Month: December 2020

  • Anna (2019)

    Anna (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) Every storyteller has their favourite archetypes, and based on the evidence I’m sure that writer-director Luc Besson’s go-to is that of a female assassin. (Also one much younger than he is – and that’s been known for a while.) Anna is something like the seventh dip into that kind of character after, …let’s see…, Nikita, Point of No Return, Leon (split archetype), Bandidas (somewhat), Colombiana and Lucy (sort of). It’s probably the dullest of the lot, too. Our heroine is a product of the Soviet assassin training program who finds herself in Paris living the life of a supermodel by day, assassin by night. Turning to become a double agent, she really is fighting for her freedom to disappear. The rest is action sequences, tough-person posturing, an enjoyable turn from Helen Mirren, some standard spy fiction tropes, and reasonably energetic direction. Anna is an unobjectionable time killer, although the tortured timeline filled with flashbacks and skip-forwards is better suited to mathematical exam questions than casual watching. I’m not that susceptible to Slavic blondes like Sasha Luss, but she does generally well, and is supported by the likes of Luke Evans and Cillian Murphy. Besson-as-director can deliver the strict minimum (and occasionally a bit more, like the restaurant scene) but I’m not seeing any evidence of trying to become any better. (And with recent affirmations of his terrible behaviour, it’s not clear if he’ll get to direct another film any time soon.) If he does write something else, let’s hope he tries to do something different than another female assassin.

  • Scoob! (2020)

    Scoob! (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) As a staunch Scooby-Doo traditionalist and Velma enthusiast, it was practically preordained that I would not be particularly happy with modern reboot Scoob! – in my kind of Scooby-Doo, the answer is always rational and the series exists in a mysteriously dystopian world filled with abandoned run-down properties. This shiny new animated reboot, though, is up to the tastes of the times – meme humour, hip references, Marvel-style quipping, pop-hit soundtrack, attempts to stretch to the limits of its metaverse (in this case, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters) and a clear intention to set up a franchise. The opening segment, taking us to the origin story of Mystery Inc., is not bad at all and gives false hopes that the rest of the film will keep up that level of energy and wit. After that, though, it gets steadily downhill: The plot gets more complex without becoming any better, the stylistic similarities keep reaching for modern animated films rather than Scooby-doo-specific quirks, Velma isn’t featured, and everything sort of fades into a generic film that happens to have a dog in it. To be clear, I didn’t exactly dislike Scoob! – I just found it getting increasingly mediocre, and less specific to what makes Scooby Doo so interesting. It’s watchable, although keeping interest is increasingly difficult.

  • Chasse-Galerie aka Chasse-Galerie: la légende (2016)

    Chasse-Galerie aka Chasse-Galerie: la légende (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) If there’s one folk tale that exemplifies historic French-Canadian culture, it’s la Chasse-Galerie. A story of lumberjacks making a deal with the devil to fly home in a canoe to see their family (and getting away with it), it blends Québec’s image of itself as a country of hard workers, vast natural expanses, innate bon vivants, fealty to religious icons and yet having the wily cleverness to beat the devil at his own deal. (At least in the versions of the tale I like best.) It’s one part of French-Canadian culture that I enthusiastically claim as part of my cultural heritage, and it brings me great joy to see it on the big screen as Chasse-Galerie, a big-budget film with a lavish recreation of historial period and the special-effect budget to do justice to the tale. Now, of course, this is not the canonical tale – such a film would be over in about fifteen minutes. No, this one fleshes out the legend by adding characters, motivations, backstory, specific motivations and everything else – including a generation-before prologue to further shore up the film’s distinct take. Is all of this necessary? Absolutely not, especially when it makes the film reach an unnecessary 106 minutes. But if you see it as a variation on the tale, executed to today’s specific tastes, then the film does become better. Still, it misses some of its marks by being too formal: with so much emphasis placed on characters, we get away from the myth itself. Director Jean-Philippe Duval does manage to find a few good moments, especially when the canoe takes flight and the fantasy aspects finally take their places. Perhaps this means that we’ll get another version of the tale in a generation, and I’m all for it. Until then, this Chasse-Galerie is perfectly serviceable, even when it meanders. Also: Having the Devil speak with an English accent may not be nice… but it is hilarious.

