Author: Christian Sauvé

  • In Our Nature (2012)

    In Our Nature (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2014) I’m not necessarily adverse to slow-moving character-based dramas in isolated locations featuring a handful of actors, but I like it a bit better when the characters are sympathetic and when there’s at least a bit of a dramatic arc to the bickering. In Our Nature has the benefit of a neat self-constrained premise, as an estranged father and son accidentally end up with their girlfriends at the family’s nature retreat due to a scheduling mishap. Forced to spend some time together, they all end up arguing, making up, saying terrible things to each other, experiencing nature and maybe (just maybe) gain some understanding of each other. This kind of thing is a natural actor’s showcase, and so it is a treat to see John Slattery, Gabrielle Union, Jena Malone and Zach Gilford get to exert some thespian muscles. Slattery doesn’t get very far from his Mad Men character and Zach Gilford labour under the constraints of a spoiled, unlikable character, so it’s up to Union and Malone to deliver the most interesting performances despite smaller roles. The film has a slow and somewhat amiable pacing: despite the remarkable location, there isn’t much to be done here than take advantage of the setting and let the characters talk. A few good ideas about estrangement and life are to be found in the mix, and for moviegoers who usually specialize in genre fiction, there’s something refreshing about a film that takes place in (often awkward) conversations, where the big action highlights are falling from a kayak and seeing a cub bear rummage through a kitchen. But there’s a limit to how much plotlessness even indie dramas can sustain, and once In Our Nature is over, it’s hard to avoid thinking that the film has plenty of loose ends, ideas left unexplored and the changes in the relationships by the end of the film are so subtle as to be insignificant. Is it a change of pace from Hollywood’s usual spectacle of overblown emotions? Of course. Is it satisfying from a moviegoer’s perspective? Not entirely.

  • Baggage Claim (2013)

    Baggage Claim (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2014) There is absolutely nothing new in Baggage Claim, a good-natured but familiar romantic comedy in which a flight attendant frantically sets out to find a husband in thirty days by re-examining her past boyfriends. The conclusion is obvious barely thirty minutes in the film (to the point where the remaining plot elements either feel forced or obvious) and all that remains is enjoying the actors’ performances. Which, frankly, isn’t a bad thing: Paula Patton finally gets a good starring comic role (after what felt like a long series of supporting roles in action movies) and she plays the comedy as broadly as she can, with infectiously charming results. There is also a lot to like in the series of would-be suitors jostling for screen time, from Derek Luke’s boy-next-door charm to Taye Diggs’ power-broker strength to Djimon Hounsou’s effortless smoothness. (Seriously; is that guy even capable of being anything less than totally suave?) While the film’s romantic messages (“Be yourself”, etc.) and airport-set climax were old decades ago, this familiarity works at lowering expectations to the point where the film feels likable even despite having nothing new to say. Romantic Comedies have the built-in advantage of innocuous failure modes: even at their blandest, they’re more forgettable than actively irritating. So it is that Baggage Claim may have flaws, but it’s competently-executed enough to settle for mild entertainment. The actors get to show what they can do, no one will be offended by the results and I can name plenty of films that don’t even meet those two criteria.

  • Bullet to the Head (2012)

    Bullet to the Head (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2014) The problem with making a movie that consciously call back to a sub-genre fallen in disfavor is that, well, there’s usually a reason why the sub-genre has gone away. With Bullet to the Head, veteran director Walter Hill clearly tries to model his movie after the countless buddy-cop action thrillers of the eighties, a fraction of which he himself directed. And to a certain extent, there’s an interesting clash-of-the-eras in pitting Sylvester Stallone against action upstart Jason Momoa. But the final result doesn’t do much more than string along a passable action thriller: Bullet to the Head is generic to a degree that would be almost laughable if it wasn’t for the suspicion that it’s actually trying to be as generic as it can be. While the dynamic between good-cop Sung Kang and secretly-nice-assassin Stallone can be fitfully amusing, there really isn’t anything new here. Stallone looks tired in yet another self-satisfied mumbling performance, and the dialogue that the script gives him really isn’t anything worth remembering. The plot is familiar, and while the various incidents along the way often try to make Stallone’s assassin character look far cooler than he is, he simply isn’t as interesting as the script believes him to be. There’s some value to the film, one supposes, in filling late-night slots, much like its 1980s predecessors once did. But if this is old-school, then it must be remedial class.

