Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Taxi Driver (1976)

    Taxi Driver (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 1999) This rescues itself from pointlessness in the last five minutes. What was up to then an unpleasant series of episodes starring a low-life taxi driver peppered by occasional moments (“You talking to me? Good, because I’m the only one here.”) suddenly becomes worthwhile, though one can’t help but to feel that this is one short film’s material stretched out to almost two hours. Viewer might be excused if they keep thinking about how many other movies are a more worthwhile investment of time.

  • The Sixth Sense (1999)

    The Sixth Sense (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 1999) While not as great as its fans have made it to be, this very well-done film allows us to envision a far better parallel universe where almost all Hollywood films attaint this level of all-around competence. The Sixth Sense offers a great little script, a sagacious non-usage of special effects, an original storyline, some great acting (notably by the young Haley Joel Osment) and non-obtrusive direction. Now, if only other films could aspire to this…

  • The Shining (1980)

    The Shining (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, August 1999) So what happens when a very competent director decides to do a horror film—while having no idea what horror should be? You get The Shining, a “horror” film with 75 minute’s worth of setup, three or four really good scenes, no clear resolution and some interesting camera setups. Fans of classical horror won’t know what to do with the storyline, which mixes together monsters, hallucinations, split personalities, bloodbaths, ax murders, reincarnation and/or a whole lot of stuff. Yes, the technical side of the film is polished and the “classic” sequences stay in mind, but the movie itself flops around without too much vigor.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, September 2024) Oh my.  Ignore the above review.  I was wrong.  So incredibly wrong.  A chance re-watch of The Shining has me thinking that this is one of the finest horror films of the 1980s, if not of all time.  While I don’t disagree with my former self that the film is often incoherent, I think I now get why it is — or rather, what’s the story behind the incoherence.  The other thing is that an an older, savvier reviewer, I now place a lot more weight on execution than premise, and Kubrick’s work here is on the next level.  While I think that most of the various interpretations about the true meaning of The Shining are putting things together in outlandish ways, there’s no denying that Stanley Kubrick has crammed so much stuff in the background of this film that it makes viewers desperate to dig into it.  What’s more apparent to me, twenty-five years and thousands of movies later, is that you can recognize Kubrick’s genius here both by the amount of material that has been stolen from this film, but also by how the film remains original, surprising and subversive even after all these years.  One underappreciated aspect, for instance, isn’t just how axe-crazy Jack Nicholson’s performance becomes, but how Shelley Duvall’s weak and ineffectual character makes the marital-abuse-gone-murderous thrust of the third act even more terrifying.  Or how the camera work remains exemplary after so many imitators, or how much of a misdirection is the Scatman Crothers subplot.  Or the growing sense of dread that radiates from the film even as it takes its time to set everything up.  Or how deliciously effective the opening moments are at hooking viewers.  One of the marks of a great film is how much discussion it generates and my that metric, The Shining was, is and will remain one landmark piece of horror cinema.

  • She’s All That (1999)

    She’s All That (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 1999) A teen romantic comedy that’s far, far better when it remembers to be a comedy. Taking place in some fantasy high-school where students drive around in Porsches and Jeeps, She’s All That features some wickedly fun quotes and moments (the hilariously-directed why-I-dumped you scene, the energetic “Rockafeller Skank” dance number) but more often than not drags itself in unbelievable “dramatic” moments that just feel forced. Rachel Leigh Cook isn’t believable one second as an “unattractive” girl (it’s the glasses, yeah, even when she’s in that killer black swimsuit…) but Freddie Prinze Jr. manages to fulfill his role as “High School God” with a certain amount of coolness. Watchable, but not really exceptional.

  • The Replacement Killers (1998)

    The Replacement Killers (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, August 1999) There’s no mistake that this is B-movie: Cop drama with hitmen, policemen, damsels in occasional distress, gunfights, cars, guns… Fortunately, if the film can’t transcend its roots, it faithfully exemplify the genre. Chow Yun Fat and Mira Sorvino are pretty darn cool/cute in quasi tailor-made roles, and the director is competent when it comes to action scenes. Unfortunately, the whole film feels curiously vapid and unmemorable, true to form for most B-movies.

  • Moonseed, Stephen Baxter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Prism, 1998, 534 pages, C$20.95 hc, ISBN 0-06-105044-X

    Sometime, I wonder how Hollywood producers deal with it.

