Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Addicted to Love (1997)

    Addicted to Love (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2015)  I heard about Addicted to Love long before it showed up on my noteworthy-films-of-1997-that-I’d-missed list.  This is, after all, the one where America’s-Sweetheart Meg Ryan ends up playing a short-haired psycho stalker with a fondness for riding motorcycles and making a reference to “a blast of semen”.  This is the one where Matthew Broderick turns out to be an equally-obsessed psycho stalker who can’t let an ex-girlfriend go and instead lives into an abandoned building next to her apartment to keep a constant eye on her.  This is the film where their characters team up to destroy the life of two rather nice people in the hope that they’ll either suffer or crawl back to them.  (I’m sure there’s a fantastic essay somewhere on the web that explains this film’s ludicrousness in excruciating details.)  Romantic comedy?  So it claims.  The bigger problem, though, is that Addicted to Love shows signs that if could have been much edgier, but deliberately holds back.  Did Ryan and/or Broderick impose limits on how dark their characters could be?  Did the script fall into the hands of a director unwilling or unable to follow the story where it need to go?  Did the screenwriter lose his nerve?  I’m not sure and while the result on-screen plays considerably better than what you’d expect from the above summary, there’s a sense that it doesn’t go as deep as it needs to.  Still, what we get is interesting enough: There’s some inventiveness to the light/voyeurism motif (the protagonist is an astronomer and one of the film’s big gadgets is a camera obscura), some of the scenes are crazy enough to be funny, Tcheky Karyo is good as the nominal antagonist of the piece (yet a more mature character than everyone else) and the film predictably wraps up with a big happy romantic bow.  Addicted to Love is not too bad, but it’s not quite what it could have been.  For a 1997 film, though, it doe still have some interest, especially considering how it plays off Meg Ryan’s once-unassailable persona as a romantic ingénue.

  • Catwoman (2004)

    Catwoman (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2015)  Ow!  Catwoman was almost universally panned upon release, which convinced me not to see it in theatres and then proceed to forget all about it.  But it still lurks in the basement-like depths of late-night cable TV channels, ready to pounce on anyone curious enough to have a look.  Yes, it’s just about as bad as you’ve been told: Executed at a time when it was finally possible to distinguish a good comic-book movie from a terrible one, Catwoman now looks, a decade later, like one of the last gasps of the pre-MCU way of making awful movies based on comic book characters.  This Catwoman stands alone, bereft of the DC comics continuity or even the privilege of taking place in Gotham City.  She shares a few traits in common with far better-appreciated media Catwomen (Pfeiffer and Kitt, most notably) but otherwise laboriously goes through yet another boring origin story as if we hadn’t seen enough of them already.  It doesn’t feel like a Catwoman film as much as a very forgettable action movie.  It’s all in the execution, of course, and while director Pitof has an ambitious eye for special effects (some of the sequences are well designed, even if the delivery now look far better in low resolution), he’s not particularly good at telling a story, or even maintaining a sustained tone throughout an entire film.  If you keep hearing about “the basketball scene” from reviewers, it’s because it’s a special scene… best seen than described.  The supernatural mythology of the film is all over the place without a bit of central focus, the plot holes are plentiful, the so-called feminist overtones of the film (Criticism against cosmetics! Female-versus-female showdown!) are petrified by the male-gaze aspect of Catwoman’s strutting and the costume is more puzzling than sexy.  Speaking of which, Halle Berry is just about the only person who emerges from the film with some dignity: She gives her performance some warmth early on, and some energy in the latter half.  Take away her performance and some of the special effects sequences, and Catwoman is barely better than a direct-to-cable action film, with mediocre dialogue, formulaic storytelling and muddled action sequences.  I should have listened to the reviewers and stayed away, even eleven years later.

  • Dope (2015)

    Dope (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, December 2015)  Oh, the joys of being married to a cinephile with slightly different tastes!  I’m not sure I would have looked at Dope had my wife not selected it as our Saturday Night Movie, and that would have missing on a happy discovery: A playful blend of comedy, ghetto awareness, geek-chic, hip-hop soundtrack and fizzy directing, Dope features a black nerd protagonist pushed into crime as a path to higher learning.  It’s got substance, style, hilarious moments and heartfelt observations about the American racial divide.  Shameik Moore is immediately likable as the film’s protagonist, but the ensemble cast works just as well with the material.  Still, the real star here is writer/director Rick Famuyiwa, who manages to bring together hood references with a geek sensibility, delivering a lively film that changes stylistic gears every so often (from narration to breaking the fourth wall, to rewinding in time to explain a strange visual) and keeps things interesting throughout.  There’s some good comedy mixed with the heartfelt social concerns but the combination of geek culture with hood circumstances feels unique, and as a computer nerd I couldn’t find much at fault in the film’s use of technological jargon.  The soundtrack couldn’t be better (fittingly enough, it seems to be only available digitally) and it works both as a collection of songs as well as a reinforcement for what’s happening on-screen.  The ending sequence may be a bit too on-the-nose, but it earns its own earnestness through self-aware storytelling that manages to do interesting things with well-worn elements. 

