Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Act of Valor (2012)

    Act of Valor (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, March 2012) Anyone who thinks that Hollywood is usually in the business of promoting the American military-entertainment complex may want to get off their high horses for a moment and have a look at Act of Valor, because for once this is the real deal: An unabashed sloppy kiss to covert military operations, produced without subtlety, shame nor questioning of its premises.  Few other films shown in theaters, after all, start with a featurette in which the directors explain that they felt compelled to cast real-life SEALs as lead actors, and willingly embed themselves with military units during production.  And that’s not even discussing the end credits, in which country music plays over a montage of pure-Americana pictures of soldiers, firefighters, families, flags and such.  Story-wise, Act of Valor is either about American soldiers either being good family men or killing terrorists, in-between action sequences featuring real SEALs doing real-SEALs things.  The result feels a lot like a movie made for a specialty audience, much like the religious-themed films that pop up in limited release from time to time.  As you may expect during discussions between true believers in America’s exceptional nature, there’s little need for subtlety, characterization or even good acting: The real-life-SEALs in the starring roles are charmingly earnest in the way they read their lines, but while they can enforce national policy by gunpoint, they’re not actors and they can’t save a script that seems proud to run clichés into the ground.  Still, the point of Act of Valor isn’t a fine storytelling: It’s about brute-force action sequences and the promotion of American might as its basks against a backdrop of family, honor, freedom and other quasi-myths that make American feel better about themselves.  Crazily enough, it works well at times: Some of the action sequences are shot with energy (the gunboat sequence is good –although it could have been better without the over-editing) and at times, even with the coarse appeal to symbolism, it’s almost easy to forget that as a Canadian, I’m being asked to cheer for people who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in my head if ever they were told to.  As a movie, Act of Valor is closer to a curiosity than to a success –but it’s an interesting artifact, and one that’s hard to dismiss in part due to its anti-cynical, plainly partisan outlook.  At the very least it’s going to become a reference of sorts, for pure distilled pro-military propaganda on the big screen.

  • Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

    Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2012) There are a few remarkable things about this low-budget, low-profile horror sequel, and the least important one is how, even if it’s a sequel to a remake (Quarantine) of an Spanish horror film (Rec), it doesn’t have any similarity to the direct sequel of the Spanish original (Rec 2).  Rather than go back to the apartment building of the first film, this sequel goes to lock itself up somewhere else; first in an airplane, then in an airport terminal.  Heck, it doesn’t even keep the subjective-camera motif of the first film.  Fortunately, Quarantine 2 holds up pretty well to casual viewing: The sense of claustrophobia is acute in the plane-bound first act, and if the film loses a bit of steam once back on the ground, it keeps a good focus on the scares and the forward narrative rhythm.  The small cast of characters is efficiently introduced and just as effectively eliminated.  The back-story explanation reaching to the first film doesn’t feel completely idiotic, and the film does take advantage of its environment in order to heighten the suspense.  Quarantine 2 ends up being a perfectly acceptable genre picture, successful in part because it doesn’t have any illusions about what it tries to be, and deliver to the audience.  The gradual distancing away from its Spanish origins also works well –although you shouldn’t let this influence you away from watching Rec 2, which is good in entirely different ways.

  • Hugo (2011)

    Hugo (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) Watching Hugo became mandatory after its five-Oscar performance at the 84th Academy Awards, but such success was predictable given that Hugo is a movie celebrating movies; Hollywood loves patting itself on the back (as further proved by the night’s other big winner, the silent-film homage The Artist) and Hugo is less about its plot that it is about seeing Martin Scorsese deliver a paean to the beginning of the film industry and, in the same breath, the tradition perpetuated by Hollywood. Which isn’t to say that Hugo is overrated: As a flight of fancy honoring Georges Meliès and the beginning of film-making as a dream factory, it’s perfectly-controlled, lavishly produced and almost heartfelt.  It tells an enchanting story and does so with the best and latest feats of technical wizardry.  Even seen in two-dimensions, Hugo benefits from having been shot in 3D: The opening half-hour, in particular, shows a Cameronian understanding of how to move a camera through space, creating a depth to the film that will delight anyone interested in great cinematography.  The special effects are used wisely, and 1931 Paris comes alive in a way that somehow feels different from any of the many versions of the city seen on film so far.  Hugo doesn’t avoid feeling a bit long, especially toward the end, and wallows in its own sentimentality, but the result is still a film that combines emotion and technology in efficient fashion.  Ben Kingsley is remarkable, and the film allows itself a few moments that, while not strictly necessary, show how much wonder you can create with a big budget and decent craftsmen.  The 2011 epitome of Hollywood at its most lavish, Hugo will speak most clearly to cinephiles willing to embrace “the magic of movies”.

