Reviews

  • The Apollo Murders, Chris Hadfield

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Random House Canada, 2021, 470 pages, C$36.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-7352-8235-3

    Criticizing Chris Hadfield is not recommended up here in Canada—he’s as close to a national hero as we’ve got—an astronaut with impeccable professional credentials, an entertainer’s flair and a high media profile.   His rendition of “Space Oddity” is legendary—the first music video performed and shot in space.   I didn’t have to think twice when I happened to see a copy of his first novel, The Apollo Murders, at a nice discount at the local Wal-Mart—it was an instant buy.

    Considering how deeply I admire Hadfield, it brings me no joy to reluctantly find issues with The Apollo Murders—but even admiration should not prevent honest criticism when it’s warranted. It pains me even more considering that The Apollo Murders squarely plays into one of my favourite sub-genres of fiction: the immensely detailed techno-thriller, blended with a good chunk of space program secret history and a one-big-idea-a-chapter narrative drive. There are plenty of reviews elsewhere on this site to testify how I’m not afraid of good long exposition dumps, plotting-dominant functional prose, wild ideas and techno-geek vocabulary. Hadfield’s novel has all of this.

    The first few pages set the tone, as we are brought back to the 1970s. Our hero is someone not unlike Hadfield himself—a test pilot turned astronaut, with guitar-playing skills. It’s not meant to be an exact alter ego, of course—In the first chapter, our protagonist (an American) loses an eye due to a plane/bird collision, and other differences abound. Think of it as a way for Hadfield to write about what he knows without necessarily self-inserting himself in the novel.

    As the novel advances, it’s clear that we’ve hopped into a slightly alternate dimension where the Apollo program didn’t stop when it did in this universe—Apollo 18 is on the launchpad, and the tensions of the Cold War are heavily informing its secret mission. Overloading his narrative with juicy thriller elements, Hadfield has the mission launched not only to go to the moon, but to take a look at a Soviet orbital station along the way. It gets much, much wilder when someone sneaks aboard an Apollo module that already has a Soviet sleeper agent, and the drama goes all the way to the moon and back. By cramming a full thriller on top of an Apollo mission procedural, Hadfield has a lot of things to talk about.

    There are, to my delight, a lot of technical details along the way, and a re-use of odd bits and pieces of Cold War gadgets—many abandoned plans, bizarre ideas and half-baked concepts all make an appearance here, blending fact and fiction with a credible sheen of things that only an astronaut would think about including in the narrative. There’s an appendix specifying what is real, and far more of it is than you’d think. The publisher’s blurb namechecks The Martian and The Hunt for Red October, and that’s an accurate triangulation. (For specialists, I’d throw in other points of closer comparison—Edward Gibson’s Reach, Homer Hickam’s Back to the Moon, Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens’s Freefall, even David Onley’s Shuttle if you’re old-school Canadian about it.)  I’m not going to criticize the engineer’s approach to detail in the novel—it was one of my favourite things about it.

    Where I’m a bit more neutral is in the actual nuts-and-bolts writing of the novel. Look, I’m a Science Fiction fan—I’m not usually bothered by clunky prose. But time and time again, I found myself looking at sentences and wondering if there wasn’t a better way of phrasing them. The good news is that this brings further credence to the working theory that Hadfield did not use a ghost writer like so many celebrity writers—and further evidence for this can also be found in the other books he’s published.

    Where I have far more serious doubts about The Apollo Murder is in overall structure and plotting. My biggest complaint, probably idiosyncratic, is that it seemed to me as if the novel was building to a moon-set climax, but then kept going long after that highlight passed, to ever-diminishing returns in terms of thrills. I get that the entire Apollo trip to the Moon and back was the operating framework for structuring the novel, but there’s something in the way it builds up tension for a specific point in the story, and then doesn’t deal with it effectively. This means that the last third of the story becomes less and less effective, which is a singularly damaging impression for a story that should end with a strong climax. I’m not sure what the problem is exactly, but it felt as if the novel peaked far too soon, and couldn’t commit to an appropriate resolution afterward.

    Other nagging issues include an inconsistent sense of claustrophobia (considering that most of the novel takes place in a very small enclosed space with more than one antagonist), a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward its Soviet characters (something no doubt informed by Hadfield’s experiences in Russia, but frustratingly out-of-focus), an equally-weird lack of indignation about the US going to space to sabotage another space exploration effort, some wonky handwaving about whether Apollo 18 is really a secret, and other little bits of unfinished business throughout it all.