  • EverAfter (1998)

    EverAfter (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2015)  Everyone’s got irrational dislikes for particular actors, and one of mine is Drew Barrymore.  I can’t explain it, shouldn’t proclaim it but won’t try to hide it.  While I can actually name a few movies of hers that I like (including a few in which she played a central role, such as the Charlie’s Angels films) and find that I’m disliking her less and less lately, EverAfter has taught me that my dislike of her in earlier roles remains real: Her turn as the protagonist of this reality-based take on the Cinderella fairy tale left me cold and wishing that just about any other age-appropriate actress could have taken the role.  It doesn’t help that the film itself feels so dull: Being quite familiar with the Cinderella story beat by virtue of having a young daughter, I find that any attempt to take supernatural elements out of the story makes it far less interesting.  Here, the insistence to “keep it real” by setting it in medieval France feels as if it’s holding the film back, especially when adding Leonardo da Vinci as a character makes a mockery of the whole realism thing.  Hammering modern social notions into that framework also feels beside the point, adding to the increasing lack of interest in the film as it rolls along.  Now that I think of it, you can add “making fairy tales gritty and realistic” to the list of my pet irrational dislikes: it doesn’t add much, takes a way of lot of potential greatness and misses the point of the fairy tales.  EverAfter feels rote, especially after the recent slew of revisionist takes on other classic fairy tales.  At this point, I can’t help but compare it to the live-action Disney remake of Cinderella and find it severely lacking in the wow department.  But, as they say, your mileage may vary… especially if you don’t quite have the same irrational dislikes as I do.

  • How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

    How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2015)  I wasn’t the biggest fan of the original How to Train your Dragon despite recognizing its many qualities, and I have similar feelings about its sequel as well: It’s competent fare, well-executed, warm and beautiful.  As a sequel, How to Train a Dragon 2 does nearly everything right: it expands the scope of the universe, picks up the story at another stage of the protagonist’s evolution, delivers something like the first film without being the first film.  Writer/director Dean DeBlois knows what he’s doing, and the result distinguishes itself from many animated sequel cash-ins.  What seems quite a bit better this time around is the visual polish of the film, which is spectacularly animated from beginning to end, and far more visually interesting than it needed to be.  Jay Baruchel’s voice performance still brings a lot of personality to the protagonist.  This being said, I often wished that I’d like the result more: while watching the film, I often had the impression that it was hitting its targets but for a younger audience.  At least I can recognize that How to Train a Dragon 2 works, and that it should please everyone who loved the original more than I did.

  • It Follows (2014)

    It Follows (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2015) Despite its unlimited potential, genre horror too often becomes stale, relying on the same monsters, gimmicks and metaphors.  As a result, the average horror movie has become intensely predictable, familiar and suspense-free.  But there are a few films willing to shake it up, and It Follows is a refreshing example of genre reinvigoration.  Benefiting from an unusual premise and a remarkable absence of special effects, It Follows remixes lumbering zombies, AIDS metaphors, an eighties-style synth-based soundtrack and unnerving wide-shot cinematography to deliver something that feels fresh and daring.  It’s superficially about a sexually-transmitted monster antagonist that walks up to their target in order to kill them horribly, but it gets a lot of mileage out of that simple premise: Effectively building dread rather than disgust or shock, It Follows manages to say a few interesting things about its teenage horror protagonists and their relationship with sex and death. (Never mind the adults: They don’t figure in the film.)  Writer/director David Robert Mitchell knows what he’s doing, layers in thematic depth, blurs his eras, presents effective nightmare-based frights and gets a lot of sympathy for his characters.  It doesn’t take much more than the opening shots (which simply rotates 360-degrees to present the situation for reasons we later understand) to set us on edge, something that the deliberately off-putting soundtrack later reinforces.  While some aspects of the film can be a bit blurry to the point of owing more to dream-logic than solid plotting, and while one could quibble almost endlessly with various aspects of the premise, its logic or its development (let alone its origin), there’s no denying the effectiveness of the scares or the compelling nature of the film as the characters try to figure what’s happening to them.  Maika Monroe is particularly good in the lead role.  It Follows feels new and disquieting, which should please those who feel a bit jaded with horror movies.  One word of advice: try to see the film on as big a screen as possible: The cinematography often shows action or important images as part of a much wider frame.