  • Safe House (2012)

    Safe House (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, March 2012) Good casting is about finding actors able to fulfill the demands of a particular role; good typecasting is about using the actors’ existing screen persona to flesh out characters.  In this case, seeing Ryan Reynolds face off against Denzel Washington and Brendan Geeson, we can already guess a few things about their dramatic arc: Reynolds is a young hot-shot who will learn much; Washington is an honorable rogue who never shows a moment of weakness and Geeson, well, [spoilers].  This kind of ready-made characterization plays right in the hands of Safe House, a routine spy thriller that goes through the motions and delivers at least most of the thrills we expect from a film of its sort.  The colorful Cape Town location adds a dash of interest (we see downtown, the stadium, the slums and the neighboring countryside), but much of the film is deeply stepped into the thriller conventions of the espionage business.  The premise isn’t bad (young agent sees turncoat show up at his safe house; mayhem ensues) and the development has its moments (say, during the inevitable car chase, or the twists and turns of the stadium sequence) but it leads somewhere very familiar, with plot developments that can safely be predicted by looking at the casting.  The direction is an added irritant, as it indulges in pseudo-realistic drab shaky-cam cinematography and mumbled dialogue: it’s exactly the wrong choice of aesthetics for a film that doesn’t really adhere to our version of reality nor has anything crucial to say about the state of the world.  Still, the result is entertaining enough, and the lead actors all deliver good performances in typical roles.  Fans of Reynolds and Washington will get their fixes, as well as any indulgent thriller buff.

  • Collision Earth (2011)

    Collision Earth (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2012) Another year, another crop of cheap SF movies produced for specialty cable channels.  Collision Earth, like many such undistinguished efforts as Ice Quake or Metal Tornado, faithfully follows the usual disaster-movie plot template: Mysterious events, life-threatening revelations, scientists allying themselves with ordinary people to find a solution.  It’s all wrapped in classic low-budget filmmaking: by-the-number script; found locations; merely adequate actors; and wildly inconsistent special effects.  What distinguishes Collision Earth is scope and a certain go-for-broke grandness.  The first few minutes show the tone as much in bad physics than in grand concepts, as a shuttle doing a Mercury fly-by is swept along when a massive solar flare sends the planet careening straight toward Earth.  No points will be awarded for credible science or technology, but then again this is a film with an oddly awe-inspiring scene in which Seattle’s cars are all sent up in the sky due to Mercury’s magnetism.  (Then: be prepared for a lot of CGI falling cars.)  Collision Earth is just as heartless in disposing of its supporting characters in unsentimental, quasi mechanistic ways.  It doesn’t amount to a movie that escapes the Syfy death-kiss of low quality, but it does have a few moments to distinguish itself.  The best thing about this being a made-for-TV movie is that you will never have to pay for it, except by letting it waste your time.

  • J. Edgar (2011)

    J. Edgar (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) There’s little doubt that a biopic of J. Edgar Hoover is a good idea. Hoover was, after all, a dominant figure in twentieth-century America: The man who defined the FBI and led it for nearly 50 years, accumulating damaging dossiers on powerful people along the way.  Then there’s the man himself, filled with contradictions and character quirks; stutterer, driven, wed to the idea of law and order, devoted to his mother, not strictly heterosexual… It’s almost a wonder a big-budgeted romanced biography had to wait until 2011 to be released.  Still, source material and execution aren’t the same thing, and the big question at the end of J. Edgar is whether this is the best possible film one could have made about Hoover.  The script itself dares to question the usual biopic template by indulging in a lot of back-and-forth between Hoover’s early years and the end of his life: At any moment, the film is liable to switch between then and further-then, leaving a chaotic chronology.  (That Hoover lies to himself and others makes for a cute third-act plot point, but it also makes chunks of the film less than relevant.) Director Clint Eastwood made the choice to film the film in desaturated colors and dark lighting, creating claustrophobia at nearly every shot.  There’s also a bit of intentional blurring between Hoover’s life and the FBI’s early years, which is in-keeping with the character, but also suggests that a better film could have focused on either.  Not that the film is a complete miss: Leonardo DiCaprio is quite good as Hoover, playing a character over nearly fifty years and nearly disappearing in it.  In the end, J. Edgar is interesting to watch and revealing about its subject, but it’s not particularly involving or gripping.  Overlong at two hours and twenty minutes, J. Edgar is a flawed take on a flawed historical figure: Worth a look, but not a film that will remain in mind for long.