    Note that I’m not really taking away any points for a ludicrous plot that ignores NASA’s decades-long history of careful planning and risk-averse decision-making: Having the mission merrily trucking to the Moon after an act of orbital piracy goes horribly wrong is part of the fun of an exuberant space thriller. It’s within that plot structure that I have issues with how things are developed. The execution undermines the premise in inconsistent but cumulative ways.

    It’s pretty clear to me that The Apollo Murders would not have been published as-is had someone else’s name been on the cover—any strong editorial guidance would have pared down some subplots, revised a good chunk of the book’s last third, and arranged for plot elements to come together in a more propulsive way. But that’s one of the privileges of fame and public goodwill—you can write what you want, few will dare question it and the result may even dazzle readers for whom this is something fresh and new. (For seasoned genre readers, Hadfield’s promotional interviews for the novel are best avoided—the lack of awareness of the space program secret history subgenre is understandable but frustrating.)  But more critical readers may not be so kind. In the end, I’m left unsatisfied—I like a lot of The Apollo Murders, but those parts I didn’t are too significant to ignore.

  • The Wisher aka Spliced (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2022) I have always had a soft spot for horror movies about horror movies, even if that fondness is rarely rewarded. The Wisher, for instance, gets a few points for focusing on the experience of watching horror movies compared to the more frequent horror moves about making horror movies. But it doesn’t get very far in originality within that framework: Apparently inspired by the first Scream films (down to the use of “Do you like scary movies?” in its trailer), this one follows a young woman as her fascination for horror films ends up echoed in the apparition of a murderous supernatural figure. Her powers even extend to directing that figure to do harm to people she dislikes… but don’t expect much more than this in terms of digging into questions of guilt, power and fantasy. While The Wisher was never designed to fly high (it’s still a Canadian horror film…), it’s still hampered by a workmanlike script, low-budget production values and unambitious direction. While it’s cool to see a young Liane Balaban playing a female lead that isn’t limited to screaming at knife-wielding psychos, there’s still not as much for her to do. The period details of the early 2000s are now coalescing into a definite aesthetic, so that may add a bit of unintentional interest to the result. Still, the overall impression here is one of missed opportunities. Much is made of horror watching in the opening minutes, but it turns into a moral lesson by the end of the film. Too bad—Canadian horror fans may enjoy, but that’s an admittedly narrow niche.

  • Miss Bala (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2022) As far as action thrillers go, Miss Bala has its own distinct sheen—sure, it’s a remake of a Mexican film, but that hardly matters for the American market. It stars Gina Rodriguez as an American thrust in the middle of Mexican drug cartel intrigue after a trip south of the border. While I gather that the original isn’t as heavy on the action and much grimmer in tone, this remake predictably goes out of its way to pepper the script with high-octane moments, female empowerment and an upbeat ending. Still, much of it is rather familiar material as an everywoman is stuck between powerful forces, learns not to be helpless, and takes down the crime lords herself. The film isn’t quite so stereotypical in its depiction of Mexico as many other Hollywood thrillers (the “yellow filter” effect is not completely absent, but not omnipresent either) but it doesn’t seem interested in digging into the roots of the violence it casually employs for thrills either. With Miss Bala, director Catherine Hardwicke delivers a middle-of-the-road action thriller that gives Rodriguez a few moments to bolster her action-heroine credentials if she so chooses… but the result is hardly memorable.

  • Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2022) I have some sympathy for the filmmakers assigned to Dr. Dolittle 2, handed over a mandate to make a blockbuster movie out of the spare part of the first film. Here’s Eddie Murphy, here’s a character with the ability to speak to animals, here’s special effects technology to approximate talking animals and go. The initial writing brainstorming session must have been fun, as the screenwriter crossed out various possibilities and somehow settled on a bear looking for a mate and stopping loggers from clear-cutting his habitat. This is family filmmaking at its most mercenary, even if some of the racier humour is not really for kids and the potty humour is not for adults. Murphy is along for the ride here—he barely registers as a lead as the animals keep talking away. There’s a potentially great plot turn involving Raven-Symoné’s character, but it barely registers as a third-act afterthought (although something like it would form the backbone of the third straight-to-DVD film). At the very least, Dr. Dolittle 2 has the bare-bones of a summer blockbuster: it’s reasonably well-made, mildly entertaining and innocuous enough. That’s not much, but it explains why it was a box-office hit despite underwhelming material.