  • American Hustle (2013)

    American Hustle (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2014) As a plot-driven moviegoer, I’m always a bit frustrated when contemplating movies such as American Hustle: While I had a pretty good time watching the film, much of this enjoyment was based on getting to know the characters, appreciating the gorgeous re-creation of the late 1970s, humming at the soundtrack and enjoying the costumes. Plot? Well, there’s some kind of bare-bones caper/con action going on, but it’s not particularly heartfelt, nor all that interesting once everything has gone down. This a director/actor’s kind of film, and so the real joy of American Hustle is in seeing David O. Russell having so much fun with Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence that all five of them get Oscar nominations. Much of the acclaim is justified: Russell may not be as interested in telling a story than in letting his actors run with the scenery and the costumes, but American Hustle is filled with feel-good energy, tense dramatic confrontations, steady forward rhythm and plenty of laughs. Christian Bale turns in another performance unlike anything seen from him before, while Bradley Cooper carefully undermines his own all-American good-guy image, Amy Adams brings subtlety to a complicated character and Jennifer Lawrence almost makes us forget that she’s roughly ten years too young to play that particular character. Frankly, American Hustle is so successful in what it gets right that it practically minimizes what it doesn’t get so right. It feels scattered, loose, improvisational and filled with badly-tied loose ends. But at the same time, it’s a fun movie and an invigorating viewing experience. Who cares if the plotting isn’t tight enough: At a time where nearly all major cinema releases are excuses for bigger and shakier special effect sequences, it’s almost a relief when a character-based film comes along and ends up being a massive success.

  • 13 (2010)

    13 (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2014) There’s a familiar-but-intriguing premise at the heart of 13, as a down-on-his-luck young man discovers a secret society of rich gamblers betting on desperate people playing Russian roulette against each other. It’s got class commentary built into a rich suspense framework, which is usually more than enough for a respectable little thriller. Add actors such as Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke and Michael Shannon and you can almost expect something good. Unfortunately, the result is remarkably underwhelming. The slow pacing doesn’t help, nor does the somewhat indifferent lead character or the gratuitously drawn-out nihilistic ending. While this is an American remake of acclaimed low-budget Georgian thriller 13 Tzameti, I’m not sure Hollywood is to blame for the lack of energy, as writer/director Géla Babluani helmed both films, and plot summaries from both versions seem more or less identical. The marquee actors don’t add much, as they show up for scarcely more than secondary roles. 13 simply feels more annoying than thrilling, and considerably duller than its sharp premise suggests. No matter the premise, all is in the execution and this one is botched.

  • The Counselor (2013)

    The Counselor (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2014) I can see why The Counselor got such terrible reviews. It’s utterly nihilistic, written with self-conscious lack of Hollywood polish, inconsistently paced and stylised to a degree that can be uncomfortable. The violence isn’t glamorous, the good guys are victims and there’s no escape from the consequences of bad decisions. On the other hand, I’m finding it hard to dismiss it out of hand as a complete failure: novelist Cormac McCarthy can be out of his depth as a screenwriter and Ridley Scott can have one of his off days, but the result of their collaboration has individual moments of off-beat brilliance. Michael Fassbender is compelling as a good man who decides to tempt fate with a few illegal decisions – The Counselor is about what happens when he runs afoul of some people without restraints to their wrath, and the ultimate price he pays for transgressing order. An interesting number of actors surround him, from an amused Brad Pitt to an often-hilarious Javier Bardem who gets some of the most darkly comic lines of the film. Penelope Cruze and Cameron Diaz get opposite roles as the good and the bad girl, with starkly different fates. There is, to be clear, no flow to the movie as it hops from one monologue to the other, from one oblique scene to the next and from one seemingly disconnected set piece to another. The film is at times suspenseful, disgusting, enigmatic, hilarious, horrifying and tragic. It’s all shot impeccably (it’s a Ridley Scott film, after all) but it struggles to amount to much more than a series of showcase sequences. There’s little suspense –almost by design, since this is a film describing an irreversible downfall but there is a sense of clumsiness to the result, as if no one could be bothered to smooth out the edges in-between the smaller pieces. That doesn’t make The Counselor an overlooked classic, but it makes it a hard sell for anyone who’d prefer a more consistent experience.

  • Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

    Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1994 paperback revised edition of 1985 original, 352 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-812-55070-2

    It’s hard to overstate the prominence of Ender’s Game as one of the major novel in the Science Fiction genre. It swept the major awards of the field upon initial publication in 1985 and hasn’t stopped selling in the three decades since then. It’s one of those rare SF novels that nearly every serious fan has read, and it has found a substantial audience outside the genre. It’s a perennial favourite of SF academics, a part of the US Army course curriculum and has been translated in nearly all major languages. Now that it’s a movie, it’s likely to replace Dune as my perennial favourite for demonstrating the reach of media SF compared to written SF. (As in: In any given room, more people will have seen the averagely-successful movie than will have read one of the best-selling SF novels of all time.)

    And with that success has come a substantial backlash, reinforced by the widely held perception among the most progressive wing of SF fandom that author Orson Scott Card has since become a conservative right-wing homophobe. (Vulture has a nice timeline of the controversy.) There is now a vigorous number of essays criticizing the novel from various points of view: John Kessel’s Creating the Innocent Killer remains a landmark, but for a comprehensive look at the various self-contradictions and outright puzzlers of the novel, I can’t recommend highly enough Will Wildman’s vastly entertaining and insightful Ender’s Game read-through. And I’m sure that there’s plenty of accumulated wisdom somewhere in the 7643 reviews that the book (merely 179 of them one-star) has accumulated so far on Amazon.

    I first read Ender’s Game as an older teenager, and it’s fair to say that almost exactly twenty years later, I don’t quite have the same perspective on it than I did back then. I picked up the book shortly after seeing the movie adaptation, and unlike my mid-nineties read-through, I immediately started second-guessing the basic premise of the novel. Ender’s Game appeals to smart teenagers because it tells them that they are special, and so are inevitably ostracised by normal people, and that being so exceptional gives you the right to kill your tormentors as long as you feel bad about it. This is the kind of power-fantasy that explains the book’s success… and that seems toxic once you graduate from high school. Given my life’s journey so far, I’m increasingly dubious (and headed toward repulsion) of fantasies of exceptionalism. The bedrock of Ender’s Game plot machinations are that the end justify the means, that it’s OK to systematically abuse a boy if he’s the only chance that humanity has at surviving. But that only works as a narrative conceit. The real world doesn’t require such harsh premises: smart people are everywhere, and it’s hard to imagine a situation where a single exceptional person could save the world. In reality, many people are suitable for even the toughest assignments, and they usually succeed because of systems, teams, procedures and support mechanism that do much to distribute expertise among capable groups. (Yes, I work in an office.) Exceptionalism is a sure road to exceptions and abuses of power. We don’t need exceptional people to save us: We need structures so that we never get in a situation where we need saving by exceptional people.

    But never mind that for a moment: Broad ideological objections aside, Ender’s Game does remain a highly enjoyable read. Card has a gift for prose narration that remains easily readable while hitting ambitious emotional targets. His handling of incluing is as good as it gets (as you can see from the use of technology that is never explicitly explained, but fits the plot naturally while surviving twenty years of innovations) and he manages to render a compelling internal monologue for his characters. As strange as some of the novel’s plot points can be, their handling feels right –the sequences where the teams of soldiers-in-training go in combat are exhilarating, and there is some strong emotional material in the conversations that Ender has with his sister.

    It’s also worth underlining how ironic the novel seems to be from beginning to end. Ender may be a savior of humanity, but he needs to be made alien to everyone in order to do so. His greatest triumph remains his biggest mistake, and for an entire novel thirsting for xenocide, Ender’s Game seems positively devastated when humans triumph over their opponents. Ironies pile upon each other in a rich blend that makes it hard to dismiss the entire novel as being much of this and some of that.

    Still, Card’s contemporary reputation as a right-wing homophobe being what it is, it’s amusing to spot in a 1985 novel the various kernels of what would later define him among a certain audience.