  • Elektra Luxx (2010)

    Elektra Luxx (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2012) Naive viewers may expect movies about porn stars to be at least interesting, but in a textbook example of false-titillation, Elektra Luxx is low in nudity and high in laugh-free art-house comedy.  Viewers who stumble on this film without knowing that it’s a direct sequel to Women in Trouble may have a hard time figuring out the relationship between the various plot strands that make up the film, especially when at least one of them remains unconnected to the rest.  Of course, excuses of sequelitis only go so far in making audience forgive a wildly inconsistent pace, dull dialogues, indifferent characters and lack of entertainment value.  Carla Gugino may vamp it up as porn star Elektra Luxx, and be surrounded by an impressive supporting cast going from Joseph Gordon-Hewitt to Julianne Moore, but there just isn’t much to the film itself.  Interest starts slipping away after half an hour, never to return.  There are, to be fair, a few interesting strands here and there; the evolution of a woman “from porn star to functioning adult” is promising… but Elektra Luxx itself is too scattered to do justice to the premise.  Bits and pieces of interest can’t make up for a largely indifferent film; there are better choices out there.

  • Falling Down (1993)

    Falling Down (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2012) It’s hard to watch Falling Down (a movie which, for two weeks in 1993, dominated the North-American box-office) without reflecting on the evolution of movies over the past twenty years.  Director Joel Schumacher’s film has become both a period piece of life in Los Angeles during the early nineties, and a reflection of the kind of films we don’t really see in big cineplexes any more.  As Michael Douglas plays a proverbial “angry white male” driven mad by the pressures of modern life, Falling Down targets annoyances but does not indulge in the glorification of vigilantism.  The lead character is to be pitied more than to be admired, something that the conclusion makes sadly clear.  The indictment, in-between on-the-nose symbolism and a little bit of speechifying, is equally spread between victim and aggressor.  Douglas’ clean-cut character is a relic of the fifties unable to cope with the chaos of the nineties, but his downfall is party his own fault.  Not entirely interested in being thriller but a bit too action-packed to be pegged as a pure character study, it’s hard to imagine Falling Down being released widely in 2012 and earning strong box-office success.  The past twenty years, after all, have seen Hollywood shift gears from movies to spectacles: The big screens of the cineplexes, now that alternate distribution mechanisms are well-developed, are for overblown thrills and sure commercial bets: A modern-day Falling Down, absent a wildly popular star as once was Michael Douglas in 1993, would most likely be an independent feature, released on DVD after some success on the film-festival circuit.  On the other hand, things have also changes for the better the moment you stop talking about movies: Los Angeles doesn’t have as big a smog problem as it did in 1993, and its gang violence problem is quite a bit better as well.  Thankfully, much of the film still resonates now thanks to interesting flawed characters and an endearing outraged earnestness.  Who’s to say that only one bad day is the only thing standing between our normal selves and falling down?

  • Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

    Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2012) There’s a lot to dislike about Vanishing on 7th Street, but before truly giving the film the critical savaging it deserves, let’s take a moment to point out what does work: Much of the first fifteen minutes.  As our lead characters discover themselves (nearly) alone in a deserted Detroit when people have all spontaneously disappeared leaving behind their clothes, there’s an aura of mystery over the film’s premise and a few effective visuals along the way.  An enigma is set up, promising an explanation.  But, as soon as the film clumsily jumps “three days later”, doubts appear about its good intentions.  As it soon becomes obvious, Vanishing on 7th Street isn’t interested in answers.  In fact, its lack of interest extends to such things as internal consistency, continuity or compelling characters.  Not only are there no answers, but the mechanics of what’s happening are wildly inconsistent, and often hand-waved with unknowables.  Laws of physics change, and the plot rules are blurry enough that viewers stop caring about what’s happening on-screen.  It’s not even clear that there’s a threat of sorts –or what the shadow figures are doing, exactly.  Once dark jousts with darker as a cinematography motif, it’s hard not to roll eyes and laugh at the ineptness of the results.  By the middle of the film, the characters are so irritating that they might as well die sooner than later: I have seldom been less interested in Thandie Newton than in this film, and even an energetic performance by John Leguizamo (as a character who comes back from the dead for no reason whatsoever) isn’t enough to redeem the film.  By the time the credits wrap up, Vanishing on 7th Street earns a one-way trip to the “bad straight-to-DVD horror” shelf.  As far as the extras go, the half-hour interview with the director confirms that the filmmakers had no interest in offering answers; left unknown is their lack of ability is delivering anything more compelling than a first-act mystery.

