Month: July 2022

  • Scarborough (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) It wouldn’t be exact to refer to the Toronto neighbourhood of Scarborough as a slum, but as Scarborough-the-movie makes it clear, this isn’t a place of stately mansions and expensive cars. Focusing on three kids following the same drop-in reading program at a community centre, it’s an ensemble drama of misery at the bottom of the social ladder, with kids not being protected by their parents and any overly empathic response being discouraged. Adapted from the novel of the same title by author Catherine Hernandez herself, it’s a gritty, depressing, often infuriating ensemble drama that doesn’t spare any misery for the innocent. It occasionally feels like a grab bag of every possible social issue—by the time gender dysphoria is introduced late in the film, it’s not as much a plot development as the last item to be checked in a specific list. Still, for all of its heaviness, grittiness and formulaic uplifting end, Scarborough has a few aces up its sleeves—most notably Aliya Kanani as an engaged young teacher doing her best to take care of kids despite a system that tells her not to care too much, and a street-level authenticity engineered by directors Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson. In a certain grand tradition of Canadian movies, it may not be fun to watch, but it’s respectable to have seen. Too long at two hours and a quarter, it’s often an ordeal but ultimately a very humanistic one.

  • Antebellum (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) There’s no frustration quite like giving a disappointed review to a film that has its social conscience at the right place. It’s repulsive that we would need a full-throated denunciation of the evils of American slavery in 2022, but, well; here we are. Given this, the opening moments of Antebellum pack a punch, graphically portraying plantation slavery and then revealing that a modern, well-educated black woman is among the slaves. It’s after that strong opening that the film goes into a tailspin. Much of the problem is that, beyond a provocative premise, the film runs out of plot very quickly—Antebellum is a Twilight Zone episode stretched over 115 minutes, and the hollowness of its execution quickly becomes apparent as it moves to the “modern” day and spends far too much time establishing irrelevant subplots and characters. It doesn’t help that the script can’t follow up its premise with something interesting—it takes the cheapest, least imaginative road to its conclusion. Antebellum being a black horror story, it goes without saying that the white characters are irremediably, cartoonishly evil here—even if Jena Malone does have an interesting role as Queen Racist. Never mind the practicalities of their plan! Janelle Monáe is good within the confines of her role, while Gabourey Sidibe is tremendously fun to watch but plays a useless character. Antebellum cheapens its most distasteful moments by having nowhere to go—when so much of the film doesn’t have a reason for existing, it becomes much harder to justify the exploitation of its most striking moments—especially by the time the third act rolls round. There are about a dozen more interesting, substantial and wittier directions the film could have gone, but in the end, it retreats to cheap shots, empty empowerment slogans, excruciatingly executed obviousness and filler material for more than half its length. Much to my dismay, Antebellum is a thriller that should have been science fiction, or a film that should have been an episode, or knee-jerk cheap horror that should have been nuanced systemic drama—anything but what it is right now.

  • Measure for Measure (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Adapting a lesser-known Shakespeare play to modern-day lower-class urban Australia, Measure for Measure goes for a complex web of modern-day issues (drug dealing, Islamophobia and romance being only a few of them) featuring an ensemble cast led by Hugo Weaving. The result may have its moments, but remains unremarkable and is not worth a recommendation. For all of the potential complexities of its ensemble drama, much of the film eventually boils down to a generic crime story interacting with a forbidden romance. Weaving is as good as usual as an elderly crime lord, while Megan Hajjar/Smart is quite likable in the lead female role. Alas, bland execution from writer-director Paul Ireland makes the film slower, duller and grittier than it should have been, making it difficult to remain interested in what’s happening before the precipitating burst of violence. While the glimpse at an Australian housing project can be interesting at times, Measure for Measure doesn’t manage to use its elements effectively, and the result is surprisingly forgettable.