    No, I’m not talking about the sleeping-with-supermodels-and-rolling-in-cash part. That I can reasonably understand. But I really wonder how they have to deal with the trade-offs between story and budget. Consider disaster movie, which are all about showing expensive catastrophes on screen. If you’re on a limited budget (and even $150M is a limited budget), how can you deliver a really good disaster film when it’s literally too expensive to put it all on screen?

    This isn’t a problem in novels, because when you get down to it, prose writers have essentially an unlimited budget for visual effects. They can blow up the earth for exactly the same amount of money that have two minor character talk to each other. No publishing house is ever going to bankrupt themselves by investing in a spectacular historical war novel over a simple romantic comedy. Movie studios, on the other hand, pretty much tattooed HEAVEN’S GATE in the forehead of every script acquisition manager…

    Stephen Baxter’s Moonseed proves how much more satisfying a disaster story can be in written format. Not only is it more spectacular, but it’s also better-constructed and far more clever than its Hollywood counterparts.

    It all begins on the night when astronaut Geena Bourne and geologist Henry Meacher decide to divorce. Venus blows up and Henry is transferred to Edinburgh, where a mysterious silvery dust soon begins ravaging the countryside. Before long, the Edinburgh dust pool is growing at exponential rate, and it becomes clear that they’ve got to stop it. Evidence points at contamination from one of the Moon rocks, so NASA puts together a mission using present-day technology to go back there…

    Stephen Baxter is known for being a hard-SF writer, and Moonseed will do nothing to diminish this reputation. He plays the SF game and follows the rules, which does give a delicious particularity to the part where NASA puts together a baling-wire mission to go back to the moon. Otherwise, spectacular scenes abound, whether it’s Edinburgh being consummated by the “Moonseed” or Seattle being erased by a tidal wave. Big bucks special effects, backed by I-guess-accurate physics.

    Moonseed is less capable when it comes to human characters. Some are barely introduced and then forever forgotten (Marge Case, Jenny Calder, Cecilia Stanley, etc…), others are superfluous (Blue Ishiguro, Hamish “Bran” McCrae and the remainder of the clichéd cult subplot), while the protagonists are involved in quasi-soap-opera plot complications to keep them together. (No, but seriously, wasn’t it possible to select a worse three-person moon team?)

    But it doesn’t really matter, disaster stories and hard-SF novels being what they are. Even the lengths of the novel can be a good thing when they add such richness. Who cares about individual humans when the whole race is at risk? Moonseed is far more original than the usual catastrophe scenarios, ironically by going back to the source disaster story, the classic When Worlds Collide. The ending accelerates the pace of the novel, leading to a wide-open conclusion that truly rewards the reader.

    So, next time you’re contemplating paying almost 10$ for a disaster movie, consider Moonseed as an alternative. Easy reading, original threat, imaginative plotting, neat gadgets and cool scenes not constrained by a fixed SFX budget. What more could you ask of an end-of-the-world story?

  • October Sky (1999)

    October Sky (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 1999) Any film featuring kids playing with guns, explosives and ballistic mathematics can’t do wrong! Naturally, a story about rocket-making boys at the end of the 1950s can’t be anything else but inspiration, especially when it’s based on a true story (Homer Hickman’ Rocket Boys). It gets even better when you realize that October Sky is a coming-of-age story that doesn’t focus on beer, sex or proms, but on intellectual breakthroughs, hard work and confidence in yourself. It works even better than it sounds, and is one of the very few movies to be watched by everyone in the family without any discomfort. An all-around winner, made with skill and distinction: See it, and see it now!

  • North By Northwest (1959)

    North By Northwest (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 1999) With Hitchcock’s 100th anniversary celebrations, two local TV stations ran some of his films. While I was not interested enough by Psycho to keep watching it beyond the infamous shower scene and couldn’t muster the interest to see most of The Birds (watched the set-pieces and returned to my book for the remainder of the film), I must admit that North By Northwest still works very, very well forty years later. Okay, most of the special effects are weak and the beginning could be tightened, but the dialogue and the plotting gradually build to a high pitch of interest. Interestingly, the movie uses (defined?) most of the modern conventions of thrillers, up to the gimmicky ending at A Famous Location. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are great in their roles, and the overall result is worth a look.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, January 2019) Revisiting North by Northwest after seeing so many other Hitchcock or Cary Grant films seemed inevitable—now that I’m more familiar with that era of filmmaking, now that I know the quirks of Hitchcock and the charm of Grant’s performances, would it be as good? Happily, not only is it just as good as I remembered it—it’s even better. There’s a thrilling sense of adventure, plot twists, set-pieces and humour to the film, as Cary Grant becomes the prototypical Hitchcockian man on the run alongside Eva Saint-Marie, going from New York to the Rushmore monument along the way. The conclusion is abrupt, but there’s something to be said for not overstaying one’s welcome. The direction is top-notch, the actors couldn’t be more likable, and the mystery/suspense just keeps going. North by Northwest is simply a fantastic film no matter how you look at it, and no matter when you look at it.¶

