways. The strongest female character, wonderfully played by Lucie Laurier, is relegated to a stand-in who lives only for the hero: a sad simplification for a character who could have stolen the protagonist’s mantle at any moment. Martin Matte is another issue: though he has a strong screen presence, it’s not that of an underworld boss. Ultimately, the small and big script mistake accumulate and rob the film of any enjoyment we may have gotten from the action scenes, leaving us with a grim conclusion and the sentiment of having been manipulated in gratuitous pathos. You can forgive even the worst mistake if it leads to a happy ending, but even the slightest mistake will make nuanced endings just feel cheap.

  • I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

    I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) There was a time where I would have moved mountains to see a film in which Linsey Lohan plays a stripper. Alas, that time has passed, because seeing Lohan pole-dancing in I Know Who Killed Me is an endurance contest in the middle of a deeply ludicrous experience. Setting itself up as a thriller but truly belonging to a weak form of supernatural horror (Oops, was that a spoiler? You’ll thank me.) I Know Who Killed Me is bad from the first few frames, but quickly makes things worse for itself by pretending to be a piece of art. A striking colour scheme is the least of the film’s aspirations to art, but it doesn’t take Art Bell’s appearance as a reliable Exposition Device to realize that this film has jumped the rails of even B-movie cinema. Lohan is irritating, the film feels exploitative, the plot drags on and the resolution of the entire mystery is a cheap device. Thriller fans will be furious at how the film doesn’t play fair, and everyone else will just wonder when it will end. There’s always a lot of competition for the title of worst movie of the year, but I Know Who Killed Me makes a strong case for the honour.

  • Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (2007)

    Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) Clearly, the Potter film team knows that it doesn’t really have to cater to the non-reading public: This fifth entry in the Potter saga holds up well to those who are familiar with the story, but earns a few blank stares from those who haven’t read the source book. By now in the series, the elements are familiar: Potter, friends, dark lord, bla-bla-bla. But as the series gets darker and darker with each volume, so does this film treading into adult matters as Hogwarts is taken over by a power-mad busybody who does her best to dismantle schooling standards. No Wizard Left Behind? Surely I can’t be the only one making that joke. I certainly could feel the collective slash-mind wobbling when Snapes told Harry “I will attempt to penetrate your mind and you will attempt to resit me”: Sheesh, the stuff practically writes itself, doesn’t it? But slash-spotting is something I only do during dull films, and as this Potter 5 moves to the conclusion, there seems to be less and less connecting material left on-screen. Suddenly, our heroes are in a big room of glass balls. Suddenly, our heroes are fighting evil. Suddenly, someone’s gone: Dead or Out for lunch? Suddenly… well, suddenly everyone needs the book to make sense of what’s happening. But since we will all end up reading it anyway, does it really matter?

  • In the Hall of the Martian King, John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 2003, 294 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-61083-6

    Well, it had to happen. After two books of generally likable action and adventure featuring young adult protagonist Jak Jinnaka, Barnes finally drops the hammer on his characters in the second half of In the Hall of the Martian King. Happy Barnes characters are generally an anomaly: sooner or later, the real world comes calling.

    If you’re familiar with the rebellious, rabble-rousing Jak Jinnaka, the first few pages of this third volume are a bit of a shock: Jak seems to have settled down and is using his skills for a good cause. He’s now a capable bureaucrat stationed in Martian orbit, tasked with the mission of keeping things together just as his boss goes away on an extended holiday. From an undisciplined teen, Jak has now embraced responsibility and supervisory duties. All is well, except for one small archaeological discovery.

    One tiny, insignificant unearthing of the all-encompassing “lifelog” of a major religious figure. An object that everyone wants, regardless of political authority. Before the end of the fourth chapter, Jak is already making end-runs around his own bureaucracy, setting plans in motion to capture the log for his true employers. If he could just be left alone, things would unfold smoothly. Alas, before even realizing it, Jak is surrounded by a menagerie of friends, fools, enemies and ex-lovers. His capabilities as a bureaucrat are taxed as he’s got to spend more time protecting an ignorant aristocrat against his worst instincts than successfully leading the diplomatic negotiations required to secure the artifact.

