Month: September 2022

  • Death Saved My Life (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I often joke that one of the reasons why Lifetime/Hallmark/BET movies are so popular with their intended audiences is that they keep recycling the same plot for added comfort even in delivering “thrills.”  But I didn’t expect the Lifetime original movie Death Saved My Life to track so closely another film. Let’s see—woman realizing that she’s in an abusive relationship gets out of it by faking her death, but is later found out by the abuser, leading to a final violent confrontation. So far so good? Well, that also happens to be the plot summary of 2017’s BET original movie Til Death Do Us Part, and it’s not even race-flipped for plausible deniability. Alas, it also manages to be worse and even more morally conflicted. Til Death Do Us Part, for all of its blunt caricature of an abusive marriage and cliché plotting, was at least clear on the moral righteousness of its protagonist: she was an angelic victim, and the husband (after a perfect honeymoon period) was a cartoonishly evil person. Our protagonist was also relatively clever in the confines of the genre, having a near-perfect plan unravelled by an innocent dangling thread. When the film moved on to the final confrontation, there wasn’t much ambiguity: she was good, he was bad, he wanted to kill her, so she defended herself. Not great art, but at least we knew where we stood. Death Saved My Life can’t even manage that. Our heroine is not only dumb as dirt, but her post-disappearance plan becomes an implausibly elaborate campaign of psychological torture, even endangering innocents in targeting her no-good surgeon husband. In going too far in revenge, Death Saved My Life becomes a confused piece of work, with the tormented becoming such a tormenter than the entire thing becomes far less enjoyable. It also feeds into a vexing finale that has the merit of not reaching for pure violence, but still leaves unsatisfied. It would have been a fascinating reversal of expectations in a more sober-minded drama examining the consequences of righteous revenge, but let’s face it: Death Saved My Life is utterly uninterested in nuance—good woman beats bad man is about as sophisticated as it wants to be. As much as it pains me to do so, I’m going to recommend watching a low-budget BET original instead: At least Til Death Do Us Part has the advantage of knowing exactly what it’s doing. Too bad for Meagan Good—she (alongside her real-life sister playing he fictional sister) deserved better than this.

  • Running with the Devil (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Hey, what just happened here? Running with the Devil is a thriller featuring a sequence in which Nicolas Cage spends some time hiking in a forest with Lawrence Fishburne and still it’s a disappointment. Granted, you’re not going to get a comedy out of the whole thing: This is one of those films trying to make a Profound Statement about the war on drugs circa 1995 through a moody plot, an ensemble cast and blue-dominated cinematography. It doesn’t work. There’s a misplaced mixture of realism and wild plotting going on at once, with vigilante justice winning out in the end. Some segments can be interesting (such as the procedural explanation of how drug shipments in the 1990s made their way from Colombia to US city streets, or alternately seeing Fishburne pimping hard on the bling-bling) but it’s not enough. The episodic nature of the story makes it hard to keep a focus, not just on specific characters, but also in narrative progression and tone as well—Running with the Devil goes all the way from sober didacticism to jet-black humour and little of it is actually fun. It’s an unfocused mess (the cast list doesn’t have names, but occupations), and it wastes a lot of good-to-great potential on its way to its disappointing conclusion.

  • Before and After (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) I get that Before and After is the kind of thriller made to make you question your allegiances between your family and a wider social order. All of the film is consumed with parents reacting differently to their sons being involved in a murder—the father by (incompetently) trying to cover up for his son, the mother by thinking really hard about spilling everything to the cops. It’s quite a mediocre, middle-of-the-road thriller: I doubt it would still get airplay today if it wasn’t for Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson (what a couple!) as headliners—especially given that the film predates the post-Taken rise of Neeson as an action hero. (One imagines that the same film with the same actors would be written very differently today—did anyone say, “Daddy makes police station explode to get rid of evidence?”)  What’s far less than ideal here, even if you buy into the premises, is the very slow pace and the misjudging of the subgenre. At 108 minutes, Before and After feels interminable at times, with the characters making ill-advised decisions over and over again. There’s also a sentiment of discomfort brought by a film that hangs on a “maybe be did, maybe he didn’t” balance later presents a testimony without many questions. Edward Furlong has the added disadvantage of playing a spectacularly annoying character here—a good thing when trying to make a thriller about doubt and protecting a family even at the expense of justice, but not so much when we’re supposed to cheer for the little creep later on. I suppose that viewers here, especially parents, are supposed to empathize and wonder just how far they’ll go in protecting their kids—but Before and After’s distanciating execution makes it far too easy for viewers to say—my kid is PERFECT while yours is a KILLER who deserves to be SENT TO HELL.