  • Never Been Kissed (1999)

    Never Been Kissed (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 1999) Thank goodness that the screenwriter didn’t take his script seriously! What could have been a tedious exercise in yet-another-teen-romance-that-ends-at-the-prom suddenly becomes an acceptable film with some greater resonance than what we might expect. Some choice gags (“The Simpsons” theme, a Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas flashback, etc…) pepper the film, making it seems far more clever than it truly is. Leelee Sobieski shines as the Hollywood hot-babe- with-glasses-so-we’re-supposed-to-know- she’s-smart-and-ugly. The movie falls flat near the end, as a long-awaited confession cuts off a half-dozen plot threads in thirty seconds, but the rest is okay.

  • Mystery Men (1999)

    Mystery Men (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 1999) Holds the distinction of being a satisfying disappointment. Given its premise (a satire of superhero films by looking at the “B-grade” superheroes), its assembled talent and its superb special effect work, one could have expected a truly memorable experience. Alas, such is not the case: The narrative meanders, the quips are wildly uneven, the villain isn’t impressive, the resolution too conventional. Fortunately, the end result is still loads of fun, much like when Men In Black delivered good summer fun even if it couldn’t match its own premise. Most of the actors are delightful (with special kudos to Ben Stiller, William H. Macy and Janeane Garofalo), some one-liners are really good (“By doubting training you only train yourself to doubt”) and the overall atmosphere is just wonderful. Grrreat soundtrack. Yes, Mystery Men could have been much more, but it’s quite delightful as it is.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, November 2000) This isn’t quite as good the second time around. Sure, the actors/characters are (mostly) as appealing, the lines still as funny and the overall sense of fun still unbeatable. But the bad moments, boring stretches and various incoherencies all pile up to diminish the film’s lasting impression. Director Kinsha Usher’s commentary track is one that will actually diminish your opinion of the film by pointing out last-minutes ad-libs, referencing deleted scenes not included anywhere on the DVD and generally acting like a barely-articulate doofus. (“…and we thought it was really funny” is the commentary track’s most-often repeated line. Problem is that the “funny” stuff most often isn’t.) Worse; a lot of the film’s jokes seems to have been put together by the actors, director, production assistants, even the assistant sound editors… but the writer is barely referenced once. (And even then, it’s as a vaguely derogatory reference to the film’s original script.) Oh well… comedy by committee usually works well, though as proven here, it doesn’t hold up very long.

  • The Iron Giant (1999)

    The Iron Giant (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 1999) I like most movies because they entertain. I admire some movies because they’re very well done. I only love a few movies for their emotional impact, and The Iron Giant joins this select club by virtue of being an excellent film. It’s not “merely” a story about the friendship between a boy and a giant extraterrestrial robot, though it is also exactly that. It is, at turns, comedic, dramatic, horrifying, uplifting and every else you’d wish a great film would be. Cleverly constructed and exceedingly well-executed, The Iron Giant is simply wonderful. It can’t escape being a children’s movie (it eschews emotional subtlety and drags as it goes through the early “required scenes”) but also holds as much content for adults. It’s a measure of how good the film is that I was near-tears at the line “I am not a gun”, and horrified at a firepower display that would normally make me cheer. Great stuff, great movie; see it.

  • False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, Thomas Hoving

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 1996, 366 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-684-81134-0

    For someone like me, technically trained in cold, hard matters of equations, algorithms and formal methods, the world of fine arts is as mysterious and incomprehensible as an alien mindset. You look at a picture, you like the picture or not. If you really like it and if it’s for sale, you buy it. Simple!

    Not so simple. C.P. Snow would be proud. Art is not merely something that can be simply reduced to “liking/not liking”. Especially when older artwork is concerned, it becomes a question of cultural pride, personal self-aggrandizement, financial investments… And then troubles begin. When you buy a Roman sculpture to show off, it doesn’t matter if you like it: It does matter if it’s an authentic Roman sculpture, though. Who is to say if it wasn’t hacked out three years ago by some guy deep in Arkansas with a talent for reproducing “authentic” Roman sculptures?

    False Impressions is a book about fake artwork. Well-respected “former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art” Thomas Hoving brings both erudition and wit to this fascinating subject.