    This first half of the novel is very, very enjoyable. It’s easily one of the highlights of the series so far: There’s a pleasant “lone competent man against the universe” feel to this section, one that brings to mind Keith Laumer’s “Retief” series of adventures. Barnes takes on the tone of a farce, and seeing Jak trying to keep all the spinning plates from crashing into the ground is hilarious. Nearly all of the series’ recurring characters are brought together in a tiny space, and the various plots and counter-plots are a delight to follow.

    But pretty soon, even the fanciest diplomatic footwork can’t substitute for direct action. And this is where, true to the series’ structure so far, things change. Every book of the Jak Jinnaka series so far has been divided in two distinct sections, and the division in this third volume is more dramatic than most: The action spins out of control, and even a satisfying victory turns to a nightmare when one recurring character is killed.

    This also marks he shift in tone from a lighthearted farce to a steely-eyed political thriller. Jak has to deal with his grief, settle a few unresolved issues, face down the web of manipulation in which he’s been snared and look at a world that’s much meaner than he expected. The conclusion of the entire story has resonance with John Le Carré’s implacable tales of realpolitik in which bad things happen to people who are worth more dead than alive. This leads Jak ready to face more adventures (as yet unwritten), but those are likely to be a touch darker in tone.

    Fortunately, it’s not all gloom and depression for most of the book’s duration. Barnes’ strong narrative skills keep the book rolling along, and the verve of his prose once again bring to mind the usual comparisons with Heinlein. Barnes, though, has a stronger grasp of socio-political issues, and In The Hall of the Martian King is just as adept as its predecessors at integrating cool ideas with the flow of the story. The “Wager” of Jak’s universe is finally explained, with potentially wide-reaching consequences for upcoming books in the series.

    Despite the abrupt turns in tone, and the growing darkness of the universe, the Jak Jinnaka series has been a terrific trilogy so far, and shows ample potential for further volumes. Barnes just has to write them; I’ll be there to buy them.

  • Hairspray (2007)

    Hairspray (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) I’m a really easy audience for musical comedy, so it’s almost inevitable that I’d enjoy Hairspray as much as I did. Fifties/Sixties rock, dance numbers and a bunch of laughs: What else could one want? What further distinguish this film from the norm, though, are its slightly-sarcastic lyrics and a deep love for the underdog. For those who haven’t paid attention to the film’s pedigree, this is where John Waters’ original influence comes through. (Waters himself appears in a split-second cameo as a flasher. Still, you can’t miss him.) One aspect of the film’s promotion leaves me frowning, though: For a film where racial equality is the backbone of the plot, Hairspray‘s trailer seemed a bit… light in this matter. Does it matter? Not really… but it’s still curious. In other related areas, it’s fun to see Hairspray take up where Far From Heaven and Dreamgirls lefts off in recasting black music as the good music of its period: There’s some interesting cultural reinvention here, but I’ll wait a bit later down the trend to think about it. In any case, thinking seems almost irrelevant in a film where John Travolta dancing in fat-suit drag can almost seem cool. Bubbly Nikki Blonsky makes a heck of a debut appearance; I wonder what’s next for her.

  • A Good Year (2006)

    A Good Year (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2007) Trying to identify with a rich materialistic bastard as he inherits a magnificent property in Provence isn’t exactly an easy proposition. So the first few minutes of the film are sometimes obnoxious, as we’re asked to contemplate the rich workaholic man’s burden of a multi-million dollars estate. Play tiny violins, especially when we can all guess the dramatic arc that the character is going to take. But the film eventually warms up: It’s hard to stay mad at the beautiful cinematography, or at Russell Crowe’s rough charm. Pretty much everything unfolds as predicted, but it does so at a satisfying pace, slow enough to reflect the quiet French countryside. A Good Year often mis-steps and never quite reaches the level it aims for (a number of silly “fast-forward” comedic scenes detract from the rest of the film, for instance): in retrospect, Crowe and director Ridley Scott seem too rough for the light touch that the material requires. For a romantic comedy, the laughs are few and the romance seems like an afterthought. Oh well; at least there’s the scenery, and a number of performances to enjoy. One could do much, much worse: misguided films are usually preferable to terrible ones.