Author: Christian Sauvé

  • A Cure for Wellness (2016)

    A Cure for Wellness (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2017) There are at least two movies in A Cure for Wellness: The first is terrific, and it shows an impressive blending of modern concerns and gothic horror, as a young corporate executive goes to a secluded health retreat in Switzerland where old secrets accumulate in a deliciously over-the-top fashion. It’s the set-up half of the film and it gets increasingly engaging, what with writer/director Gore Verbinski delivering top-notch atmosphere. It’s a frequently beautiful film to gawk at, and there is a precision to the images that confirms his intent to crank up the tension. Seasoned viewers are liable to love it all, especially as known horror signifiers are used to good extent. Sadly, jaded viewers also suspect what comes next: a far less interesting second half in which some mysteries are explained, many are ignored (or dismissed as good-old hallucinations) and the film keeps going well past the two-hour mark. While A Cure for Wellness is narratively conventional, the third act is stuck trying to make sense of the entire film, and doesn’t quite rise up to the challenge. The coda is particularly disappointing, leaving far too many things up in the air. Other inconsistencies annoy. Dane DeHaan is perfectly suited for the unlikable anti-hero of the first half of the film, but he can’t quite make himself or his character sympathetic enough in the second half. Jason Isaacs is fine as the antagonist, but Mia Goth is generally dull as the heroine. Bojan Bazelli’s cinematography remains exceptional throughout, but Justin Haythe’s screenplay is simply a framework. It’s a shame that the film isn’t edited more tightly—there are not reasons why it should be as long as it is, especially given the straightforward script. Still, there’s a lot to like in the film’s best moments, whether it’s an announced nightmarish visit to the dentist, a claustrophobic visit in a water tank, or various bits of body horror and hallucinations. I was reminded of Crimson Peak in that this is a simple gothic horror story told lavishly—except that Guillermo del Toro knows how to layer depths and ensure that the details are consistent, neither of which are particularly solid in this case. A Cure for Wellness does get a marginal recommendation, but mostly for its first half and mostly for horror fans—it doesn’t quite manage to go farther than that for other audiences.

  • Black Mirror, Season 2 (2013)

    Black Mirror, Season 2 (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2017) Well, if you’re feeling too optimistic about your life, the world or what humans are capable of doing to each other with a little bit of technological help, have fun with this second season of Black Mirror (including the unusually bleak “White Christmas” special). If the first season left you with nightmares, this one won’t be any easier to stomach, with “White Bear” and “White Christmas,” in particular, being particularly able to give you fits of guilt at being part of the human species. “White Bear” talks about our capacity for righteous indignation and how rage can become an entertainment experience (hilariously enough, the credit sequence plays like a hideous making-of), while “White Christmas” simply points out how eager we are to enslave even ourselves. But I summarize too much: part of the pleasure of Black Mirror’s twisted effectiveness is finding out that what we think we see on-screen isn’t what’s really happening. Better production values and bigger names (such as Jon Hamm and Oona Chaplin in “White Christmas”) help make the show even better. Still, there’s more to Black Mirror than simple bleakness. Episodes such as “Be Right Back” show that series creator Charlie Brooker is also able to touch upon more complex emotions than simple revulsion. But then, of course, you have “The Waldo Moment” which, in its critique of cheap populism, rather depressingly anticipates that a buffoon could in fact be elected in a position of power. After the way the first season’s “The National Anthem” proved stomach-churningly prescient, maybe someone should keep tabs on what Charlie Brooker has in store for Black Mirror’s third season…

  • Äkta människor, Season 1 [Real Humans] (2012)

    Äkta människor, Season 1 [Real Humans] (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On DVD, November 2017) I’m five years late in watching Swedish TV series Real Humans, and yet taking a look at it today, after 2014’s rush of AI-themed movies and 2016’s similarly themed Westworld, reveals a ten-hour story that still works as a complement to what’s been done since then. Typically Swedish down to the IKEA furniture in the protagonists’ living room, Real Humans takes a refreshingly domestic approach to the perennial issues facing the introduction of humanoids in society. There’s a real sympathy for the robots here, especially as human characters fail to come to grip to their own imperfections in comparison to always-optimal machines. Interestingly enough, this season does spend a lot of time in its first half in making us care for its androids, whereas the second half of the season offers a far more nuanced portrait of everyone involved. Some characters have the luxury of changing their minds a few times, becoming more complex along the way. The domestic approach (in which a substantial portion of important conversations take place around the proverbial dining room table) helps the show remain grounded in its more fanciful second half. Still, this being a Swedish show, don’t mistake “domestic” with “boring”: the series has its share of violent deaths (especially in the last-episode bloodbath), copious nudity and mature themes featuring robosexual characters. While none of the ideas developed here are startlingly original for seasoned SF fans, they are executed well enough, and following characters for ten hours does allow for an impressive amount of character development that may be missing from shorter movies. While there is quite a bit of narrative sleight-of-hand required to keep so many things happening to such a small number of characters, Real Humans does work well, and justifies its running time thanks to deeper engagement with its characters and ongoing ideas. Despite a second series and a two-season English remake, there’s a fair chance that the series will have flown under the radar of most north-American SF fans—get the DVD box sets and rectify this whenever possible!