  • Game of Thrones, Season 1 (2011)

    Game of Thrones, Season 1 (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2012) The fact that this ten-episode television series exists at all is remarkable: Few would have predicted that the first volume of George R.R. Martin’s sprawling epic fantasy series could have been adaptable to the screen with any degree of faithfulness –let alone become a compulsively watchable success in the process.  Featuring a credible fantasy world, continent-spanning intrigue, scores of characters, nudity, gore and complex family backstories on a TV series’ limited budget, this first season of Game of Thrones sets the stage for epic developments, keeps the essence of the book and manages to deliver a striking ten hours’ worth of entertainment in the process. Sean Bean makes for a compelling anchor as Ned Stark, a good man woefully out of his depth once thrown in the capital’s palace intrigue, but it’s Peter Dinklage who steals the show as Tyrion, perhaps the most self-aware character in a cast of a hundred.  The amount of sex and violence is such that the series could only come from HBO, as is the patience through which the story is developed.  The flip-side of such faithfulness to the 700-page book are a few pacing lulls, especially for viewer unwilling or impatient to piece together the slowly-developed back-story.  Still, the result is worth the sit.  The limits of the budget sometime show, especially in large-scale sequences, but the result on-screen still works well.  The nudity, gore and sexual content often straddle the line from gratuitous to essential: It does affirm Game of Thrones‘ more adult scope, but some sequences combine nudity with exposition in ways that may be more audacious than successful.  Still, the overall result is the beginning chapter of a fantasy series with scope and power.  I hope ratings and DVD sales will be good enough to warrant enough latter installments to do justice to the rest of Martin’s as-of-yet-uncompleted series.

  • Jack Goes Boating (2010)

    Jack Goes Boating (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2012) I’m not usually a good audience for the kind of low-budget, low-stakes working-class dramas exemplified by Jack Goes Boating.  I like genre stories with imagination, high stakes, some action and upbeat humor… not slow-paced dramas in which self-destructive characters to their best to ruin their lives.  Yet there’s something compelling in Jack Goes Boating; Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sad-sack performance is oddly likable, even set within a directorial debut that doesn’t try to glamourize his character.  In tackling intimate issues about budding romance and confronting it to long-term commitment issues, the script confronts issues commonly left unsaid, and there’s a quiet elegance to the way it throws together plot strands in a universe essentially made out of four people.  (You just want to invite two of them home, feed them dinner and tell them everything is going to be all right.  The other two can go stew in their own self-pity.)  Adapted from a theater play, Jack Goes Boating isn’t the most dynamic film out there… but it reaches its objectives, hints at a few profound truths and sticks in mind a while longer than expected.

  • Youth in Revolt (2009)

    Youth in Revolt (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2012) Teen comedies starring Michael Cera may look the same, but they’re not always the same.  Exception made of the superlative Scott Pilgrim, Youth in Revolt is a bit better than the others: Cera can here depend on a clever script and an amusing “evil personae” plot device to extend his typical screen presence beyond the usual, and the film can be surprisingly unexpected at times.  The story of a dweebish young teenager trying to win over a girl while acting as delinquently as possible, Youth in Revolt distinguishes itself though witty dialogue, unexpected turns, full characterization and oddball details –it particularly flips over a number of teen-movie plot devices in showing dastardly plans blowing up in the protagonist’s face, doesn’t pander to empty morality and uses a wider vocabulary in its witty dialogue than most other similar teen movies.  While Youth in Revolt can’t escape a certain amount of aimlessness in its plotting, it makes up for it with a good conclusion and a clever use of some actors.  It’s off-beat enough to fit within the Juno frame of reference, but not derivative enough to be stuck in it.  Give it a try, especially if you think you’ve reached the end of your tolerance for the Cera personae.