  • The Lost Daughter (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2022) Slow-moving psychological dramas aren’t my style, and The Lost Daughter tested me. The first film written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal (working from a novel) is about motherhood but not the kind of stereotypical motherhood held up as ideal. No, in this case we follow the summertime adventures of an accomplished academic as she experiences the lifestyle of the Greek island she’s visiting, and flashes back to her own progressively unhappy experiences as a young woman. Olivia Coleman stars and features a typically finely honed performance, alongside such notables as Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris, and Peter Sarsgaard. From a certain viewpoint, The Lost Daughter is a successful film: it’s generally well directed, offers a strong showcase for its actors and delves into unconventional topics that are not seldom tackled. But the same film excels in a very specific niche that may not appeal widely: it’s slow-moving, and showcases a rather unlikable protagonist while remaining uninterested in any kind of moral condemnation or celebration. Much of the action being an internal character study, it’s not a film made for suspense or action. And then there’s the Hollywood-dynasty pedigree of its writer-director. In other words—you can see exactly how the film would appeal to critics and the Academy and understand why it ended up with a very long list of accolades—including three Oscar nominations. That doesn’t make it a crowd-pleaser, though: The Lost Daughter’s glum, unsentimental, naturalistic style takes patience and a specific kind of mood to appreciate.

  • Gun Hill (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2022) In theory, there’s enough good stuff in Gun Hill’s premise to make the film viable as good evening entertainment. In practice, though, this BET original film quickly reverts to the dull routine of such low-budget made-for-TV movies. The hook here is the idea of twin brothers on opposite sides of the law, with one of them taking the other’s identity when he’s killed. Writer-director Reggie Rock Bythewood should have been able to parlay this premise (along with a rather good double turn from Larenz Tate) into a compelling result. But the result is held back by a few things—most notably the requirement for being a pilot for a later series that never materialized, hence dangling subplots not properly resolved. (BET did the same thing with the even-more-frustrating Sacrifice, except it did lead to a TV show.)  The low budget doesn’t allow for many flourishes, and the “BET house-style” is usually synonymous with amateurish screenwriting. Gun Hill suffers from all of this, but fares even worse in the dullness of its execution: it rarely rises above mediocrity in terms of viewing interest, and it’s a measure of how thoroughly it squanders its assets that by the film it springs a surprise revelation right before ending, most viewers are liable to shrug for utter lack of caring. Too bad, really—I still think a much better film could have come out of this.

  • The White Tiger (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2022) I’ve seen more than a few reviews comparing The White Tiger to Slumdog Millionaire, which initially feels like a cheap comparison. After all, it’s not because you’ve got two western-produced rags-to-riches movies set in India that they are the same—you could argue that it’s an act of western imperialism to conflate films based on mere setting, and that’s before even getting into the vitality of the Indian film industries, or the bewildering diversity of India by itself. But despite first instincts, there is an interesting point of opposition between two films, one that has a lot to say about the way western filmmakers/studios/audiences/reviewers perceive films in so-called exotic (ack, ptui) contexts. The White Tiger, at a very superficial glance, does seem to typify the kind of story that audiences crave: how a promising young man rises through a stratified society to become his own boss, acquiring riches along the way. Entire genres of American literature have been built on such narratives. Who doesn’t love an underdog? But from the very first moments of the film (which is framed as a letter from our protagonist to the visiting Chinese Prime Minister), something feels off—and the rest of the film all leads to a conclusion that trashes the usual standards of decency, eventually flaunting its transgressions as a demonstration that the future does not belong to the honourable white man. It gets very, very dark, and in a way that has far more to do with sociopathic glorifications of hustling than the Horatio Alger plucky-young-man-does-good literary archetype. The tone is deeply cynical to the point where the film (adapted from a similarly caustic novel) doesn’t really go for outright moral condemnation. If the future does belong to those ready to kill in order to succeed, perhaps everyone else should stay in the coop where life is predictable and usually bearable. It does (or doesn’t?) help that the film is slickly executed by screenwriter-director Ramin Bahrani—grittily portraying a slice of Indian life over the past few decades with a minimum of sentimentality and plenty of jaundice. It’s disturbing if you dig into its amoral core, and as such offers quite a contrast to Slumdog Millionaire: it’s not sweet, not romantic (almost anti-romantic, in fact), and definitely not honourable. For western viewers, it presents a conundrum about expectations—is it a realistic reminder that “the other,” in reclaiming a multipolar world, is not beholden to hypocritical standards of western morality? Or does it skirt racist agitprop by demonstrating how “the other” will not be stopped by the niceties held as ideal by western movies? Maybe both, maybe neither: the unfortunate byproduct of adapting one of tens-of-thousands of novels into one-of-dozens prestige films (especially in a rarefied area such as “western films about India”) is that the film acquires the force of a geopolitical statement that the novel is not really built for. Far more people will ever see The White Tiger than will read it, and far more opinion pieces will be written about it as well.