    • Sexism? Try the bit where girls are said to be less aggressive than boys due to centuries of evolution:

    “All boys?” “A few girls. They don’t often pass the tests to get in. Too many centuries of evolution are working against them. (Chapter 3)

    • Jingoism/religionism/birthism? I was gobsmacked by the bit where the French (in their “arrogant separatism” ) are bashed for daring to speak French rather than “common” language –in the same novel where the Poles are praised for chafing against anti-Catholicism (and, more importantly, anti-birth-limits) restrictions. Have a look at this:

    His name, Ender quickly learned, was Bernard. He spoke his own name with a French accent, since the French, with their arrogant Separatism, insisted that the teaching of Standard not begin until the age of four, when the French language patterns were already set. (Chapter 5)

    versus

    Your father was baptized with the name John Paul Wieczorek. Catholic. The seventh of nine children. (…) Your father denies his Polish ancestry, since Poland is still a noncompliant nation, and under international sanction because of it. (…) [Your parents] haven’t really given up their religion. They look at you and see you as a badge of pride, because they were able to circumvent the law and have a Third. (Chapter 3)

    • Zionism? There’s a few paragraphs dedicated at explaining why Jews make the best generals (and this despite a Jewish character called by a slur and demonstrated to be not very good at the stuff.): it starts with

    “Since the I.F. was formed the Strategos of the military forces had always been a Jew. There was a myth that Jewish generals didn’t lose wars. And so far it was still true.” (Chapter 8).

    • Racism? There’s a bit where the kids trade the n-word and then laugh about slavery, which ends with

    “Alai grinned. “My grandpa would’ve killed you for that.”
    “My great great grandpa would have sold him first,”    . (Chapter 6)

    [This bit apparently isn’t to be found in the latest editions of the novel.]

    But there’s something even more amazing (not) to be found in a contemporary reading of Ender’s Game: For an author often accused of homophobia, you’ll find quite the opposite in the novel. In fact, it doesn’t take much imagination to read protagonist Ender as a gay, and the events showing him his true preferences in bonding with other boys while having ambivalent non-romantic feelings about girls. In a better universe, a slightly-revised version of Ender’s Game has become beloved for showing a positive role model for young gay teenagers. In this world, oh well. Moving on.

    Perhaps my biggest reaction to a second reading fifteen years later is how rough the novel can feel at times. The world-building is a bit shaky around the edges, the plots points handled more arbitrarily than needed. A close reading of the text reveals astonishing contradictions, and push buttons that readers may develop later in life. I still think (as documented in my big list of Alternate Hugo Winners) that Ender’s Game is one of the novels from 1985 that everyone should read, but I now have to temper this assessment with a few warnings (and maybe move Sterling’s Schismatrix to the top spot). This, too, feels like the passing of the years more than any change in the novel itself: I’m not the same reader than I was twenty years ago, and my then-tendency to see it through uncritical fannish lenses has been eroded away (and even more so lately that I’m reading far less SF and am so not as completely immersed in its privileged assumptions.) So it goes; much like the plot of Ender’s Game requires an innocent ready to be molded into a destroyer of worlds, it strikes me more than ever that Ender’s Game is deliberately optimised for less-jaded readers. Which may very well explain its massive appeal: there are far more innocents out there than stone-cold readers.

    [April 2014: Reasoning that I’d never get as good an opportunity while the original was still fresh in my mind, I re-read “parallax” novel Ender’s Shadow, which explores the same rough timeline from the perspective of ‘”Bean”, a minor character in Ender’s Game. Here we see Card’s attempts to patch the holes in Ender’s Game with fifteen years’ insight and second guesses about the first novel. Nearly every dicey plot development in Game is explained in Shadow as part of a masterful plan by someone even smarter than Ender. It often reaches ludicrous levels of disbelief (especially once you factor in Bean’s age) but there is some compelling material here and there, especially in getting another, better hit of the same kind of excitement about Battle School training. There are some major contrasts between both novels, though, and some of the issues in the previous novel simply can’t be explained away. My advice: If you’re going to read Ender’s Game, have a quick look through Ender’s Shadow while events are still fresh in your mind. Browse quickly over the parts with Sister Carlotta and Achilles, and focus on the parallax view of Ender as from other viewpoints.]