  • Nuevo orden [New Order] (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) It’s appropriate for a film about a populist revolution to have bourgeois viewers unsettled. But this can be overdone. Falling into a few common dystopian storytelling traps, New Order starts out promisingly, yet disintegrates to meaningless, unlikable garbage by its conclusion. It’s intriguing in its first half-hour, as an upper-class wedding reception in Mexico City goes forward even as the rumble of a violent populist uprising becomes louder and louder. An ensemble cast of characters is quickly introduced, sketched and confronted with a murderous revolution that quickly reaches into what should have been a safe place. By the time the servants drive their former masters against the wall, it’s clear that New Order is not going to be a pleasant experience. Not all of the rich characters are heartless, but that doesn’t make much of a difference when the first culling is one of indiscriminate rage. But then the film goes off the rails in many ways. The first being an inability to keep a handle on the outwardly expanding scope of the story—as most Science Fiction writers understand, the way to write about society-altering events is to find characters able to witness the events and suffer from them. But New Order doesn’t have this discipline—it expands upwards to the ministers trying to keep a handle on the situation, sideways on the revolutionaries turning mercenary, and not at all on the characters introduced in the first half-hour. It makes for an increasingly remote film with no one to root for, a problem compounded exponentially by a nihilistic attitude that kills off nearly everyone by the time the film wraps up. It makes New Order curiously conservative—the popular uprising becoming a horror scenario that should have been wiped out early by all means necessary. Writer-director-producer Michel Franco’s regrettable intention to additionally turn New Order into an artistic film (most notably via non-chronological flashes of slow-motion events) pales in comparison to its narrative problems. This leaves a lot of potential on the table for a cogent depiction of class warfare, or even in showing why violent revolution will fail in its aims when compared to peaceful incremental change. As the world teeters ever closer to violent populist uprisings, New Order fails to engage with the danger of where things may be headed, minimizes the real inequity factors leading to such anger, and wastes its assets into something that means almost nothing.

  • Rolling Like Thunder (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As someone who is surprisingly and vociferously opposed to graffiti, I did not have a particularly good time watching Rolling Like Thunder, a documentary film that delves into the subculture of those who draw graffiti on freight train wagons. My opposition to graffiti is largely aesthetic—even the most artistically ambitious ones (with strong composition, clean lines and bright colours: the vast majority of them are not artistically ambitious) still feel like a blight over utilitarian objects. There’s some built-in irony in the film beginning with New York City making a deliberate effort to clean up graffiti-covered subway cars in the 1980s, driving “artists” to paint rolling stock outside the city. We have many interviews with the small-time vandals defacing the trains: some of them are even interesting. But the film’s MVP is an anti-graffiti activist who has found his own way of discouraging the vandalism through vandalism of his own—badly painting over some parts of the graffiti as to deface the defacement without giving them the satisfaction of a virgin ready-to-be-repainted surface. Some time is also spent detailing the horrifying injuries suffered by the vandals as they slip on the tracks and under the cars, or are apprehended by security. Rolling Like Thunder, despite its awed portrayal of vandals and intention to humanize them, did nothing to change my mind—they come across as immature idiots picking on easy targets for dubious thrills (and those are the artistically ambitious ones—for each one of them, there must be ten, twenty others just spray-painting squiggles for giggles). I had marginally more respect for those able to do something creative with their skills—whether it’s taking great photos of vandalized rolling stock, becoming lawyers, or turning their artistic skills to non-ugly purposes. Such unimpressed reactions are probably playing into the hands of director Roger Gastman, as he goads the mundanes into spray-painting his subject matter with disdain. He admittedly delivers a slick product with technically adequate interviews and some evocative footage. It’s the thrust of the documentary that seems off balance: Barely any discussion of the visual ugliness of train graffiti or its costs, while some sad stories are lionized or played up—who cares that there’s a beef between vandals painting over each other’s work: isn’t that irony too thick to be grasped? Alas, the blight will continue, and it’s a continent-wide problem by this point. I would have enjoyed Rolling Like Thunder a lot more had it been a documentary about something long gone.

  • Waiting for Guffman (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Look, I know that Waiting for Guffman is dearly beloved. Christopher Guest’s filmography is incomplete without it; it stands on numerous “best comedies” lists, and it’s a not-infrequent reference even twenty-five years later. But I’m more of a Best in Show person—and when it comes to comedy, I’d rather watch something tightly written than improv that goes all over the place. I also suspect that some of the clichés on which the film is built—which is to say: the backwardness of small-town America—don’t hold quite as true today. Still, that’s what we’ve got: In celebrating a historical milestone, a very small Midwestern town puts on a musical and everyone involved is convinced that they’re one New York agent (the titular Guffman) away from becoming rich and famous. Of course, there’s a quite a gulf in-between their talent and their self-assessment of that talent and that’s where much of the comedy comes in. Guest himself plays a not-very-closeted flamboyant man with Broadway experience trying to orchestrate the show. Around him are various townspeople with delusions of grandeur, small-minded folks not quite grasping what the musical is trying to do, and an assortment of just-normal-people swept up in the craziness. To be fair, Waiting for Guffman is steadily amusing—with people such as Eugene Levy, Bob Balaban, Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard in the cast, it’s hard not to have at least a smirk throughout. But Guest’s much-vaunted improvisational approach (leading to multi-hours assembly cuts that need to be whittled to a much-shorter final film) is a specific taste, and there’s often the impression that the film is going in several directions at once, only to be reluctantly led down a specific path. One thing that may or may not help is the utterly deadpan nature of the comedy: while that’s an impressive alignment of improvisational material (in that no one is obviously mugging for the camera), it takes a specific comedic wavelength to be in-tune with what’s going on. Save for the visually ridiculous musical sequences at the end (some of them surprisingly snappy), there’s little here to suggest at first glance that you’re watching a comedy—you have to pay attention to decode the jokes. It may also be a case of hype exceeding the material—I expected nothing from Best in Show and laughed through the entire thing, whereas I was expecting much from Waiting for Guffman and merely chuckled a few times. It’s certainly not a bad movie—but I’m allowed to pick other guest films as favourites.

  • The Devil-Doll (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Now here’s a fun surprise from the 1930s, a decade in which a few hardy creators were doing interesting things in the fantastic genre. The Devil-Doll is not exactly the most logical or tightly plotted movie out there—it’s a mixture of wacky scientific ideas, arbitrary restrictions, revenge fantasy, special effects showcase and one big hammy actor at the centre of it all. That would be Lionel Barrymore, of course, playing an escaped convict from French Guyana’s Devil Island (where Papillon would later take place) and vowing revenge on those who framed him for fraud and murder by using the human-shrinking technology of the scientist friend he escapes with. If your “you’ve gotta be kidding me!” tripwire has already been triggered by this preposterous premise, then sit down because it’s not going to get any better: Disguised as a woman (hence Barrymore’s interest in the role), our protagonist goes around Paris, shrinking people to doll size, evading police, and unleashing revenge on his enemies by using his dolls with evil intent. Oh, and checking in on his estranged daughter along the way. There are a few conceptual showcases here, such as psychologically torturing his enemy into a confession… while having a murderous back-up plan ready to go if they don’t. Plausible? Absolutely not. Rather entertaining? Yes, very much so. The film being written and directed by Tod Browning clearly gives it a halo effect from Browning’s other landmark horror film Freaks, but it’s perfectly watchable on its own. There’s a further interest in seeing how the film dates from 1936 rather than, say, Pre-Code 1934—some of the film seems to skirt or avoid the strictures of the Production Code—most notably the anti-hero escaping further punishment. Also, Maureen O’Sullivan is quite lovely here. But in the end, all of those quirks accumulate to provide yet another reason why the 1930s remain a strong decade for cinephiles—so much invention for results that remain just as accessible now as they’ve ever been.

