Month: December 2015

Dope (2015)

Dope (2015)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on Demand, December 2015)  Oh, the joys of being married to a cinephile with slightly different tastes!  I’m not sure I would have looked at Dope had my wife not selected it as our Saturday Night Movie, and that would have missing on a happy discovery: A playful blend of comedy, ghetto awareness, geek-chic, hip-hop soundtrack and fizzy directing, Dope features a black nerd protagonist pushed into crime as a path to higher learning.  It’s got substance, style, hilarious moments and heartfelt observations about the American racial divide.  Shameik Moore is immediately likable as the film’s protagonist, but the ensemble cast works just as well with the material.  Still, the real star here is writer/director Rick Famuyiwa, who manages to bring together hood references with a geek sensibility, delivering a lively film that changes stylistic gears every so often (from narration to breaking the fourth wall, to rewinding in time to explain a strange visual) and keeps things interesting throughout.  There’s some good comedy mixed with the heartfelt social concerns but the combination of geek culture with hood circumstances feels unique, and as a computer nerd I couldn’t find much at fault in the film’s use of technological jargon.  The soundtrack couldn’t be better (fittingly enough, it seems to be only available digitally) and it works both as a collection of songs as well as a reinforcement for what’s happening on-screen.  The ending sequence may be a bit too on-the-nose, but it earns its own earnestness through self-aware storytelling that manages to do interesting things with well-worn elements. 

EverAfter (1998)

EverAfter (1998)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, December 2015)  Everyone’s got irrational dislikes for particular actors, and one of mine is Drew Barrymore.  I can’t explain it, shouldn’t proclaim it but won’t try to hide it.  While I can actually name a few movies of hers that I like (including a few in which she played a central role, such as the Charlie’s Angels films) and find that I’m disliking her less and less lately, EverAfter has taught me that my dislike of her in earlier roles remains real: Her turn as the protagonist of this reality-based take on the Cinderella fairy tale left me cold and wishing that just about any other age-appropriate actress could have taken the role.  It doesn’t help that the film itself feels so dull: Being quite familiar with the Cinderella story beat by virtue of having a young daughter, I find that any attempt to take supernatural elements out of the story makes it far less interesting.  Here, the insistence to “keep it real” by setting it in medieval France feels as if it’s holding the film back, especially when adding Leonardo da Vinci as a character makes a mockery of the whole realism thing.  Hammering modern social notions into that framework also feels beside the point, adding to the increasing lack of interest in the film as it rolls along.  Now that I think of it, you can add “making fairy tales gritty and realistic” to the list of my pet irrational dislikes: it doesn’t add much, takes a way of lot of potential greatness and misses the point of the fairy tales.  EverAfter feels rote, especially after the recent slew of revisionist takes on other classic fairy tales.  At this point, I can’t help but compare it to the live-action Disney remake of Cinderella and find it severely lacking in the wow department.  But, as they say, your mileage may vary… especially if you don’t quite have the same irrational dislikes as I do.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2015)  I wasn’t the biggest fan of the original How to Train your Dragon despite recognizing its many qualities, and I have similar feelings about its sequel as well: It’s competent fare, well-executed, warm and beautiful.  As a sequel, How to Train a Dragon 2 does nearly everything right: it expands the scope of the universe, picks up the story at another stage of the protagonist’s evolution, delivers something like the first film without being the first film.  Writer/director Dean DeBlois knows what he’s doing, and the result distinguishes itself from many animated sequel cash-ins.  What seems quite a bit better this time around is the visual polish of the film, which is spectacularly animated from beginning to end, and far more visually interesting than it needed to be.  Jay Baruchel’s voice performance still brings a lot of personality to the protagonist.  This being said, I often wished that I’d like the result more: while watching the film, I often had the impression that it was hitting its targets but for a younger audience.  At least I can recognize that How to Train a Dragon 2 works, and that it should please everyone who loved the original more than I did.

It Follows (2014)

It Follows (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2015) Despite its unlimited potential, genre horror too often becomes stale, relying on the same monsters, gimmicks and metaphors.  As a result, the average horror movie has become intensely predictable, familiar and suspense-free.  But there are a few films willing to shake it up, and It Follows is a refreshing example of genre reinvigoration.  Benefiting from an unusual premise and a remarkable absence of special effects, It Follows remixes lumbering zombies, AIDS metaphors, an eighties-style synth-based soundtrack and unnerving wide-shot cinematography to deliver something that feels fresh and daring.  It’s superficially about a sexually-transmitted monster antagonist that walks up to their target in order to kill them horribly, but it gets a lot of mileage out of that simple premise: Effectively building dread rather than disgust or shock, It Follows manages to say a few interesting things about its teenage horror protagonists and their relationship with sex and death. (Never mind the adults: They don’t figure in the film.)  Writer/director David Robert Mitchell knows what he’s doing, layers in thematic depth, blurs his eras, presents effective nightmare-based frights and gets a lot of sympathy for his characters.  It doesn’t take much more than the opening shots (which simply rotates 360-degrees to present the situation for reasons we later understand) to set us on edge, something that the deliberately off-putting soundtrack later reinforces.  While some aspects of the film can be a bit blurry to the point of owing more to dream-logic than solid plotting, and while one could quibble almost endlessly with various aspects of the premise, its logic or its development (let alone its origin), there’s no denying the effectiveness of the scares or the compelling nature of the film as the characters try to figure what’s happening to them.  Maika Monroe is particularly good in the lead role.  It Follows feels new and disquieting, which should please those who feel a bit jaded with horror movies.  One word of advice: try to see the film on as big a screen as possible: The cinematography often shows action or important images as part of a much wider frame.