  • Cinderella (1950)

    Cinderella (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (First-through-fiftieth viewings, Toddler-watching, On Blu-Ray, March 2014) I must have watched Cinderella a few times as a kid, but watching again with my daughter is like seeing a new film… especially when toddler-watching it a few dozen times in a row. As I should know by now, animated Disney movie have amazing power to remain just as enjoyable today as they did upon release a long time ago (a baby born on Cinderella‘s premiere day would be months away from retirement as I write this): the toe-tapping musical numbers, clean direction style, charming animal sidekicks and heart-warming finale have all survived nearly intact and have been re-used in countless other movies since then. Cinderella is one of the classic underdog stories, of course, and this version basically codified Perrault’s fairytale into the sanitized form that most people have now learned. (I have a non-Disney “Cinderella” puzzle book within reach, and despite the adorable anime drawing style, nearly all of the background details are inspired by the Disney version.) The animals remain one of the enduring assets of the film: Cinderella herself barely shows any personality (although I do like the glimpse at her exasperation at hearing the castle bells toll upon waking up) and the antagonists are too caricatured to be taken seriously. (On the other hand, there’s a pretty good gag involving the cat blowing out a candle.) But ask my daughter: we’re really watching for the animals and the musical numbers: “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” remains the standout sequence of the film, even though “The Work Song” is a solid second, and “Sing, Sweet Nightingale” remains curiously hummable, especially in its horrid version. Otherwise, I still think the film ends too quickly… but that’s often a relief when going through another round of “this is the last time we watch it today, OK? The last time.”

  • Thor: The Dark World (2013)

    Thor: The Dark World (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2014) I said it about the first movie and I’ll say it again because it’s important: I don’t really care about the entire mythology of Marvel’s Thor character. It’s a hodgepodge of fantasy concepts all blended together and I can’t make myself to care about Asgaard’s sixteen worlds of wonder or whatever. The hammer is lame, the palace intrigue is dull, Thor looks silly and the material with his faithful companions (or, again, whatever) is so under-developed as to be a waste of footage. So it’s no surprise if Thor 2 feels like such a slog in-between the passable parts. I still find Chris Hemsworth compelling in the title role, I’m not entirely immune to Tom Hiddleston’s charming villainous performance as Loki and there are a few nice special effects sequences here and there. But once the geekery cranks up into a salad of made-up words, I’m left rolling my eyes and thanking my own good luck that I never got into comics in any serious way. I’m still frustrated by the absence of thematic depth to the Thor films, and felt my fleeting interest dwindle the longer the film was away from Thor or Loki. I’ll tolerate the result if it means we get another Avengers film out of it, but come Thor 3‘s opening day, look for me anywhere but in the movie theaters showing it. I don’t care and it increasingly looks as if no one can make me care.

  • Ender’s Game (2013)

    Ender’s Game (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, February 2014) As a confirmed Science Fiction reader with an extensive knowledge of the genre’s classics (seriously, have you read the book reviews on this web site?), the big-screen adaptation of Ender’s Game after decades of discussion and false hopes (“Jake Lloyd as Ender!”) is a Big Deal. It’s one of the genre’s biggest, most passionately-discussed novels finally brought to a wider audience, with all of the good and bad that this supposes. (I’m going to mention, but not dwell upon, the controversy surrounding novel author Orson Scott Card’s homophobia… except to note ironically that if someone reads Ender’s Game without any clue as to Card’s attitudes, they’re likely to find a sympathetic depiction of a protagonist who may very well be more interested in boys than girls.) The good news are that much of the novel’s plot has been adapted reasonably faithfully. Even the changes feel like a much-needed polish over the novel’s rougher elements: Ender being a more reasonable age, streamlining some of the plot points, toning down the “bugger” slurs, excising the “genius bloggers” angle, and including a redemption for one of the minor antagonists: It makes the novel’s most problematic edges easier to take (and if you don’t think the novel has its share of edges, go re-read it.) Much of the novel’s surprises are included as well (although, yes, the trailer does spoil one of the pivotal images) although telegraphed so hard that readers may find them underwhelming. The use of cutting-edge special effects makes not only for visually pleasing space-fight sequences, but for a convincing Battle Room as well. Gavin Hood’s direction is nicely unobtrusive, while Asa Butterfield makes for a serviceable Ender even as Harrison Ford turns in another fun grumpy-old-man performance. Ender’s Game does feel rushed (the novel takes place over years, making the progression of the protagonist more realistic –the film seems to take place over six months.), doesn’t seem to portray Ender’s isolation and exhaustion as accurately, and takes a few too many shortcuts in an attempt to set up the background information. And while the novel was explicitly written to set up sequel Speaker for the Dead, the film does the same, leading to a truly puzzling conclusion for non-readers that is unlikely to be satisfied by a filmed sequel. For a novel as flawed as the original, the adaptation does its best, and while the result is unlikely to be as much of a classic in the movie realm as the original was in the written, Ender’s Game is a decent-enough Science Fiction film. For years, in speaking with large audience about the reach of written SF compared to filmed SF, I always used Dune as my example: in pitting the best-selling SF novel of a generation compared to a mildly-successful film adaptation, I always found that more people were familiar with the film. Now I’m about to update my example to Ender’s Game: As massively successful as the novel was and as tepidly received as the film is, more people will be familiar with the film than the novel. Even die-hard written-SF fans will have to live with that.

