Month: March 2012

J. Edgar (2011)

J. Edgar (2011)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On-demand video, March 2012) There’s little doubt that a biopic of J. Edgar Hoover is a good idea. Hoover was, after all, a dominant figure in twentieth-century America: The man who defined the FBI and led it for nearly 50 years, accumulating damaging dossiers on powerful people along the way.  Then there’s the man himself, filled with contradictions and character quirks; stutterer, driven, wed to the idea of law and order, devoted to his mother, not strictly heterosexual… It’s almost a wonder a big-budgeted romanced biography had to wait until 2011 to be released.  Still, source material and execution aren’t the same thing, and the big question at the end of J. Edgar is whether this is the best possible film one could have made about Hoover.  The script itself dares to question the usual biopic template by indulging in a lot of back-and-forth between Hoover’s early years and the end of his life: At any moment, the film is liable to switch between then and further-then, leaving a chaotic chronology.  (That Hoover lies to himself and others makes for a cute third-act plot point, but it also makes chunks of the film less than relevant.) Director Clint Eastwood made the choice to film the film in desaturated colors and dark lighting, creating claustrophobia at nearly every shot.  There’s also a bit of intentional blurring between Hoover’s life and the FBI’s early years, which is in-keeping with the character, but also suggests that a better film could have focused on either.  Not that the film is a complete miss: Leonardo DiCaprio is quite good as Hoover, playing a character over nearly fifty years and nearly disappearing in it.  In the end, J. Edgar is interesting to watch and revealing about its subject, but it’s not particularly involving or gripping.  Overlong at two hours and twenty minutes, J. Edgar is a flawed take on a flawed historical figure: Worth a look, but not a film that will remain in mind for long.

Elektra Luxx (2010)

Elektra Luxx (2010)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2012) Naive viewers may expect movies about porn stars to be at least interesting, but in a textbook example of false-titillation, Elektra Luxx is low in nudity and high in laugh-free art-house comedy.  Viewers who stumble on this film without knowing that it’s a direct sequel to Women in Trouble may have a hard time figuring out the relationship between the various plot strands that make up the film, especially when at least one of them remains unconnected to the rest.  Of course, excuses of sequelitis only go so far in making audience forgive a wildly inconsistent pace, dull dialogues, indifferent characters and lack of entertainment value.  Carla Gugino may vamp it up as porn star Elektra Luxx, and be surrounded by an impressive supporting cast going from Joseph Gordon-Hewitt to Julianne Moore, but there just isn’t much to the film itself.  Interest starts slipping away after half an hour, never to return.  There are, to be fair, a few interesting strands here and there; the evolution of a woman “from porn star to functioning adult” is promising… but Elektra Luxx itself is too scattered to do justice to the premise.  Bits and pieces of interest can’t make up for a largely indifferent film; there are better choices out there.

Falling Down (1993)

Falling Down (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2012) It’s hard to watch Falling Down (a movie which, for two weeks in 1993, dominated the North-American box-office) without reflecting on the evolution of movies over the past twenty years.  Director Joel Schumacher’s film has become both a period piece of life in Los Angeles during the early nineties, and a reflection of the kind of films we don’t really see in big cineplexes any more.  As Michael Douglas plays a proverbial “angry white male” driven mad by the pressures of modern life, Falling Down targets annoyances but does not indulge in the glorification of vigilantism.  The lead character is to be pitied more than to be admired, something that the conclusion makes sadly clear.  The indictment, in-between on-the-nose symbolism and a little bit of speechifying, is equally spread between victim and aggressor.  Douglas’ clean-cut character is a relic of the fifties unable to cope with the chaos of the nineties, but his downfall is party his own fault.  Not entirely interested in being thriller but a bit too action-packed to be pegged as a pure character study, it’s hard to imagine Falling Down being released widely in 2012 and earning strong box-office success.  The past twenty years, after all, have seen Hollywood shift gears from movies to spectacles: The big screens of the cineplexes, now that alternate distribution mechanisms are well-developed, are for overblown thrills and sure commercial bets: A modern-day Falling Down, absent a wildly popular star as once was Michael Douglas in 1993, would most likely be an independent feature, released on DVD after some success on the film-festival circuit.  On the other hand, things have also changes for the better the moment you stop talking about movies: Los Angeles doesn’t have as big a smog problem as it did in 1993, and its gang violence problem is quite a bit better as well.  Thankfully, much of the film still resonates now thanks to interesting flawed characters and an endearing outraged earnestness.  Who’s to say that only one bad day is the only thing standing between our normal selves and falling down?