    Though the book is not without flaws, it does present the subject adequately. Hoving spends some time discussing the history of fakes, noting that even in Roman times, for instance, artists routinely faked Greek artwork. Medieval times are full of fakery, up to and including the shroud of Turin. The popularization of the art world has given rise to even more audacious fakery at the beginning of the century.

    A lot of the narrative is simply Hoving’s autobiography as far as fakes are concerned. It’s a bit of a disappointment to find out that in many cases, a fake is never entirely conclusively proved as being a fake. It often happens that even the latest scientific methods are simply useless to distinguish fakes, especially if they are from roughly the same period.

    Neither is the fake necessarily of lesser quality and/or artistic merit. Hoving insists that fakes are often of better quality than the original work of art. Generous souls can even consider them pastiche, especially if they’re not meant to represent a specific oeuvre, but a “lost piece” in the same tradition.

    What is a fake, then? It all boils down to the very simple axiom that a fake is not what it’s purported to me. A Roman sculpture produced by our hypothetical Arkansas guy would be a fake if represented as being authentically roman. But it would be a work of art in its own right if represented as “American, 1999”—though probably decried as being an obvious Roman rip-off…

    Any book that can have me thinking about this kind of stuff gets points for audacity. On the other hand, False Impressions is not exactly a great book and part of the problem lies in the medium. Text-heavy books are not a good way of discussing art. Art is made to be seen, to be touched, to be felt in person. A study of fakes almost requires us to be able to compare original with fake, or at least see what we’re talking about. No such luck here: False Impressions does contain photographs, but they’re on a black-and-white insert late in the book that feels a lot like if each one was painstakingly inserted after much arguing. This would have been terrific material for a TV documentary, even a four-part miniseries. But as such, False Impressions is a tease in its text format.

    Compounding the problem is that Hoving might know his subject like few others, but his writing style often veers into irrelevant minutiae. Everything he writes isn’t exactly essential. Where was the editor?

    Still, I have to admire a book that can make me ask questions about artwork and fakery. False Impressions, despite significant flaws, is an eye opener and a mildly diverting trip into a hitherto unsuspected shady underworld. Not exactly recommended to everyone, but worth picking up if you’re really intrigued by the subject.

  • Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998)

    Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 1999) A documentary about wrestling? Yes, and a darn good one. Beyond simply exploring the fascinating “sports/entertainment” business of wrestling (and settling once and for all the question Is-Wrestling-Fake?), Wrestling With Shadows details the real-life sordid business surrounding the fall of Bret “Hitman” Hart, the Canadian “good guy” wrestler forced into “bad guy” status by World Wrestling Federation honcho Vince McMahon and then unceremoniously fired—all in the name of ratings. The documentary is very well-done and incredibly managed to obtain actual proof of McMahon’s duplicity. Wrap this up in the carnival spirit of wrestling shows, and you’ve got a documentary that almost has it all. Though overlong in spots (during flashbacks to Hart’s family history, for instance), Wrestling With Shadows is certainly one of the best documentary I’ve seen in a while, and should appeal to a variety of viewers not necessarily fascinated by wrestling.

  • High School High (1996)

    High School High (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, August 1999) This gets a failing grade for two reasons. One, this parody of high-school dramas isn’t very funny. Yes, there are chuckles; yes, some set-pieces are great; yes, the whole movie is fun. On the other hand, it’s not that funny if you’re not familiar with the source material, the material isn’t clever or unexpected and there is far too much plot for the various gags. The second failing of High School High is that despite everything, it thinks of itself as terribly funny. The biggest sin of the film is to actually allow long reaction shots to let the audience laugh. (There’s a gag, then a second-long shot of a character looking amused/puzzled/nauseous while -in theory- the audience laughs their heads off, then the movie continues) This, given the non-hilarious nature of most jokes, totally kills the pacing of the film and gives an air of unbearable pretentiousness to the whole movie. Oh well, at least Tia Carrere (and not a few young actresses) looks good, which is considerably more than what one can say about Jon Lovitz.

  • Forces Of Nature (1999)

    Forces Of Nature (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 1999) Yet another one of these everything-goes-wrong comedies that could be over in fifteen minutes if anyone in it acted rationally. But no, we get lies-leading-into-more-embarrassing-lies, idiotic decisions, contrived bad luck and a bunch of other annoying things. The result is a comedy with some moments, but a romance that falls very flat. Fortunately, the direction has its moments of interest, the soundtrack is unusually dynamic and a few scenes work well. Despite the happy (?) ending, this is not really a good date movie.