  • Bailout: The Age of Greed aka Assault on Wall Street (2013)

    Bailout: The Age of Greed aka Assault on Wall Street (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2014) Writer/Director Uwe Boll may be one of the most reviled filmmakers around, but wow is his latest Assault on Wall Street a fascinating piece of work. Few movies commit as completely to sheer populist outrage, and in selecting Wall Street as a target for a cheap exploitation film, Boll seems far more adept at reading the cultural zeitgeist than in more Hollywoodized products such as Tower Heist. From the get-go, the plot screws have the ring of the time: A protagonist stuck between crippling medical bills and life savings frittered away by financial shenanigans vows vengeance when he loses everything. The titular assault not only succeeds, but goes unpunished and even celebrated in a bit of epilogue narration. Hollywood is never this transgressive, and that makes Assault on Wall Street worth a look even if the film itself never rises above straight-to-video quality levels. There really isn’t much to say about the acting, directing or cinematography when compared to the sheer chutzpah of the script. Taking a break from more fantastical video-game premises suits Boll well: maybe he should consider that as a future career path. Who knows –he may end up doing something more than half-way respectable one of those days.

  • Scary Movie 5 (2013)

    Scary Movie 5 (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2014) The art of the parody movie has eroded so dramatically since the ZAZ heydays of Airplane! and Top Secret! that contemporary standards for those kinds of films are, to put it mildly, abysmal. If it’s not from Friedberg/Seltzer, then it’s already a notch above the worst. If it’s not wall-to-wall covered with sadistic slapstick violence, it’s another rung up. (But I repeat myself.) If it tries something slightly funnier than simply re-create scenes from well-known movies then we’re already comfortably above the bottom of the barrel. Sadly, this doesn’t mean that Scary Movie 5 is a good movie; it just means that it’s not as bad as it could have been. I suppose that anyone willingly choosing to watch this film can’t complain if it sucks: The previous installments of the series have ranged from terrible to mediocre, so it’s not as if the series has a reputation to maintain. This time around, Scary Movie 5 rounds up sequences and references to films ranging from 2010 to 2013, curiously choosing the inconsequential Mama as a framework, Paranormal Activity as methodology and delving into both Black Swan and Rise of the Planet of the Apes for extended sequences. (There are smaller, lamer riffs off Inception, The Help, Sinister and Evil Dead, as well as an attempt to spoof 50 Shades of Gray before it even comes out) It occasionally gets a few grins: The opening sequence with Charlie Sheen and Lindsey Lohan works well because Sheen handles most of the comedic heavy lifting and Lohan looks surprisingly good. There’s a beautifully absurd pool-robot-party sequence late in the film that had me giggling like an idiot, and a few gags here and there earn at least a chuckles. Anna Faris and Regina Hall are sorely missing from this fifth entry, but Ashley Tisdale does her best to step up in the lead role, understanding that in this kind of film you don’t have to be good as much as being game to do the silliest things. To its credit, Scary Movie 5 doesn’t just rely on cartoon violence and laugh-free recreations. But it rarely manages to go beyond the cheap laughs and easy targets. It seldom trusts the viewers to figure out the joke, explaining it in far too much detail and killing it in the process. (Tellingly, the best running gag of the film are the split-second glimpses of the antagonist running around in the background.) Scary Movie 5 struggles to make it to 75 minutes before adding a 15-minutes-long credit/outtake/cookies sequence. While the film has enough grins to avoid raising outrage like many of the worst examples of the genre, it’s not good enough to get more than a lukewarm okay-if-you-like-that-kind-of-thing. Frankly, when it comes to dumb Paranormal Activity spoofs, A Haunted House –itself no paragon of comic filmmaking– did it first and did it better.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, October 2021) One thing made clear by a Scary Movie series Halloween marathon is that it naturally divides itself into three segments, neatly distinguished by their directors. The first Wayans phase (first and second films) is uneven and gross, with the second film being a blight on the series. The second Zucker phase (third and fourth films) is more chaotic in plotting, but more even in gags (even if it overuses slapstick comedy). The third phase, solely comprised of Scary Movie 5, shows clear signs of being an inglorious epilogue. Directed by comedy veteran Malcolm D. Lee, it’s not that bad of a film, but it trends toward an amusing-but-not-funny whole. It’s perhaps closer to the fourth film if you consider that the two screenwriters return from previous films—but the visible replacement of Anna Faris and Regina Hall by Ashley Tisdale and Erica Ash (in different “roles,” whatever that means in this series, but still stepping in the same shoes) is a clear sign that this is a last call. I’m not sure who thought making a parody of Mama was a good idea—Scary Movie 5 gets more laughs out of poking at the Paranormal Activity series anyway. While this fifth instalment is not generally as gory or gross as many of the previous instalments (with the exception of an atonal Evil Dead segment), it doesn’t reach that many comic heights either—the only exception is a robot pool party sequence that still got me laughing a second time around, but feels as if it belongs to another better movie. There are a few directorial flourishes, mostly in the way some parodies (such as the Black Swan sequences) take their stylistic cues from their inspiration, at the risk of looking out of place here. Otherwise, there are many celebrity cameos, some actors returning from prior instalments, but the exhaustion is palpable, what with the film barely making it to the 75-minute mark before featuring a very lengthy outtake/credits sequence. Scary Movie 5 is certainly watchable—and a far better experience than many of the series’ lowest moments—but it puts a stake in a series that few will seriously mourn.