  • Arlington Road (1999)

    Arlington Road (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on Cable TV, November 2015)  Some movies are made before their time, and I really wonder if Arlington Road would have been a more unnerving film had it been released three (or more) years later.  There is, of course, a definite mid-nineties vibe to the proceedings, drawing from the Oklahoma City bombing to Ruby Ridge and Waco in setting up an anti-government domestic terrorism rationale: Three years later, the American national paranoia would be obsessed about foreign-driven terrorism.  Adding foreign involvement to Arlington Road would have muddled an already preposterous plot that draws equally upon unlikely coincidences, comically evil plans, superhuman levels of deception by the antagonist and plans that would have a near-impossible chance to succeed if this wasn’t a movie.  There’s emotional manipulation nearly everywhere, and at times it’s hard to believe that anyone in the cast, even Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges, can keep a straight face pushing the story forward.  On the other hand, well-executed ludicrousness has a believability of its own, and so Arlington Road has the decency to remain interesting on a pure “OK, what will happen next?” level, egging us on to the next unlikely plot point.  I’m not sure that it helps that the film is so determined to get its downbeat ending: you can forgive a lot more silliness if it’s all neatly wrapped with a happy bow.  It makes for a more-memorable-than-average thriller, but it doesn’t necessarily make for a better one.

  • Trainwreck (2015)

    Trainwreck (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, November 2015) Much has been said about how Trainwreck is director Judd Apatow’s first film for which he did not write the screenplay; the prevailing hope being that writer/star Amy Schumer’s script would avoid a number of Apatow’s most problematic tics, in particular his tendency to meander and deliver bloated films with largely-unnecessary third acts.  Now that the film is here, though, critics have a good proof that all scripts are filtered through their director’s quirks, and so Trainwreck doesn’t exactly improve a whole lot on the indulgent ramblings, tangential subplots, improvised dialogues and low stakes so characteristics of other Apatow films.  Do note that his strengths also carry through: it’s a convincingly naturalistic exploration of modern relationships, with some good set-pieces, persona-stretching performances, frank discussions and down-to-earth situations.  Trainwreck should appeal, as labeled, to fans of Apatow’s previous films or Schumer’s increasingly familiar comic persona.  Plot-wise, there isn’t much to see here: It’s a fairly standard romantic comedy formula, used as a foundation on which to play character-driven comic moments.  As the philandering, weed-using, underachieving lead, Schumer navigates a tricky line as a somewhat unlikable protagonist who gets to grow a bit during the course of the film.  Far more likable are some personalities in bit-parts: John Cena is unexpectedly hilarious in a small but merciless role, while Lebron James (of all people) gets more than his share of laughs playing himself.  Still, much of the film is pretty much everything you’ve come to expect from the Apatow laugh factory: Those who aren’t fans (or worse; those who aren’t fans and are not in sports), may not find themselves as entertained by Trainwreck as those who are.

  • In Her Shoes (2005)

    In Her Shoes (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2015)  One of the advantages of going back in time and catching moderately-popular movies from a decade ago is that they can help fills a few gaps along the way.  If I had seen In Her Shoes back in 2005, then Cameron Diaz’s similar turn in 2011’s Bad Teacher may not have been so surprising.  It also helps answer the question “What has Curtis Hanson done since L.A. Confidential?” and “Does Toni Colette look better with or without glasses?” (Answer: “With”, but then again I’m always answering that.)  Otherwise, the most noteworthy thing about In Her Shoes is getting further proof that a romantic melodrama adapted from a book often feels far less formulaic than similar original screenplays.  There’s an added depth and complexity to the story that comes straight from the novel, along with a number of literary devices that for some reason seem more common in adapted screenplays.  (Reading a synopsis of the novel does help in finding out that the screenplay isn’t above some compression and simplification, but that’s how these things go.)  Balancing heartfelt sentiment about long-lost family relationship with sibling rivalry and more straightforward romantic subplots, In Her Shoes doesn’t seem like much, but it lands its emotional beat honestly, takes an expansive left turn past its first act and features a few good performances by Diaz, Colette and acting-her-age Shirley MacLaine.  Hanson’s direction gets the point across effectively, and if the film does feel a bit too long at times, it definitely ends well enough.

  • Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

    Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2015)  I’m aware that Wet Hot American Summer now has a cult-favorite reputation, but watching the film isn’t as amazing an experience as I’d been led to believe.  Executed on a shoestring budget in reportedly terrible shooting conditions (as in; cold and rainy for weeks, not helping a film supposed to take place during a single sunny summer day), Wet Hot American Summer does have a number of very funny moments, especially when the film temporarily lets go of character-driven comedy and fully indulges into its most absurdist whims.  Alas, those better moments tend to be sporadic and feel out of place among the more restrained humor of the rest of the film: There’s an unevenness to the quality of the jokes than probably shows better than anything else the relative lack of experience of the filmmakers.  (David Wain would later write and direct the somewhat more controlled They Came Together)  This being said, much of the appeal of at least a first viewing of Wet Hot American Summer comes from seeing a bunch of well-known actors make appearances here, often in very early roles: Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd weren’t as well-known in 2001 than today, plus we get great performances by Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce.  Otherwise, the film’s winning charm compensates for the hit-and-miss humor, although not by much: As the production values limits become more obvious, it’s easy to imagine what the creators could have done with more.  (And, in fact, you can see that in the 2015 four-hour Netflix mini-series that improbably not only manages to get nearly everyone back, but sets itself a few weeks before the film.  )  For more information on the film and the remarkable experience its cast and crew had in going to camp for a few weeks, have a look at Hurricane of Fun also available on Netflix… but be warned that it’s all 2001 grainy footage with very little connective material.

  • Annie (2014)

    Annie (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2015) Will Gluck earned a spot on my list of interesting directors after Easy A and a good chunk of Friends with Benefits: He seems at ease with fast-paced films about young characters but doesn’t necessarily talk down to his audience.  Annie isn’t in the same league as Easy A, but it’s a competent kid’s film with an appealing heroine a good narrative rhythm.  Given that much of it is a straight-up musical, that’s no small achievement.  The story, now decades old, should be familiar: An orphan is temporarily adopted by a billionaire, who then discovers the true meaning of affection and—aw, who cares: We’re here for “It’s the hard-knock life” and “Tomorrow”.  Quvenzhané Wallis turns in a very good performance as the titular Annie –quietening those who may have thought that her breakthrough role in Beasts of the Southern Wild was a feral one-shot fluke, she sings, dances and makes for a perfectly likable protagonist.  Jamie Foxx also does well as a new-economy Daddy Warbucks (he makes cell phones), while Cameron Diaz adds another unsubtle bad-girl role to her repertoire.  The music numbers often fizz and pop (although some of them aren’t as energetic, and the last one can be distracting as background detail-spotters can watch the shadows on the fence-posts to figure out how long it took to shoot.), while the comedy bubbles up naturally.  Some of the dramatic beats are over-played, but there’s some nice cinematography at play here, especially in presenting a glorious one-percenter fantasy view of New York.  I’m not as wedded to previous versions of Annie as some may be, and I have a surprisingly high tolerance for movie characters bursting in song and dance, so your mileage will probably vary. 

  • Le Coq de St-Victor [The Rooster of St-Victor] aka Rooster Doodle-doo (2014)

    Le Coq de St-Victor [The Rooster of St-Victor] aka Rooster Doodle-doo (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2015)  A crucial aspect of resisting American cultural hegemony is the unwritten rule to be a bit kinder to our home-grown films, to be a bit more forgiving, to be a bit less heavy on the mockery.  It’s in that spirit that I recognize Le Coq de St-Victor, a computer-animated film set in a comfortably kiddified vision of long-ago rural Quebec, focusing on a village in which a zealous rooster wakes everyone up and spurs the village to admirable productivity.  When the citizen rebel and the rooster is sent away, productivity falls and economic ruin follows.  Frankly, I’m not sure if it’s worthwhile to map reactionary cultural values (“Sloth leads to sin!  Salvation can only be attained by getting up early and working hard!”) onto a film definitely made for kids, but as an adult it’s hard to see the film’s strange church-free version of a small Quebec village without trying to understand which points the script is trying to make.  The relative marginalization of female characters is a missed opportunity, and the film simply feels quite a bit duller, longer and blunter than it could have been.  The visual style of Le Coq de St-Victor is a bizarre and not entirely successful blend of what looks like 3D animation with hand-drawn 2D elements –I’m guessing that it’s a more cost-efficient way to complete a project, but the visual feel is markedly more primitive than contemporary animated films.  It does have a bit of charm and the cute-factor isn’t to be dismissed, as is a surprisingly detailed explanation of the integrated economy of the village.  (I also regret being forced to see it in its dubbed English version, as I suspect that the original French soundtrack had quite a bit more authenticity to it.)  Still, there remains a sense that Le Coq de St-Victor doesn’t manage to be as good as it could have been, even considering the limited budget and means at its disposal.  The script could have been improved, and the rest would have followed.  I’m not entirely looking forward to seeing this film on almost-continuous loop for the next few years, as it’s likely to remain one of the few examples of made-in-Canada animated films to meet Can-Con requirements for TV channels.