  • Zoombies (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) The title of Zoombies says it all: Zombies, in a zoo. Meaning not only undead humans, but undead wildlife as well—have you really lived until now without at least considering the possibility of a zombie koala? As you may guess, Zoombies is not made to be a serious film—it’s a made-for-cable-TV shlock made by the same production crew as Sharknado, and the lower-end production values reinforce the idea that we’re not supposed to take this seriously. Much of the structure is obvious, from the introduction of the high-tech zoo to the bland cast of characters, to the cute animals that will turn deadly, to the high-tech mumbo jumbo that will explain how a virus can jump from animals to humans and back. The actors are in this film because they’re cheap and willing, not because they’re good—although I did find Ione Butler more compelling than the others. And while most of the film is grade-Z bloody silliness meant for humour more than horror, two overly gory sequences stand out as being particularly atonal in the middle of so much good-natured fun: the sobering aftermath of a kid being traumatized by having been attacked by a zombie koala; and a character’s guts being used as a nest for an egg-laying zombie eagle. Yuck—hey, screenwriters, tone down the gore if you want to keep it enjoyable. Those caveats aside, and with a big reminder that this is definitely not a good movie, Zoombies does have a few moments going for it. You already know if you’re going to want to see it.

  • To the Stars (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) At first, and for roughly two thirds of To the Stars, I was pretty sure I knew what I was watching—a historical forbidden romance, which is code for “gay romance set in a period of history where such things were not encouraged—i.e., anytime but now and even then, we’re asking you to pay attention.”  After all, it follows a rural Midwestern shy introverted teenage girl as she has problems fitting in at school during the 1960s. Things look up when she meets a newly arrived girl who’s outgoing, brave, encourages her to get out of her shell and is definitely presented as a lesbian. One makeover later, our protagonist blossoms and realizes that every male in the film, young or old, is irremediably flawed, abusive, violent or otherwise unsatisfying. Accidentally roll the credits after an hour and viewers will confidently tell you how the film ends—our two teen heroines will secretly hook up and eventually flee to San Francisco, where they will become part of the Stonewall era and eventually elder role models for today’s generation. But no. As it turns out, To the Stars slightly deviates from that now-cliché subgenre to deliver something more conventional and somewhat more troublesome. (Spoilers will follow, but then again this is a film whose most interesting characteristics must be discussed through spoilers.)  As it turns out, the new girl is definitely a lesbian, but after an unsatisfactory kiss with our heroine, she hooks up with another female character (a spinster hairdresser), and that liaison is discovered, which results in one character being run out of town, and the other one disappearing under somewhat depressing circumstances. Our heroine hooks up with the least awful male in the cast, and then the credits roll. It’s supposed to be a wistful happy ending and for all of the sarcasm I can muster about the now-overexposed “forbidden romance” subgenre (and that’s a lot of sarcasm), there’s something about that ending that just feels off. Even in telling us to be sad about the fate of the lesbian characters, the film ends up recreating the outcomes dictated at the worst of the Production Code—not only was happiness only found in normality, but “abnormal” characters had to be punished. The ending also seems at odds with the rest of the film, which (in the tradition of many female-centric films of late) paints the male gender in such an overwhelmingly negative brush that lesbianism or spinsterhood seem like the most logical outcomes. It’s an ending that damages a film that should have figured things out earlier and does have its undeniable qualities. The bleak cinematography reinforces the isolation of the co-leads, and Kara Hayward is frankly adorable prior to her characters’ makeover. But in the end, the film seems to take another direction than what it had been going toward, which either suggests that the ending wasn’t appropriate, or the setup was misleading. Either way, To the Stars is unsatisfying—even to those, like me, who have had their fill of by-the-numbers forbidden romances.

  • Wise Blood (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As I’ve mentioned in another review of John Huston’s latter-day efforts (i.e.: 1984’s Under the Volcano), the trouble in tracking down the complete filmography of some veteran directors is that not all of their films are equally good, and for every acknowledged classic, you get two or three other films that may span the gamut from decent to snoozefest. Wise Blood is clearly a Huston film made with a high degree of competence, but it’s also the kind of film that either works or completely doesn’t. (It’s based on a Flannery O’Connor novel, which may be enough of a warning for some.)  Brad Dourif has an early role as a young preacher with a heretic ideology, and enough of a manic personality to follow through on some extreme sacrifices. It’s an eccentric film dealing with far-out characters, mixing screeds about religion and unconventional romance with petty crime and satirical plotting. It’s really not for everyone, and I felt myself curious uninvolved with the on-screen shenanigans. The very glum ending doesn’t help. But the film has its fans—including mentions on a few “best 1000 films ever made” lists. Sure. Whatever. But Wise Blood is nowhere near the top of the list when it comes to Huston’s extensive filmography.

  • Bloody Mallory (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) The world of low-budget cinema can be a slapdash and uneven affair, but Bloody Mallory is an honest surprise: a film made back when live-action anime aesthetics and genre-blending fun were still new, it has the earnest glee of a hyperactive kid having just discovered blasphemy, manga heroines, transgressive literature and digital special effects. So it is that writer-director Julien Magnat seemingly has a lot of fun introducing us to an action heroine (the titular Mallory) and her merry crew of supernatural-hunting specialists—among them a drag queen, a mute girl that expresses herself by taking possession of others, and a more stereotypical man in black. When the pope is kidnapped, Mallory is joined by a kung-fu-fighting priest to discover and investigate a long-lost village controlled by a vampire. Bloody Mallory is a lot of fun, especially if you’re nostalgic for such fare as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 1990s Hong Kong action movies. It’s not a good movie by any sense—everything feels slap-dash (starting with the special effects), as if cast and crew were racing to finish the film before the budget ran out and the checks started to bounce. But quite a few viewers will love the result: it’s playing without any shyness with big genre tropes and ideas, defying viewers to cheer along as it goes for the power chords of the modern fantastic. The roughness of the production is almost another layer of fantasy on top of everything else. Plus, it’s French—so there’s another bonus right there. I wasn’t expecting much from Bloody Mallory, but it’s safe to say that it went far beyond my expectations.

  • After Yang (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Is it too soon to talk about “the A24 movie”? (No, decidedly not) In a decade of existence, film distributor A24 has managed to carve out a specific identity, or perhaps highlight an existing sensibility in the kind of low-budget films whose distribution rights it can afford to purchase. Works that are usually quiet yet shocking, with oddball ideas done in very grounded execution, slow-paced but with high-impact moments that make their films stick in mind even when you don’t like them. After Yang seems to be following the formula to perfection, but it also feels like the kind of low-budget Science Fiction we’ve seen more and more often in the past few years—familiar premises pushed with a different slant, relying on emotional material to the expense of pacing or energy. Those SF films don’t always make logical sense, but they’re hoping you don’t notice some elaborate slight-of-hand more closely associated with arthouse cinema (or low-intensity drama) than the typical big-budget spectacle. After Yang holds true to those as well—aside from a hilariously misleading high-energy dance competition credit sequence, the film is a sedate, meditative, often sad affair as a family with a broken-down humanoid tries to get it repaired before its memories expire. This soon exposes a privacy-busting conspiracy, but don’t worry: the way After Yang goes about its business, there’s barely any intensity except for whether Yang can be brought back. The questions raised about humanity, as it can be incarnated by an artificial being, are familiar, cheap and easy—but the film lingers on them, trying to make in depth what it can’t in originality. This, in many ways, is SF made for drama fans rather than techno-nerds: not quite so imaginative in taking an idea and running with it, but willing to explore a small concept in detail. As someone of the techno-nerd persuasion, I don’t quite respond as well to this kind of SF movie: I’d rather have many ideas rapidly shown than a single one explored in detail. But I can’t be too harsh on the result, nor ignore that this kind of SF drama is helping improve the genre’s respectability among genre-averse critics and filmmakers interested in stretching the usual labels of the genre. As for After Yang specifically, it’s not necessarily a waste of time: Colin Farrell adds another good performance in his post-stardom, character-actor phase. Writer-director Kogonada builds an appealing vision of a post-racial future that doesn’t call attention to its quirkiness. Sure, I found the entire thing a bit too dull for my liking, but it’s still a decent film—and who knows, maybe the ones it inspires will have more pep to them.