  • Killing Season (2013)

    Killing Season (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2014) There is, admittedly, some interest in seeing Robert de Niro going head-to-head with John Travolta in a no-holds-barred brawl through the Appalachians. But the interest in seeing Killing Season pretty much stops at its concept, because the film turns out to be a far duller and gorier in its execution than it should have been. Never mind the dull prologue, the interminable setup or the pretentious dialogues that drown the rest of the film’s quick-and-violent aims: Killing Season seems flawed from the beginning, from casting to the uneasy mixture of art-house bon mots with grind-house blood. While the violent match-up between John Travolta and Robert de Niro isn’t without interest, it’s hard to shake the feeling that neither of those actors are right for their respective roles. Travolta gets to indulge into fancy facial hair and an even fancier accent, but doesn’t have the gravitas required for playing a Serbian soldier with a murderous grudge. Meanwhile, de Niro seems out of place as a cranky ex-soldier: he’s too old to play the character (especially given the action sequences in the film), and his established persona is far more social/urban than being holed up in a cabin. For two people who, by mid-film, are pretty dead set on killing each other, the film drags on, and on, with an escalating number of scenes where the characters get graphically mauled or tortured. The gore increases the contrast between the exploitation roots of the premise and the talky themes it attempts to explore along the way: while action thrillers can certainly use action explore weightier themes, Killing Season simply seems to stop dead in-between its action beats as it talks and talks about the horrors of war and the way veterans never truly re-integrate peaceful society. Then there’s the weight of the film’s stars: While the film could have been an interesting discovery had it featured quasi-unknowns, it begs for more in featuring Travolta and de Niro. Anyone seeing it on cable TV listings may watch it thinking that it’s a bigger and better film than it is… and disappointment will ensue.