  • The Soul of America (2020)

    The Soul of America (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) With everything that’s happening at the moment, the most radical proposition in America may be that things are, in fact, pretty good. Yes, I know – I watch the news too. But The Soul of America takes the very long view to suggest that while temporary trends can feel terrible, the overall portrait of America is one of progress. Hard-won progress, not always linear progress, but progress nonetheless. Adapted from the book of the same name by historian Jon Meacham, it dips (quickly) into American History to offer a view of history as cyclical, with periods of turmoil settling into more steady progress – and right now being similar to the 1960s and 1930s in terms of angry populism and rising protests. The flaws in this argument as applied to today’s situation are obvious… at least without the benefit of hindsight: catastrophists will say that history is not always predictive and that black swans could attack tomorrow. The underprivileged will quite reasonably point out that Meacham’s viewpoint is that of someone who’s not pushed against the wall when things turn bad (cyclically or not). Cynics will be congenially unable to accept even the smallest ray of hope. (My own take is that I generally agree with Meacham, except with the proviso that America has always been a fundamentally reactionary society: Any significant push in one direction is usually countered with an opposite reaction – the gains usually take place when the pendulum slows down for the next movement.) Cinematically, The Soul of America isn’t much to look at: the visuals are polished, but they don’t call attention to themselves as much as they illustrate the points made by the film’s narration. Meacham himself is a reassuring, credible figure and he is the best advocate for his own view of American history. I’d like to believe him and, generally speaking, I do – but when you’re talking in decades, the day-to-day, year-to-year turbulence isn’t necessarily easier to take for those being shaken.

  • Astérix et la surprise de César (1985)

    Astérix et la surprise de César (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) As far as Asterix movies are concerned, there are several ages – the Golden Age of the 1960s-1970s, with two all-time animated film classics. The Dark Ages of the first live-action versions, followed by a certain renaissance throughout the 2010s. And in between, the silver age of the 1980s-1990s animated films: clearly faithful to the albums’ tone and style, generally enjoyable but not always all that memorable. Astérix et la surprise de César is perhaps the most average film of that era – solid, competent, animated about as well as the European animation studios were capable of doing at the time, but also featureless compared to other Asterix films. While this one has the catchy “Astérix est là” song from Plastic Bertrand, it doesn’t have a lot of set-pieces worth remembering. The Roman setting feels like another day in the series, and even having Ceasar around isn’t much of a distinction considering that he usually shows up in other Asterix movies at the drop of an excuse. Still, I don’t want to be too hard on it: undistinguished can still be pretty good considering the average level of that era’s Asterix films, and so Astérix et la surprise de César remains enjoyable to watch… even if you may be fuzzy on the details a few days later.

  • Four Kids and It (2020)

    Four Kids and It (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) A kids’ fantasy film so lightweight that it flies away as soon as it’s over, Four Kids and It looks and feels like a TV movie that somehow stumbled upon a promising cast. The story is about what happens when four kids in a newly blended family discover a mysterious beach creature with the power of making wishes real. Complications accumulate as they explore the limits of that power, and when a local aristocrat has designs on the creature. There are some interesting names in the cast: Michael Caine voicing the creature, Paula Patton and Matthew Goode as the parents of the blended family, and (sigh) Russell Brand as the villain. The special effects are generally acceptable, and the film has enough budget to indulge in its script’s flights of fancy. But there are too many problems to discount: Patton and Goode are saddled with unlikable characters that they can’t fix, while the kids are even more obnoxious than the parents. Brand seems to be playing in a film aimed at an older and more irony-appreciating audience, and the film doesn’t have enough plot to cover it 110 minutes. In the end, Four Kids and It feels like slot-filling TV: it exists because it’s cheap and fulfills some basic programming imperative, but could have been replaced by just about anything even remotely similar.

  • Housesitter (1992)

    Housesitter (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2020) As the 1980s became the 1990s, Steve Martin’s film career turned from absurd high-concept comedy into a safer, far more mainstream comic fare. In this lens, Housesitter is early evidence of a process that would eventually lead to Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Martin plays an architect who, after designing the ideal house, gets his heart broken and has a one-night stand that results into something much more complicated when she moves into the house and starts saying that she’s his wife. It sounds slightly creepy but the script, as directed by Frank Oz, is about as innocuous as it comes. It helps that Martin is playing opposite a perfectly charming Goldie Hawn, and a gallery of supporting characters out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Martin plays the straight man here, reacting to Hawn’s antics more than acting. The story itself is fair, but the restraint through which it’s executed is almost overbearing – Housesitter is a film that plays it incredibly safe, and could have benefited from a bit more comic audacity. But Martin’s career, as shown here and later films, has been a steady retreat into more broadly accessible fare – still funny, if less so.

  • Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

    Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) I’m not quite as positive about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as I want to be, but it’s better than what most people would expect. Adapting a few books of short stories about which I have zero knowledge nor attachment, the film surprisingly doesn’t take the anthology route – instead, it mixes and matches several pieces of the books into things that happen to the characters when they read a cursed book, effectively introducing a whole meta-fictional “stories coming to life” aspect to it all. (This is not dissimilar to the recent Goosebumps movies either) Also notable is the film’s decision to set itself in the 1960s, and the substantial effort required to make this period setting credible. Special effects are not bad, and I do admire the film’s decision to remain within a PG-13 rating – partly in recognition of the books / film’s target audience, but also, it feels, as a game by the filmmakers to see how far they could push without getting to an R rating. The teenage actors at the middle of the film don’t do too badly, and director André Øvredal’s visual sense is pretty good, especially by the standards of introductory teen horror. And yet, and yet – even in exceeding expectations, I found Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark a bit dull despite its qualities. The narrative density seems low, and the entire thing doesn’t stick in mid very much after the end credits. This doesn’t make it a bad film, but I wish there was just a little more to it than there is now.

  • Midway (2019)

    Midway (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) The nice thing about director Roland Emmerich taking on a World War II movie is that we know what we’re going to get. Even from the title and the opening recreation of the Pearl Harbor attack, Midway’s shape quickly snaps into focus: First, the introduction of the characters through America’s humiliation, and then (after some character “development”), a vengeful final half almost entirely preoccupied with an hour-long recreation of the titular battle as an action sequence. The flaws and qualities of the film are very Emmerichian – he can do a maximalist rendition of the material he’s given, make it fun to watch, and orchestrate a good special-effects showcase… but he’s not going to rewrite dramatic material to higher standards, push his actors into doing more than the strict minimum, or weave in complex visual themes or stylistic direction. So, what you get with Midway is what you can expect from Emmerich’s Midway: A middling script but executed rather well when it comes to the action/CGI bits. Surprisingly, I liked it– I wasn’t going to the film for a history lesson (although I gather that the film is surprisingly more historically accurate than expected once you discount the enthusiastic CGI) and as a WW2 action movie, Midway is very enjoyable. The old-school moral values of the film (honour, duty, country) are generally admirable, especially if you’re looking for a modern re-skin of classic WW2 movies. No, Midway isn’t that remarkable – but I enjoyed when stuff blows up real good.

  • Crawl (2019)

    Crawl (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) Expectations didn’t run high for creature-feature Crawl, in which Floridians having enough trouble with a hurricane-flooded house also have to deal with alligators moving in. But this is the kind of film where execution can make or break a premise, and in the hands of noted horror auteur Alexandre Aja, the film manages to find an interesting balance between chills and thrills: Aja’s stylish direction goes for suspense whenever it can, but thankfully draws back on the gore and delivers a happy ending of sorts. (Don’t worry, though – the body count of the film is surprisingly high for something taking place in what’s supposed to be an evacuated part of Florida.) The atmosphere of a flooded, rain-battered house is convincing, especially given all of the CGI required for a film shot in Serbian soundstages. Acting-wise, Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper make for an effective daughter-father team, and they’re our anchors in what would otherwise be just gators chomping on supporting characters. It’s not a big or great film, but Crawl manages to hit just the right spot for a competent B-movie.

  • Angel Has Fallen (2019)

    Angel Has Fallen (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) I’ve been saying since London has Fallen that the wrong White-House-in-Peril movie got a sequel (White House Down should have been the one to get follow-ups), and now we’re adding insult to injury with an even less remarkable third film in the series. Sure, you could warm up to Olympus has Fallen and even London has Fallen because whatever their faults were, at least they aimed big: White House under attack by terrorists? G7 meeting attacked by terrorists? There’s some fun there. But in this instalment, the plot hook is just… our hero being framed by mercenaries. Oh. The much smaller scale of the action fails to impress, and it’s not as there is that much character to develop in between the action sequences – writer-director Ric Roman Waugh is content simply getting something bankable to the screen. Sure, Angel Has Fallen is watchable. Whether it will hold your interest in between other things, though, is highly debatable. At least it’s honest about what it’s trying to do: Gerard Butler is making a career out of mediocre films that know perfectly well what they’re all about, and it’s not with this third film in the series that he’s striking off in unexpected directions. At least the supporting cast also understands what kind of movie they’re playing with: John Huston makes a great heavy as usual, and Morgan Freeman plays a president like no one else can — oh, and Nick Nolte brings a welcome bit of craziness in a far too staid film. But none of this really elevates Angel Has Fallen over disappointing mediocrity. Go ahead and go rewatch White House Down instead.