  • Remember the Titans (2000)

    Remember the Titans (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2015)  Some movies feel as if they were executed almost entirely on autopilot, making use of familiar elements to make entirely unobjectionable moral points in ways that are undistinguishable from countless other similar movies.  So it is that I hadn’t seen Remember the Titans, but it felt as if I already had: Using football as a way to discuss racial integration, it’s a film that plays exactly like many other such movies, with underdog victories, enemies making nice, a community forgetting their racial divide through sportsmanship and the entire laundry list of such wishful thinking.  It’s not necessarily bad (with Denzel Washington starring, there’s at least one good performance worth watching), but it’s intensely familiar.  It’s also, to be savagely truthful, the kind of movies so specific to the American Midwest experience (football and racism!) that it becomes an anthropological artifact to non-American viewers: Whatever strings the films pull aren’t as effective for foreign viewers and the result feels intensely mechanical as a result.  Even Washington plays pretty much the same role as he ever has.  Despite its subject matter, Remember the Titans is consciously meant to be nice and uncontroversial: a family movie after which everyone can feel better about their non-obvious racism.  It plays without big surprises, but also crucially without any ambiguity than a look at the historical facts would reveal.  Well-done but familiar, It’s a hard film to dislike but an easy one to dismiss. 

  • Just Like Heaven (2005)

    Just Like Heaven (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2015)  To be honest, I didn’t expect much from Just Like Heaven, which first presents itself as a basic supernatural romantic comedy: A man moves into an apartment vacated under mysterious circumstances, and soon discovers that he’s sharing space with the ghost of a feisty woman who doesn’t realize she’s dead.  Various hijinks follow, all the way to an improbable happy ending.  Standard stuff, except for a better-than-average execution and some good comic moments.  Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon are both very good the lead roles, Mark Waters directs everything with rhythm and the basic concept of a ghost trying to connect with a real live human are good for some unexpected pieces of physical comedy.  It does inevitably dip into drama later on, but no worries: the ending is as happy as anything you’d expect.  Don’t focus on the finer points of the plotting or the obvious emotional manipulation and you’ll be just fine: San Francisco plays itself well, the side-characters are fun, and the film hooks you up without too much trouble.  I started Just Like Heaven as background watching while I was doing something else, and ended up stopping my work to watch the film more often than I’d thought.  That doesn’t make it a great movie… but it does make it quite a bit better than I expected.

  • Afternoon Delight (2013)

    Afternoon Delight (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2015) I’m not sure how or why Kathryn Hahn ended up associated with raunchy comedy in my mind (although watching her roles as borderline-deviant in Bad Words and This is Where I Leave You probably explains it), but it may have led to wrong assumptions in watching Afternoon Delight.  Billed as a low-key comedy in which a frustrated suburban mom changes her life after befriending a stripper, Afternoon Delight ends up being a somewhat miserable drama in which a well-off mother uses then discards a sex worker to rekindle her marriage.  This sounds worse than it is, but the truth is that there’s a surprisingly reprehensible way to read Afternoon Delight that may not be what writer/director Jill Soloway intended.  In-between the naturalistic staging, unspectacular camera work, tonal issues and decidedly un-triumphant ending in which a character gets sidelined after serving her purpose, Afternoon Delight is the kind of independent low-budget drama that seduces with an interesting premise and unsettles with an intensely uncomfortable third act. (That princess-trinket scene… heart-breaking.)  Hahn does quite a bit better as a complex lead character than in her more usual scene-stealing comic roles, while Juno Temple is also quite good as the young woman who upsets the protagonist’s world – both of them, though, aren’t well-served by the end stretch of the film, which seems happy throwing away an entire character just to make its lead couple happy.  Maybe that’s the point; maybe that’s an accident –all I know is that by the end of Afternoon Delight, I didn’t want anything to do with anyone in the film.