  • Erased aka The Expatriate (2012)

    Erased aka The Expatriate (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2014) The prototypical thriller follows a familiar formula, but that’s no excuse to make a film as immediately forgettable as Erased. From the get-go, we are served well-worn elements: the highly-competent hero with a shady past, the woman to protect, the betrayal that upends everything that the hero knows and sends him on the run… In a few minutes, Erased sets its expectations downward and keeps them there. The bland European scenery doesn’t add much, and the progression of the plot to the hero turning the tables against the conspirators isn’t handled with any wit or freshness. It’s not as if formula by itself is bad: there are countless examples of dull premises made interesting by competent execution. But Erased doesn’t have that. Aaron Eckhart (a much better actor than most of the roles he plays) is stuck without much to do except look tough and run fast. (His transformation from super-geek to ex-CIA operative is a bit abrupt, although it’s the kind of stuff allowed on principle in thrillers, otherwise the result would be far less interesting.) In a word, Erased is dull and (ironically) instantly forgettable. It’s not actively bad or unpleasant, but it quickly blurs between what seems to be a countless number of films all telling pretty much the same story.

  • Inventory, The Onion A.V. Club

    Inventory, The Onion A.V. Club

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Scribner, 2009, 256 pages, C$24.00 tp, ISBN 978-1-4165-9473-4

    Seven ideas gleaned from reading the Onion’s A.V. Club Inventory

    1. The web’s lowest-common-denominator excuse for content has finally crossed over to the paper world. Oh, I jest, but only barely: For one thing, books of lists have a long pedigree (From David Wallechinsky’s The Book of Lists series to David Letterman’s books of Top Ten Lists). For another, while Buzzfeed.com has recently perfected the idea of using lists as cheap ways to grab viewer eyeballs on the web to a science, the folks at The A.V. Club have been at it for years, delivering weekly lists of pop-culture trivia. Inventory is a collection of their best lists, along with some original material all wrapped up in pleasant page design.
    2. Pop culture is hopelessly tribal: Since The A.V. Club is entirely dedicated to pop-culture, expect the lists in Inventory to focus on movies, TV, music or (more rarely) books or video games. Of course, since the lists delve deep into minutiae, their interest is likely to be proportional to your own knowledge of the area. I’m generally knowledgeable regarding movies, a bit less so regarding books or video games, and sort-of-lost in TV and music (it’s a vast universe, and one can’t be expected to know everything) and my interest in the lists was generally proportional to my expertise in the area. Some of the music stuff was dreary and pointless enough to make me skip to the next list; other lists about movies, video games or books felt far more interesting. Inventory is a buffet; take what you want.
    3. At their dullest, lists are wastes of meaningless trivia: Especially if you have no perceptible interest in the central focal point of the list. “Songs about taking the bus?” Meh. “Songs under 3 minutes.” Really? I don’t need a list of movies about specific things when I can just go get one from IMDB.com
    4. At their best, lists are a decent way to chunk a larger thesis: Beyond trivia, well-conceived lists become something else: Some of the most remarkable material in Inventory end up building an argument through an accumulation of examples, or a categorization of the same. “Approaches to DVD commentary” isn’t a list as much as a systematic breakdown of how directors approach their DVD commentaries. “Videogames that outraged a nation” paints a capsule history of how videogames pushed the envelope throughout their history. And “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” practically codifies a trope that illuminates a certain kind of self-indulgent filmmaking. All a far more satisfying than listing songs about public transit.
    5. Talking about Pop Culture is a waste of time… unless you enjoy it: Reading Inventory, it’s hard to avoid the ghastly realization that the book is essentially useless. That lists of trivia are useless. That pop-culture itself is useless. Why, then, does it compel us so much? Perhaps because, as the very name implies, that pop-culture is the glue that binds us to our own self-chosen subcultures. Discussing shared interest is fun, not for the things themselves but for the sentiment of belonging to a group with someone else. Inventory is clearly meant for the cyber-fluent quasi-hipster: The “Heaven/Hell” bits clearly identify the audience as young(ish), urban, progressive and multi-media literate –although classifying Coke as Heaven and Pepsi as Hell is a good way to get on my list of pretentious posers. In keeping with the “Inventory is a buffet” thesis, the most interesting pieces of the book are those that most closely align with our own projected persona.
    6. Parents of toddlers trying to get back into reading could do worse than beginning with a book of lists: Let’s face it: toddlers require less attention than infants, but they don’t like to be ignored for more than a few minutes. A book of list, easily digestible in chunks of 2-3 minutes, is ideal for reading in such circumstances: Even trivial interruptions don’t feel as annoying when they happen on the eighth item of a meaningless list. Plus you can hand over the bookmark for the toddler to play with and not feel too concerned about losing one’s place in the book.
    7. There’s not need to go all the way to a top-10 when you’ve said enough.