  • Hellboy (2019)

    Hellboy (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) I suppose that if you must replace Ron Perlman as Hellboy, then David Harbour is not a bad choice at all. But it’s Guillermo del Toro’s absence at the helm that is most deeply felt in the 2019 Hellboy reboot. Neil Marshall is not a bad director, but del Toro’s affection for monsters and his unmistakable touch for the fantastic are what held the previous two Hellboy films together, and it’s sorely missing here. There are quite a few things that I do like here: Finally seeing fully-horned King Hellboy is nice, and the acting talent on display does include names such as Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane and Daniel Dae Kim playing were-cheetah. Harbour himself does well, and the special effects work is fun when supernatural weirdness and wide-scale destruction hit London. But the rest of the film isn’t as bad as it is instantly forgettable. The bland story retreads material far better handled in the earlier films; the tone has a lot of trouble keeping balance between end-of-the-world stakes and sardonic humour, and the over-the-top gore is off-putting, bordering on disgusting. In the end, this Hellboy feels juvenile, graceless and meaningless compared to del Toro’s dark poetry, and while this could have passed muster had earlier Hellboy films had not existed, they not only existed but justified the existence of this one. Once upon a time, Hollywood missed a fantastic opportunity to do a Hellboy 3 – but they missed it, and we’re never going to get that back, or anything approaching it.

  • Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

    Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) Considering the downward trend of the Rambo series and the less-than-stellar impression left by this latest instalment, I’m tempted to ask if they really mean it when they say Rambo: Last Blood. Is it a promise? Is it legally binding? This time, seventy-something Sylvester Stallone hauls himself from the retirement home for another go at the Rambo character. This time around, he goes off to Mexico to rescue his niece from the clutch of sex traffickers, then comes back to the farm to set up a gleefully gory series of traps meant to show that, even at an elderly age, Rambo can take on an army of ethnically coded bad guys. While I do like that this final (?) instalment closes a circle that began with a loner assaulting typical America and ended with him defending what he has against enemies, this is thin and weakly realized over-rationalization for what’s a straightforward shoot’em up. Stallone can still growl menacingly, but he still looks as if he should be taking it easy rather than play in an overly macho celebration of bloodlust. As with the previous instalment, the gory violence is disturbingly over-the-top, easily exceeding some horror movies in conscious sadism. I’m absolutely not sorry to see Rambo go off into the sunset (literally) – this is a character that has overstayed his welcome, and the series surrounding him has grown unbearably ugly.

  • Hustlers (2019)

    Hustlers (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) Welcome to the 2020s! Your new moral orthodoxy, and you don’t get to choose to accept it, is that drugging, robbing and possibly abusing people is perfectly fine as long as they’re men and you pre-emptively declare yourself the victim! Wait, what? Well, yes: While it’s absurdly reductive to see Hustlers through the lens of reactionary misandry, there’s also a lot of that in the film. Adapted from an article about real NYC strippers drugging and robbing Wall Street types, the film does become more potent as a class-war kind of screed. It does have the (belated) decency to recognize that its heroines may not be completely righteous – that once you successfully target the deserving, it’s much easier to hurt the undeserving. Fortunately, some top talent goes into the execution: written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, the film assembles an all-star cast of actors-singers like Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lizzo and Cardi B (who once said she drugged and robbed clients of their money during her early years as a stripper – role model, wooo). Nearly everyone does great work, with special attention paid to a great performance from Lopez, who hits upon a number of her personal strengths to create her character. The execution of Hustlers is a great deal better than its somewhat problematic premise, in between what could have been male exploitation of a salacious topic, on the one hand, or unrepentant man-bashing on the other. Having never been a stripper nor a strip-club patron in the past, I’m clearly not in the target audience for this film, but even I could appreciate the better moments of the film when it gets cracking on the atmosphere, the characterization and the dark irony inherent in its Robin Hood(ick) premise. Maybe it’ll go down more easily on a second viewing.

  • The Joy Luck Club (1993)

    The Joy Luck Club (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Even more than twenty-five years later, The Joy Luck Club remains a singular reference in American cinema. There simply aren’t that many (or any) Hollywood-affiliated films with large casts of Asian-American performers, let alone an ensemble of eight Asian-American actresses. But that’s what was needed to adapt Amy Tan’s sprawling novel of family relationships, generational continuity and cultural resilience. It’s all the more remarkable in that this is not blockbuster four-quadrant filmmaking: this is what was formerly known as “a woman’s picture” and, in modern parlance, a “literate character-driven drama for a specific demographic.” Spanning five decades, the story intersects four distinct strands during 132 minutes, and that is a lot of drama to go around. A lot of it is very accessible despite the affirmed Chinese-American context – the mother-daughter relationship material feels universal and so do many of the issues faced by the characters. And yet, as admirable as it is, it’s not perfect: Being largely focused on female characters and their problems, the film often portrays men as caricatures of evil personified, with no depth or redemption. But maybe the problem is to try to make The Joy Luck Club an exemplar of Chinese-American film representation rather than the very specific story it meant to tell. But that’s almost inevitable when a film becomes a beacon of representativeness in an otherwise barren wasteland – it was a long, long time between 1961’s Flower Drum Song, this 1993 film and 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians.