Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Dead Zone (1983)

    The Dead Zone (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2016) I’m writing this a few days after the close of the 2016 American presidential election, in a haze where I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t. It’s not necessarily the best time to tackle The Dead Zone, or maybe exactly the right time. Here, an unassuming teacher gains the power to foretell the future and see the past, leading to a complicated life and terrifying visions of what would happen if a local loon became president. Best time or worst time? I’ll tell you in four years. Until then, there’s an impossibly young Christopher Walken’s strangely compelling performance to admire and Martin Sheen as an unhinged politician that contrasts with his latter President Barlett. I’ve read the Stephen King novel too long ago to be specific about the details, but The Dead Zone seems to play loose with the details of the original story, which is not necessarily a bad thing. While writer/director David Cronenberg’s film can hit a few rough patches at times, with ambitions exceeding the means at its disposal, The Dead Zone remains engrossing throughout … and suddenly seems like a newly relevant film at a time when we’re grasping at any attempt to predict the future.

  • The Postman (1997)

    The Postman (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, November 2016) Though largely forgotten nearly twenty years later, The Postman does have a few things going for it. It’s a Kevin Costner-directed movie featuring Costner in his classic stoic persona. It tackles not just the post-apocalypse, but the reconstruction of civilization. It (very loosely) adapts a novel by David Brin, an author I quite like. It is, by nature, fundamentally optimistic about humanity, which is not necessarily something that is expressed all that often in the post-apocalyptic genre. It features some good landscapes from the American northwest, further highlighting similarities with Costner’s western oeuvre such as Dances with Wolves and Open Range. The script isn’t too bad, wrestling a complex subject matter (and often wild source novel) into a relatively enjoyable film. Still, it’s not without its own problems. The most obvious would be the lack of concision in the result, and the overdone sentimentality. The Postman would have been perceptibly better had it been shorter and a bit less overbearing in its mawkishness. Removing some of the slow motion and toning down the insistent score would have helped in making the result palatable to a wider, perhaps more jaded audience. Streamlining the script would also have helped—the final result doesn’t benefit from a lot of repetitiveness and overly-explained context. I’m not overly bothered by the Americano-centrism of the symbolism in what is after all an American movie, but some of the imagery can feel a bit fetishistic to non-Americans. (Woo, post office!) Still, there are a few good moments in The Postman, and the result still feels fresh among other post-apocalyptic Science Fiction films. Even if imperfect, it’s quite a bit better than the crucial consensus seemed to be at the time.

  • Bulworth (1998)

    Bulworth (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2016) I really thought I’d like Bulworth more than I did. As a look in the life of an American politician, it’s not too bad: we get a feel for the trade-offs, the deals, the drudgery of the work. It’s even promising when it becomes obvious that the lead character has decided to give it all up and hires an assassin to take himself out. But then Bulworth decides to become heavily didactic, has its character raps through a few scenes and more or less gives up on any kind of unified tone. It doesn’t work, even despite the good efforts of the performers. Warren Beatty is very good as the titular politician; meanwhile, a young Halle Berry shows up as a young woman that teaches him the errors of his ways. (She gets a very good speech answering “Why do you think there are no more black leaders?”) Bulworth, to its credits, plays with a few daring ideas that remain evergreen (and I write this even despite the crazy electoral circus that was 2016), trying to pass along those ideas within a credible framework. (Witness Oliver Platt, shining as a political operative trying to keep his candidate on track.) But Bulworth ends up shooting itself in the foot a few times, most notably by having Beatty vamp it up by rapping at high-society events, adopting black speech patterns and trying to ingratiate himself in lower society. It’s often more embarrassing than successful, betraying a juvenile intent more than proving its political sophistication. By the end, Bulworth has become a grab bag of intriguing moment and cringe-worthy ones. Beatty the actor does well, but Beatty the director could have used more restraint and another script re-write. But then again, after the results of the 2016 American elections, it may be that our ability to distinguish satire from reality has completely evaporated.

  • The Hateful Eight (2015)

    The Hateful Eight (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2016) As a confirmed Quentin Tarantino fan, I was expecting The Hateful Eight with a bit of cinephile glee, curious to see what he had in mind. After all, each of his movie is usually an event, doing thing with cinema that other filmmakers usually don’t try. His newest offering makes the unusual bet to transform itself in practically a theatre piece by putting eight characters in a snowbound lodge. The suspense is notable, as most of these characters have backstories and plenty of secrets to reveal in the film’s lengthy running time. By the end, the film becomes graphically violent as tensions erupt in all-out shootouts, poisoning and hanging. The dialogues are good and the performances terrific (with particular applause for Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins and Jennifer Jason Leigh), with some assured direction from Tarantino. And yet, and yet… The Hateful Eight doesn’t quite amount to something as good as it could have been. For all of the dialogue’s deliciousness, the film does feel overlong and far too busy for its own good. As the complex plotting and counterplotting accumulates, it’s easy to disengage from the experience of the film. The conclusion is also particularly grim, which doesn’t help. As a result, it feels less interesting than (say) Django Unchained and not quite as meaningful either. Still, even a lesser Tarantino film can feel far more fascinating than other films by more pedestrian authors, so let’s count our blessings that the film exists and wait for Tarantino to come up with something new.

  • Free State of Jones (2016)

    Free State of Jones (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, November 2016) As much as it’s not advisable to trust Hollywood for anything approximating a history lesson, Free State of Jones offers a quick dramatic primer on the incredible story of Jones County, a small area of the Confederate South that managed to rebel against the southern government and remain independent throughout much of the American Civil War. Matthew McConaughey stars in another substantial role as Newton Knight, a Confederate soldier who defiantly returns home with his dead cousin and rebels against the local authorities, drawing more and more support along the way. This takes us through the Civil War, well into reconstruction and the difficulties encountered after the moment most war movies end. It ends up being an uplifting story about inclusiveness, rebellion against injustice and the power that small communities can have in shaping their destinies. Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Keri Russell have good supporting roles as wives who reach a curious understanding. Free State of Jones is not quite as successful as it could be: it feels long at more than two hours and a quarter, resorts to title cards to explain what it can’t dramatize, isn’t always able to make the most out of its scenes, loses its way in flashforwards and occasionally feels like it’s repeating the same thing. Still, it’s an interesting historical thriller, and it has a few weighty themes on its mind. It could have been better, but it easily could have been worse.

  • Love, Rosie (2014)

    Love, Rosie (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2016) Anyone expecting Love, Rosie to remain a cute teen romantic comedy is in for a rough first few minutes, as the film boldly tackles missed opportunities, impulsive sex and an unwanted pregnancy that completely changes the protagonist’s life. Much of the rest follows according to the predictable frustration of seeing the film’s two romantic heroes comes close to consummating their love, but never quite managing to do so. Lily Collins stars, convincingly portraying a woman over eighteen years and numerous life changes. The highlight of the film may be the heartwarming relationship that the heroine has with her daughter. Otherwise, much of the story is a predictable cavalcade of near-romantic misses, intentionally frustrating until the big happy ending. Some of the humour goes a bit heavy on the humiliation of the heroine. The same characters pop up too often over the eighteen years of the story but really—who cares, it’s a romance film. Designed to be sappy and relatively successful in achieving its objectives, Love, Rosie doesn’t reach for the top of its category, but should manage to make its audience happy.

  • Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

    Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2016) Given that I have no perceptible affection for the slasher genre, revisiting the Halloween series twenty years later via Halloween H20 is more interesting for what it shows about the evolution of the genre in two decades and where the slasher genre was at the end of the nineties. Comparing the original 1978 Halloween (and its inseparable first sequel) to this nineties remake shows the gradual taming of the subgenre over the years. The 1998 version is slicker, glossier, occasionally sadistic but just as often hesitant to go too far. (e.g.; no killing kids in public restrooms, thankfully!) The focus on teenagers remains, even though this late sequel cleverly makes middle-aged Jamie Lee Curtis the hero of this belated fight with Michael Myers. Perhaps most of all, though, is Halloween H20’s demonstration that the nineties slasher genre was profoundly dull. Once the film spends the first 30 minutes setting up the plot pieces, everything else follows without much surprise or interest. It predictably builds up to a culminating fight in which the final girl presumably kills the villain … at least until later filmmakers change their minds. The problem is that Michael Myers is remarkably dull even as a quasi-supernatural psycho killer—he has no personality to speak of, and he feels less like a mortal threat than an annoyance you can’t get rid of. It’s possible to damn Halloween H20 with the faint praise of competent execution, even though even that has its limits: Much of this 90-minute film feels far too long, stretched beyond impatience through endless “suspense” moments in which we wait for the next predictable event to occur. At least there is some fun in looking at the cast: Beyond a competent Jamie Lee Curtis, there’s the big-screen debut of Josh Hartnett, an early appearance by Michelle Williams, a minor character for LL Cool J and a very short role for Joseph Gordon-Lewitt. It says much about the film’s interest that there’s more fun talking about the cast than in what happens in the film. Slasher movies periodically rise from the grave to annoy new generations, but few people seem to miss them when they go away.

  • Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

    Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2016) One of the two best things about Halloween III is how it’s completely disconnected from the other movies in the series. For a series that has come to be defined by its antagonist Michael Myers, Halloween III stands completely apart, focusing on presenting a standalone film revolving around Halloween itself. The second best thing about Halloween III is that it’s, to put it bluntly, a crazy film. Trying to explain it cold sounds like an unhinged rant: A plot to kill children using Halloween masks made with pieces of Stonehenge, and robots killing anyone coming close to exposing the conspiracy! … yeah, OK. Other than the crazy disconnect though, there isn’t that much to be seen here. Stacey Nelkin still looks really good (which isn’t often the case for heroines in early-eighties films) but much of the film plays along dully in between flashes of insanity. The conclusion is grim, although it would have been interesting to see the kind of world that would have resulted from those events. There is a little bit of techno-historical interest in seeing how the film grapples with early questions of networked evil, surveillance cameras and the gradual integration of computers in everyday life. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that Halloween III is essential viewing except as an eighties curio. It does have its moment, though. Don’t expect to forget that infernal Silver Shamrock jingle anytime soon.

  • Halloween II (1981)

    Halloween II (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2016) Slicker, gorier but ultimately less interesting than its predecessor, Halloween II at least has the distinction of picking up moments after the original, making for a surprisingly integrated sequel from a narrative point of view. Of course, the match isn’t perfect: Having disposed of much of the cast in the first movie, the follow-up has to reintroduce new characters to kill by moving the action to a nearby hospital. Audience expectations being what they were in 1981 at the height of the slasher craze, the sequel is also significantly gorier, with bigger hints of nudity than the original. Then, of course, is the nature of the antagonist, here even more mysterious and invincible than in the original. There’s also a generally useless revelation regarding the link between heroine and psycho-killer that is best forgotten. But in “improving” upon the original in this way, the sequel also moves closer to the average eighties slasher. As a result, the things that still make the first Halloween remarkable aren’t to be found in the sequel. At least Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t bad as the heroine. Still, the best argument for watching Halloween II is that it closely continues and completes the first film’s story—if you get it in the same DVD series pack, then why not watch it as well? It’s barely more than 90 minutes long, so you can actually watch the two films one after another in the same evening.