  • Kate & Leopold (2001)

    Kate & Leopold (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2017) I’m usually a good audience for romantic comedies and science-fiction movies, but Kate & Leopold falls flat in ways that have to do with an incompetent blending of genres. Even as a time-travel romance (a surprisingly robust category), it falls short. It really doesn’t help that Hugh Jackman signed up to play an essentially perfect character, plucked from history to serve as a romantic partner for an incredibly bland heroine played by Meg Ryan back when Meg Ryan was the it-girl for any romantic comedy. While I can understand Jackman’s enthusiasm for a role in which he is flawless, it doesn’t make for good cinema. Kate & Leopold’s romantic aspect seems rote and featureless, while the time-travel elements scarcely make sense. Not only does it have to do with falling through temporal anomalies by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge (!), there is something deeply dumb about elevators not running properly because their inventor has travelled to the present. By the time hero and heroine travel back in time for good, we can barely muster up enough energy to formulate a perfunctory “I give them six months … or really I give her a year before she’s dead.”  To be fair, little of the film’s flaws have to do with its lead actors: Jackman is charming no matter the situation, while Liev Schreiber gets an oddball role as a nerd matchmaker far removed from the tough-guy persona he has since developed. (Amusingly enough, look closely and you’ll see Kristen Schaal, Viola Davis and Natasha Lyonne in very small roles.) While it’s worth remembering that romantic comedies aren’t really watched for plotting or even logical consistency, Kate & Leopold does very little in more crucial matters of characters, dialogue, comedy or struggles to outweigh its serious narrative issues. As a result, it feels both flat and insubstantial—with very little to make it worthwhile except for Jackman coasting with a flawless character performance.

  • The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

    The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, November 2017) I thought I remembered The Manchurian Candidate from seeing it (on TV, in French) more than two decades ago, but it turns out that I had forgotten quite a bit in the meantime. Which is a good thing, given that I got to re-experience it all over again. A product of the paranoid early sixties (it was famously released shortly before the Cuba Crisis), The Manchurian Candidate delves into far-reaching Russian plots to destabilize the United States through intervention in its politics—but stop me if this is too familiar circa 2017. What I really did not remember from my first viewing is how early we know of the Russian brainwashing, and the delightfully crazy way in which this is explained, through a dream sequence that switches between real and imagined environments. After that, it’s up to Frank Sinatra as the protagonist to get Laurence Harvey (as the tragic anti-hero) to reject his condition. There are complications. While The Manchurian Candidate remains a clear product of its time, director John Frankenheimer keeps things moving, and the fascinating glimpse at early-sixties contemporary reality is now fascinating and proof that the film has aged well. It even takes potshots at McCarthyism. Sinatra is quite good in a relatively straightforward role, while Angela Lansbury is surprisingly evil as a scheming mother. Better yet, the film itself is a crackling good thriller with interweaving subplots and good character performances. While much of The Manchurian Candidate will feel stiff by today’s standard (and occasionally silly or misleading, such as Sinatra’s character love interest), it remains compelling today and well worth another look.

  • Haute Tension [High Tension aka Switchblade Romance] (2003)

    Haute Tension [High Tension aka Switchblade Romance] (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2017) Curiosity may or may not kill the cat, but it certainly leads movie reviewers to questionable choices, such as watching Haute Tension despite not liking extreme horror and knowing all about the film’s certifiably insane Big Twist. A core movie in the “New French Extremity” curriculum of extremely violent and intentionally transgressive horror movies, Haute Tension is also an early calling card for writer/director Alexandre Aja, who has since gone on to a Hollywood career. Since I don’t really like gory horror, I put Haute Tension on as background noise while I was doing something else and dared the movie to catch my attention. It only did so in small moments: there is a lot of screaming and crying in the film as it seems to show a woman trying to rescue her friend from a psycho killer. Québec-based French-language horror movie channel “FrissonTV” doesn’t provide closed captioning yet, but that doesn’t matter much given that most of the film’s soundtrack is composed of crying, screaming or disquieting musical cues in-between bouncy pop songs used ironically. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Haute Tension is that it does provide a lot of foreshadowing for the Big Twist (starting with one of the film’s first lines, “I dreamt I was chasing myself”) but also more grist for calling it completely bonkers. Even shrugging off the film as having an unreliable narrator really doesn’t explain much of the film’s first half (including an entire truck). Is it important, though? The point of Haute Tension isn’t the plot or the heroine-as-psycho-killer twist: it’s about the various violent deaths graphically portrayed, the relentless tension of the film and the writer/director impressing horror-loving audiences with whatever horror-loving audiences love to see. I’m not part of that audience, so even noting that the film’s big twist makes partial sense and pointing out that the tension is often effective doesn’t really mean that I liked the result. But I was curious about Haute Tension and now I’m not curious any more, which means that I can scratch the film from my to-see list and move on to something else.

  • The Wizard of Lies (2017)

    The Wizard of Lies (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2017) Of all the things I didn’t really want to see, a sensitive, almost exculpatory look at celebrity fraudster Bernie Madoff is way up there. (If there was any justice in the world, Madoff should have fuelled a few more years of Occupy Wall Street.)  It does take a while for The Wizard of Lies to overcome this prejudice, especially at it seems to spend its first hour explaining how, aw shucks, Madoff kind of, you know, stumbled into massive pyramid schemes as a business model. But, slowly, the movie does get better. It helps that Madoff is played by Robert de Niro (finally acting, for a change) and that capable actors such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Hank Azaria (under the watchful eye of director Barry Levinson) are there to keep up their halves of dialogues. The script struggles under the weight of the accepted biopic standards, allowing itself a few fanciful moments to break the monotony. But The Wizard of Lies hits its strides during its last act, as the weight of Madoff’s criminal acts finally catch up with him well after incarceration. His name now synonymous with fraud, his wife leaves him to rot in jail and his son commits suicide. At more than two hours, this made-for HBO film is a modest success but it may not be as good as it could have been. Madoff’s warm portrayal can be infuriating, but the film does lack a bit of extra energy, especially at first, to make it compulsively watchable. Still, it’s a fairly worthwhile entry in HBO Films’ long list of biopics … and it deserved its Emmy nominations.

  • The Strangers (2008)

    The Strangers (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Crackle Streaming, October 2017) Ho, boy. Another home-invasion horror movie. Another group of psychopaths. Another couple of innocent victims. Another unnecessary attempt at “evil can strike at any time!” messaging, submerged under the cheap thrills of psychopaths running amok. No, there really isn’t anything to The Strangers worth noticing when there’s an entire sub-genre of home invasion horror movies out there. I don’t like the genre, and I don’t like The Strangers, even more so given my girl-next-door liking for Liv Tyler. It’s a really dull movie, and the best thing that can happen for anyone who wants to see it is to goof up on similar titles and see 2008’s The Visitor instead.

  • Dracula 2000 (2000)

    Dracula 2000 (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2017) I really didn’t expect much from Dracula 2000: Vampire movies are a hit-and-miss proposition even at the best of times, and this one had slipped under my radar back in 2000 even as I was seeing nearly everything else in theatres. More than a decade and a half later, the only thing that looks noteworthy about the movie is a cast that includes Johnny Lee Miller, pre-300 Gerard Butler and Christopher Plummer. The plot is a half-hearted contemporary update to Bram Stoker’s Dracula featuring professional thieves and an unexplainable New Orleans setting. Even looking at bits and pieces of the film are grounds for disappointment, as the film features very dated directing and editing. Still, I had more fun than I expected from this low-profile horror movie: It’s not Blade II, but it’s more enjoyable than Blade III. The contemporary update is almost interesting, the Dracula-as-Judas thing may not be fresh but it’s clever and I think that Dracula 2000 was one of the first movies to popularize it. Justine Waddell (looking a lot like Ashley Judd) isn’t particularly remarkable as the heroine, but Colleen Ann Fitzpatrick, Jennifer Esposito and Jeri Ryan as Dracula’s three brides are a very good choice. Jonny Lee Miller plays close to his Elementary persona (minus the whole genius thing), while Gerard Butler is almost unrecognizable as Dracula. There is, in other words, just enough in Dracula 2000 to surprise, even though the execution of those things may not be good enough to fully satisfy. Nonetheless, the film endures just a bit better than many B-grade movies of the time, and seventeen years later that’s not a bad claim at all.

  • Barry Lyndon (1975)

    Barry Lyndon (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2017) For a nearly three-hour long movie from legendary director Stanley Kubrick, there is an unexpected levity to Barry Lyndon that I didn’t expect from the film’s reputation. It’s also a very unusual film in that its second half manages to completely undermine the triumphs of its first, suggesting that some characters are made to achieve success but not maintain it. Adapted from a nineteenth-century novel by William Thackeray, Barry Lyndon feels far more modern because of its somewhat satirical nature. Our protagonist spends the first section of the film stumbling and scheming himself in positions of higher power, eventually marrying rich and acquiring some measure of nobility despite a checkered past. Ryan O’Neal isn’t necessarily as charismatic as the character deserves, but there is a sense of adventure to the protagonist’s upward trajectory. The hammer hits after the intermission, as the protagonist finds himself unsuited to the work required to remain a decent noble. His mismanages his finances, alienates himself from his step-son, suffers through his son’s death, turns to alcohol and eventually loses it all. Such a narrative arc is still relatively unusual, and so Barry Lyndon remains distinctive even today. It certainly helps that it’s a film that features all of director Stanley Kubrick’s hallmarks, from stylized cinematography that still looks modern today, to an abundance of filmmaking effort that clearly shows on-screen. I thought, based on running time and subject matter, that Barry Lyndon would be an unbearable bore, but the result is far better than my expectations.

  • The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

    The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2017) There is, without question, a lot of fun to be had watching The Witches of Eastwick on a basic level, as three likable women are seduced by the devil incarnate, only to take revenge. Jack Nicholson playing the Devil is as perfect a piece of casting as you can imagine, and there’s no denying the combined sex-appeal of Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon as the titular coven. The film does have a good go at satirizing various relationship conventions (What do Women Want? Indeed) before predictably moving toward a female empowerment finale. But therein lies the rub: There was no other way to finish the film, and it kind of goes wrong in subtle and no-so-subtle ways. I would feel far better if a woman had written the screenplay, because the male gaze (and male privilege) shown here is problematic. I’m not sure that all three women being ga-ga over babies of a dubious father makes sense. (It makes even less sense to consider that one of the female characters already has half a dozen children that practically never show up during the movie—where are they and why isn’t she spending time with them???)  In some way, The Witches of Eastwick is an artifact of a time that is hopefully past—a dumb producer’s (i.e.: Jon Peters) brute-force vision of something that should be far more delicately handled. The Witches of Eastwick is funny and sexy, but it’s a guilty fun and an even guiltier sexiness. It doesn’t help that the script seems patched-up at times. The cherry pit-vomiting sequences are just gross and take away from the generally amiable remainder of the picture. (Then again, this is directed by George Miller, who’s made a career to strange tonal shifts) But this was 1987 and we’re now thirty years later—I’d be game for a less problematic remake, but I’m not sure who could step up to Nicholson’s performance.

  • The Elephant Man (1980)

    The Elephant Man (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2017) My rule of thumb for David Lynch is that the more conventional his movies get, the better I like them. (The Straight Story and The Elephant Man would suggest that some sentimentality also helps, but Dune doesn’t really fit in that pattern.)  In any case, The Elephant Man is only grotesque on the surface, as a horribly deformed man (John Hurt, justifiably unrecognizable) is taken in by a benevolent doctor (a very young Anthony Hopkins, looking unusually dashing with a black beard), revealing his sensitive nature to Victorian-era London even as some people can’t see past appearances. There is a strong sympathy here for the marginal protagonist of the story, and it’s that sympathy that carries through the movie even as the lead character gets kidnapped, abused, insulted and wounded. It ends beautifully (if tragically), which wasn’t a given considering the dour nature of the humans in the story. The Elephant Man isn’t perfect: there’s quite a bit of manipulation in hiding the protagonist’s true nature for a long time before the end of the first act, and it’s best not to dig too deep in the real events that inspired the film. On the other hand, it’s a more effective Lynch film because it is grounded more strongly in reality, which doesn’t preclude some pointed questions about human nature and motives. The re-creation of Victorian London is evocative, and the direction has its moments of interest. While I’m not going to pretend that I liked the film more than I did, it does come as an antidote to my recent viewing of Eraserhead, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

  • Inkheart (2008)

    Inkheart (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2017) There is an initial flicker of interest in Inkheart as it first seems that it will be about readers, books and fantastical adventures between fiction and the real world. I happen to think of myself as a Big Reader currently on hiatus while I focus my free time on a hundred years’ worth of movies I haven’t yet seen, so anything that reminds me of what fun it is to read is notionally laudable. Alas, as Inkheart goes on, it quickly retreats to show its true origins as yet another YA film adaptation, with the narrative compromises that this implies. It quickly turns into yet another quest fantasy, and the various ideas that stems from the film’s premise can’t quite save it from narrative ennui as it goes through the motions of so many other YA adaptations of the past decade. (No, Inkheart doesn’t get early-adopter bonus points. Not any more.)  Despite his charm, Brendan Fraser can’t save the film, nor can Helen Mirren, Paul Bettany or Jim Broadbent. Despite everything in its arsenal, Inkheart only manages a tepid impact, and disappointment may be its most striking feature.

  • The Ice Storm (1997)

    The Ice Storm (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, October 2017) In genre-literature fandom, there is this incredibly unfair cliché that the average “mainstream” literary novel is nothing much more than a college professor writing about upper-middle-class ennui, tawdry affairs, dysfunctional families and pretentious pseudo-philosophy. In this light, The Ice Storm hilariously become an example of the form despite a few references to the Fantastic Four comic books. It is about upper-middle-class ennui and tawdry affairs, as husband and wife from different couples have an affair that is exposed during the course of the film. It is about dysfunctional families, as the kids of those two families have their own experimental games. The pretentious pseudo-philosophy comes from contemplating comic books, unsatisfying lives and unusual weather events, with a side-order of communal swinging at seventies key parties. The film is sure to resonate with many viewers—the 1973 setting is convincing down to the awful fashion, Ang Lee directs with a sure hand, and the film has a strong cast of then-established actors (Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, all very good) with a miraculous near-handful of then-rising names that have since done much (Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Katie Holmes). But it doesn’t take much distancing to find The Ice Storm slightly ridiculous even as the film reaches for grief in the face of a freak death and familial reconciliation after trying times. From a non-sympathetic perspective, the clichés accumulate at a furious rate, the dramatic heft of the death isn’t earned and the film concludes without having much, everyone still being the same flawed characters than they were at first. But hey—it got nominated for a bunch of awards, so it must be good, right?

  • Martyrs (2008)

    Martyrs (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2017) I did not approach Martyrs with the best of intentions. I’ve never been partial to gory horror, and Martyrs comes billed as a closing instance of the thankfully short-lived (2001–2008) “New French Extremity” horror subgenre, which combined extreme graphic violence with intentionally transgressive themes and premises. It certainly delivers on both counts: The gore is extreme in-between graphic shotgun deaths, ripping metal hooks from the head of a still-living victim and having the protagonist flayed alive. More philosophically, there’s claptrap about pain being the way to transcendence and a shadowy organization deliberately torturing young women in order to get a glimpse at the afterlife. How droll. At the very least, it’s worth acknowledging that Martyrs is somewhat more ambitious than your usual run-of-the-mill horror. Intuiting that putting some distance between myself and the movie was the way to go, I deliberately put Martyrs on as background while I was doing something else (if you must know: sorting a stamp collection, which should provide you both with a hilarious visual and a telling yardstick through which to gauge my relationship with horror cinema) and never regretted the choice. I’d complain that the new Québec-based “FrissonTV” horror channel does not provide close captioning, but that’s not such a big deal in a movie in which half the dialogue is made of women screaming or weeping. What I had not realized prior to seeing the film is that it’s a France/Canada co-production, and so it’s visibly shot in an isolated house in rural Québec, features some familiar French-Canadian actors such as Catherine Bégin, Robert Toupin and wunderkind director Xavier Dolan (!!!), leading to a mishmash of slipping French/Québec accents that do distract a bit. To say that I did not enjoy Martyrs is as much an understatement as it is an inevitability: This is not a film meant to create positive feelings and you can almost feel writer/director Pascal Laugier begging condemnation from non-gorehound audiences. I’ll grant Martyrs a few things, though: the film may be stuck in its trash aesthetics and nihilistic intentions, but it’s almost refreshingly impossible to predict as it hops from female kidnapping to home invasion to creature horror to torture to secret-society conspiracy. It’s a wild ride made even worse by the extended graphic sequences of extreme torture—as a representative of the New French Extremity, it takes that last word seriously. Most casual viewers (i.e.: not horror fans) are guaranteed to quit watching before the end, casting dark aspersions upon the filmmakers and anyone who likes the film. As for myself, my curiosity is satiated, my stamp collection is in a slightly better shape and I can live knowing that I’ll never have to watch Martyrs again.