  • Carlos (2010)

    Carlos (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2012) This film certainly isn’t bad, but as a biography of Carlos “the Jackal” Ramirez, it should have been quite a bit better.  Part of the problem, as discovered while reading about this two-hours-and-a-half film, is that it’s a cut version of an even longer five-hours TV series.  This certainly explains the inconsistent rhythm of the movie, which sputters over lengthy periods of his life while focusing endlessly on much shorter sequences (one hour on a single terrorist operation here, five minutes on a single seduction/recruitment scene there) and ending with a long and drawn-out epilogue.  The result is a biopic that lacks focus and can’t really deliver a coherent look at its subject’s life in-between episodes.  This being said, the film does deliver on a few of its promises: The sense of being thrown back in time is convincing, and it’s hard to over-praise Edgar Martinez in the lead role –especially considering the physical changes required in portraying the fat and dissolute latter-day Carlos.  At times, though, Carlos feels like a film for people who already know all about his life history and just want a visual illustration: perhaps victim of the show-to-movie cutting process, it often feels as if we’re not even given the bare minimum of information in order to fully appreciate what’s happening.  The result is a bit of a muddle: A long sit and yet a film that feels as if it has a lot of missing parts.

  • The Wolfman (2010)

    The Wolfman (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2012) Critics weren’t kind to this remake of the 1941 horror-classic and, up to a certain point, it’s easy to see why: There isn’t much of a story here, nor too many chills.  The tone can be inconsistent, and some moments feel more ridiculous than anything else.  Additionally, the winks and nods to horror fans sometimes lead the story into small dead-ends (eg; the silver cane).  Still, The Wolfman has a lot going for it in the visual department, from an effective gothic atmosphere to Joe Johnston’s often-clever direction.  The makeup and special effects are used wisely and the cinematography can be adequately lugubrious at times.  While not up to Tim Burton’s standards (You should see The Wolfman in a double-bill with Sleepy Hollow), there is a lot to like in the film’s visual presentation, which is a notch over the usual horror film.  Unfortunately, the assets are often undermined by gratuitous gore taking down the film’s moment-to-moment impact from high-art to low-schlock, and there is a sense that the straightforward narrative isn’t up to the setting it inhabits.  (Much like Anthony Hopkins seems to be slumming in a one-dimensional role.) Oh well; at least Benicio del Toro and Hugo Weaving can be compelling to watch, and if viewers get bored, there’s usually a nice image every few moments to keep things interesting.

  • Coronado (2003)

    Coronado (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2012) Anyone who chooses to see this film based on the fact that it’s “from the special effects team of Independence Day” has little moral recourse to complain about a weak script (which is supposed to portray a subjective story, but ends up including sequences with third-parties), tepid directing and a film that seems largely designed to showcase special-effects sequences.  Proudly and loudly wearing its low-budget pedigree (with occasional self-aware smirks at its own limitations), Coronado won’t impress anyone looking for a compelling dramatic experience.  Real-world verisimilitude isn’t one of Coronado‘s strong points as chunks of the film are deeply dumb, whether it’s the US selling advanced V-22 Osprey prototypes to rebel forces or a fighter jet firing a missile on a wooden bridge.  On the other hand, it’s not a film to dismiss lightly: Despite the lame dialogues, badly-built scenes and unconvincing actors, it’s also a film that consciously attempts to show an adventure the likes of which are rarely seen in bigger-budgeted pictures.  Kristin Dattilo’s grinning turn as the heroine looking for her deceiving husband deep in a Central America country is also better than what you may expect from such a film. Reportedly shot for a miserly budget of only five million dollars, Coronado uses special effects to stretch the limits of its storytelling to a scale that is usually attempted by films with at least ten times the resources.  The illusion isn’t seamless (no points will be awarded for spotting what’s CGI and what’s not) but it’s ambitious, and it allows the filmmakers the freedom to tell a much bigger story than is the norm for direct-to-video efforts.  The DVD is a bit lame for skimping on the English subtitles, but the rest of the features show the resourcefulness of the production team in using special effects to extend a low-budget production.  The best audiences for this film are those who can appreciate a bit of film-making ingenuity, and be generous enough to see what the film intended rather than what’s on-screen.