  • Halloween (1978)

    Halloween (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2016) I have no affection and only little academic interest in the slasher genre. It’s not a kind of film that I enjoy (although I’m not opposed to other supernatural horror genres), but in trying to build a coherent picture of the horror genre over the past few decades, it’s often necessary to watch some reprehensible films along the way. Halloween remains a reference largely due to its influence on the horror genre in the following decade, in which an explosion of similar films dominated the lower rungs of the B-movie ecosystem. (I was five in 1980 and ten in 1985, so you can imagine the nostalgic memories of discovering VHS stores at the time and their terrifying cassette box art.) Knowing this, the biggest surprise in watching Halloween is how restrained it is: While there is disturbing violence, it rarely revels in the gore and terror of the victims. While there is teenage hanky-panky, there is no nudity. While the film sustains an atmosphere of dread and suspense, it feels far less exploitative than many of the films it influences. There’s a fair case to be made that Halloween is closer to a thriller than to horror and while I don’t entirely agree, this is a film now most notable for the tropes it does not use. Director John Carpenter is at the top of his game here, and the direction of the film remains remarkable even today. (The opening point-of-view sequence is still upsetting even at an age of found-footage films.) It’s also difficult to avoid mentioning the iconic soundtrack of the film, which set an example that would dominate a slew of eighties films. A very young Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic in the lead role. While the film remains a slasher, it’s a competently executed one even today (and especially considering its low budget). It’s striking, however, how much of Halloween’s impact is now dictated by the movies it influenced than by itself.

  • X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

    X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2016) I have always been cautiously positive about the X-Men film series, largely because (especially at first, when there weren’t that many good comic-book movies around) it has always put themes and characters front-and-centre, thus earning extra respectability as comic-book movies with something deeper to say. Lately, the shift to historical periods with First Class was good for style, but with Apocalypse, it looks as if the X-Men series has reached a point of diminishing returns. The themes of alienation and discrimination are more than well-worn by now, and it seems as if the series struggles to find anything more to say about it. It certainly doesn’t help that the film goes back to a hackneyed villain-wants-to-destroy-everything premise: This is exactly the kind of city-destroying stuff that has been done ad nauseam in other superhero movies, and the generic antagonist (a complete waste of Oscar Isaac’s talents) doesn’t help. Other issues annoy: the teenage angst of the X-Men is getting old, and so is the fan service to trying to cram as many characters as possible, especially Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Jennifer Lawrence’s increasingly useless Mystique. There are, to be fair, a few lovely sequences here—the Quicksilver sequence is, just as the preceding film, a joy to watch. Olivia Munn looks good despite being in a handful of scenes. It’s hard to dislike James MacEvoy as Charles Xavier or Nicholas Hoult as Beast. But Apocalypse seems far more generic than its predecessor, and suffers even more from a close comparison to Deadpool’s self-aware sarcastic exuberance. The period setting isn’t used effectively, and the film has some lengthy scenes that play out like all similar scenes in other similar movies. Even under director Bryan Singer’s helm, the result is flat, dull, mediocre and a dead end as far as the series is concerned. The next instalment (because we know there will be another instalment) better shake things up, otherwise it’s going to tailspin into the kind of movies that viewers won’t bother to see.

  • No Good Deed (2014)

    No Good Deed (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, October 2016) What happens when you drop two good (even underrated) actors in a generic formula film? You get something that’s worth watching even if the film itself is almost entirely forgettable. After all, it doesn’t get more hackneyed that a home-invasion thriller in which a dangerous escaped criminal fixates on a woman left alone at home—during a storm, no less! But, with some capable directing and Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson arguably slumming in the lead roles, No Good Deed becomes almost watchable despite a blatantly predictable plot and much nonsense along the way. I’m really not fond of the way that the film ends up tying both the aggressor and the victim together—it’s a far scarier concept to imagine just a random criminal—but I’ll allow it in the spirit of hackneyed plotting. Elba is far too good to play one-dimensional criminal, but he does it so well that it’s hard to be mad at him. Meanwhile, Henson has a far more interesting role as the victim who ends up protecting her children while fighting back at the aggression, even when it moves away from her house. No Good Deed isn’t much more than B-grade exploitation filmmaking, but thanks to its lead actors it remains compelling throughout, which is a great deal better than other movies of its ilk.