  • Donkeyhead (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Despite some light-duty family drama, there is something very likable and very approachable in Donkeyhead. Much of the story revolves around a young Canadian woman of Indian ethnicity who has given up a writing career to take care of her father. As the film starts, the rapidly deteriorating health of the older man brings home her three vastly more successful siblings, all intent on telling her what to do. While this doesn’t sound like a particularly entertaining premise, the fun starts with the characters and how they bounce off each other:  Agam Darshi (who also wrote and directed) is nothing short of adorable as the family black sheep trying to contend with accomplished siblings, but also her comfortable life-away-from-life that’s about to be upended. The family dynamics mix with the specificities of a South Asian family having assimilated to life in wintry Canada, and the result is surprisingly compelling. Everyone has a secret, and seeing some of those plays in real-time can be a lot of fun—such as when a lawyer deals carefully with the family in the hope his affair with the protagonist isn’t revealed. Donkeyhead’s earnestness manages to compensate for much of its familiar nature—troubled female characters being pushed out of the nest isn’t exactly a new thing, but seeing it done Canadian-style with non-Caucasian characters is rather fun, and Darshi manages to make it all feel far more likable than many similar films. I suspect we’re going to see much stronger material from her soon, but as a calling call, Donkeyhead is exactly what it wants to be.

  • Unlocked (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2022) If you have seen Unlocked and forgot about it, don’t be too hard on yourself—in many, many, manyyy ways, it’s a variation on an incredibly familiar kind of thriller: a middling, murky London-set espionage caper featuring a heroine betrayed by friends and institutions. (See also: Milla Jovovich in Survivor, etc.)  Here, it’s Noomi Rapace (working steadily since her Millennium breakthrough roles, but somehow never becoming the A-lister she was often presented to be) as a disgraced agent who accidentally discovers a dangerous secret, and ends up hunted by friends and foes. It’s serviceable without being actually any good—while this was director Michael Apted’s last movie before his death in 2021, it’s not much of a closing statement. Apted’s name probably explains why such known names as Michael Douglas, John Malkovich, Toni Collette and Orlando Bloom fill out the cast—but his handling of B-grade thriller material is merely competent. Unlocked’s biggest problem remains the script, which regurgitates a parade line of clichés without much gusto—there’s a sense that whatever energy the film has is provided by the actors chewing into their roles. Thank goodness for John Malkovich hamming things up in his line delivery; otherwise the entire film would have been a much duller affair. The other highlights (Rapace shooting her way out of a hotel room where she’s supposed to be killed; Colette handling a machine gun) are slight, few and should have been in a much better film. Given all this, Unlocked amounts to a disappointing, and yet very familiar film—a B-grade thriller the likes of which you can watch while doing something else and not miss a single plot beat.

  • 13 Minutes (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) When is a disaster film not a disaster film? The answer to such a tautological question may be more interesting than you think. In some very specific ways, 13 Minutes is unarguably a film about a disaster: It spends roughly an hour establishing its ensemble cast of characters living in a small Midwestern town. But don’t fret—as writer-director-producer Lindsay Gossling’s constant reminders foretell, a tornado is about to land, leaving everyone with the titular 13 minutes to get to safety. That disaster sequence is easily the film’s highlight, with a decent—but not great—use of sound design, tight directing and special effects to give the impression of what it would be like to be in the path of an impending tornado. There’s also some fine footage of a destroyed suburb after the tornado hits. But those rare highlights are measured against some dismal lows—from an overall atmosphere of melodrama to a blatant use of hot-button social issues to the unlikable characters to a dull understanding of suspense and dramatic progression. This means that once the disaster’s done, there’s no real investment in seeing who died, who survived and what happens next. You can also point at the structure of the film as further evidence that 13 Minutes isn’t a true disaster film—usually, the initial disaster sets up another catastrophe that the characters rush to avert, but this doesn’t happen here. You can point at the use of social issues as another difference: while disaster films have their ensemble cast deal with personal dramas of their own, they’re rarely as didactic and self-righteous as when the screenplay wraps itself in virtue of decrying discrimination against the immigrants, the poor, the homosexuals and the disabled. But the most crucial difference is one of tone: 13 Minutes, at the possible exception of when the disaster lands, is not fun. It’s not entertaining, it’s not spectacular, it’s not likable, and it’s not compelling. It’s as if a tornado landed in the middle of a boring performative social drama that would not be worth watching in the first place. The low budget of the film can’t be blamed for its fundamental flaws: It’s not a good sign when you root for the disaster in a disaster film—even in a fake disaster film.