  • Brick (2005)

    Brick (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2016) I have an unaccountable fondness for high-concept films, and since Brick can be summed up as “high-school noir”, you can imagine that I liked it quite a bit. Joseph Gordon-Lewitt stars as an outcast in his own school, abruptly asked to investigate a sordid story involving murder, drugs, sex and organized crime. It could have been a comedy or a satire, but it turns out that writer/director Rian Johnson cleverly chooses to play things as straight as he can: For all of the tough-guy dialogue, femme fatales, bleak atmosphere and rough play of the classic noir elements, Brick does not smirk to its audience nor wallow in self-awareness: it simply plays with the typical elements of hard-boiled noir crime fiction within a high school and sees where things go. We never spend much time in class and most of the adults are useless to the teenage characters, but the very cool result makes the most of its low budget. While Brick probably earns a lot of attention nowadays for being the feature film debut of a writer/director who has since delivered two solid films and is poised to direct the next big Star Wars movie, it’s a solid, perfectly enjoyable film in its own right. Noir fans in particular will simply love it.

  • Angry Birds (2016)

    Angry Birds (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2016) Surprisingly, maybe, there isn’t much to say about Angry Birds other than it’s a serviceable animated film for kids. That may be an achievement in itself—it’s an adaptation of a wildly popular videogame and those rarely lead to decent movies. But Angry Bird faithfully follows the current kids-animated-films playbook and if the result isn’t particularly memorable, it’s not terrible either. Bright and colourful, the universe of the film works as a foundation for the gags and while the story isn’t complex, it also serves its purpose. Notwithstanding some uncomfortable anti-immigrant plot threads (and it’s easy to be hypersensitive to those in 2016), this is mostly innocuous entertainment, enlivened by action sequences, musical numbers and various jokes. Fans of the game may or may not be disappointed to see that the big-screen version of Angry Birds doesn’t rely on the game mechanics all that much: Only one sequence re-creates the launching-birds idea and it happens to be one of the funniest of the film. Otherwise, the voice talent is fine, Rovio Animation doesn’t embarrass itself in its feature-film debut and Angry Birds is in the honest average for animated movies.

  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

    Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2016) Hmm. As much as I’d like to be the well-meaning optimist who thinks that there shouldn’t be a Marvel-vs-DC movie rivalry and that great movies are good for everyone, I must confess that lately, DC’s artistic choices (i.e.; handing over the series to Zack Snyder, going for angst-and-gloom, kick-starting a shared universe without building the groundwork) have led me to see them as the incompetent villains to Marvel’s generally competent spectacle factory. As much as I would have liked Batman v Superman to prove me wrong, it ends up confirming what a lot of reviewers are saying to DC: “Gaaah, what are you thinking?” The thing is, I like some of what they’re doing. The idea of building upon Man of Steel’s ruins (literally) and presenting a glum vision of how Superman would be received in a more realistic context is not bad. Snyder is often a gifted visual stylist with an eye for arresting images. Introducing Wonder Woman as a secondary character before her big film is pretty good. Ben Affleck is great as a grizzled Batman, Jesse Eisenberg has a promising take on Lex Luthor, Gal Gadot makes us look forward to Wonder-Woman, while Henry Cavill is picture-perfect as Superman. But the blend of those elements together proves to be weaker than expected, harmed by bad editing, a lack of flow and ponderous pacing. By the time in the opening credits it takes five (or ten?) seconds for the slow-motion gun to tear through Martha Wayne’s pearls, it’s obvious that Batman v. Superman is going to have severe pacing issues, spending forever on trivial details, while fast-forwarding through the plot. The grimness of the tone is unrelenting, and the confusion between subplots makes the extended dream/prophecy/time-travel sequence looks far weaker than expected. It all amounts to an operatic carnival of sound a fury, signifying not much besides setting up another instalment in the series: By now, we’ve come so accustomed to those calculations that the death of a major character seems more like perfunctory fake drama than anything worth taking seriously. So it goes in the DC superhero movie mould: “Just wait for the next movies (or the director’s cut)! We’ll swear it’ll be better!” Yeah, sure, whatever. I’ll see it anyway when it hits cable TV. I just won’t look forward to it.