  • Materna (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) As its title suggests, Materna is all about motherhood. The rest is unclear. Structured as four shorter films loosely (i.e.: not really) brought together by an incident in the NYC subway, this is a film that’s not really interested in coherence, logic or mere entertainment: each of the four stories feels like the result of very pretentious art students convinced that they don’t really have to bow down to patriarchy in order to have something to say. Consider that the first is about a recluse woman who experiences a virgin pregnancy and bickers with her mother and the whole thing just ends. The second segment is slightly more interesting, as it follows an actress having problems getting booked and dealing with her mother. The third segment has to do with a hard-right mom having issues with her son that her left-leaning brother can’t quite solve (the segment at least has the advantage of being slightly funny.). The fourth segment is more respectable, but still dull considering that it’s about a woman bickering with her mom (and grandmother) during a funeral. None of this is interesting, although I am curious to see what Jade Eshete will do next. Writer-director David Gutnik is clearly trying to say something about a lot of things, but the entire enterprise quickly gets mired into uninteresting claptrap with no point. (Or with points so hermetic as to be invisible.)  The film works better as an actor’s showcase, but since we don’t really attend actors’ workshops, there’s not much of a case to watch Materna.

  • Dread (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2022) There’s a nasty streak of mean-spiritedness in Dread that goes well with its dirty visual aesthetics. In most respects, it feels like the kind of torture-porn horror film in the wake of Saw and its sequels, grimy sets included. The one thing that gives it an added sheen of respectability is being inspired by a Clive Barker short story that predates Saw by decades. That cerebral hook is demonstrated early, as the film lays down its premise: here we have a gleeful college-age sociopath asking friends and fellow students about their greatest fears. He says it’s for a class project, but obviously (since we’re in a horror film) this is going to lead to far less benign horror sequences. After some throat clearing, the games become clearer when every character ends up in a trap designed to trigger their deepest fears. One of those intersects with maggoty disgust, so it’s not as if we’re in profound psychological thriller territory here. While borderline reprehensible and far from being credible, writer-director Anthony DiBlasi’s Dread stages a few set-pieces that ensure that it will stick in mind just a bit longer than your usual psycho-killer horror film. That’s not necessarily something to boast about, but it is something.

  • The Outfit (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) I wasn’t expecting much from The Outfit, and for a while the film seemed determined to reassure me that I was right. This theatrically-scaled thriller begins and ends in one night at a 1950s Chicago tailor shop, where a quiet cutter is at work with his assistant. Trouble comes barging in when mob figures carry a wounded man inside the shop—it turns out that the store’s main clients are the well-dressed organized criminals, and that tonight is when many things will come to a head. Headlined by the deceptively understated Mark Rylance, The Outfit ends up being far more interesting than expected. Like the double meaning hidden in its title (eventually used in a line of dialogue), it’s a blend of Zen-like contemplation of specialized work well done, gangster thrills and a hidden revenge story. Rylance’s narration (about the work of a suit cutter) is portentous and the lush dark cinematography of the film erroneously makes viewers feel comfortable. Writer-director Graham Moore carefully measures his effects and uses a modest budget wisely, gradually cranking up the tension from a quiet opening. The result is pleasantly old-school—a bit of bloody violence aside, one could imagine this being a remake of a classic noir-era classic Hollywood film. The Outfit is a welcome surprise at a time of bombastic, overheated thrillers: something as quiet, refined and deadly as its central character.

  • The Rig (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2022) I suspected going into The Rig that it wouldn’t be good. A low-profile low-budget theatrical release really made for the direct-to-DVD market of the time, it quickly falls into very familiar territory, as a crew of workers in an isolated oil rig find themselves fighting off a xenomorph, er, monster coming from the bottom of the sea. The Alien references are stated outright, but that doesn’t really excuse a very familiar screenplay that doesn’t try to do anything different with the formula. Someone competent could have done something interesting with the isolation of the characters, the limited space of the rig and perhaps even something about the creatures or the human interactions. But director Peter Atencio is stuck with a dull script and a thin budget, and The Rig is what happens when making a movie is a producer-defined job for everyone. It does have the advantage of being exactly the film you expect—you’ve got no one else to blame if you expect too much.

  • Un flic [A Cop aka Dirty Money] (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) While Un flic seldom gets the attention that writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville’s earlier films do, it’s still a very effective thriller that came at the cusp of the neo-noir movement. It also sports a rather amazing cast, what with Alain Delon as a cop facing down Richard Crenna as the criminal, with Catherine Deneuve as the woman between them. The secret ingredient of the film is its atmosphere, at least initially—much of the first act takes place in a southern French seaside town, now deserted during the off-season. The lack of human presence in places clearly designed for crowds further adds to the desolate, almost post-apocalyptic nature of the film. Melville further underscores that point by turning in a film painted in bleak cool colours, scarcely letting joy into the frame as he follows a policeman burnt out on humanity. Un flic is not that good—there’s a repetition of plot and theme that makes the result far less memorable than it should be—but it does remain interesting, especially if you position it in the history of film noir: Melville was one of those who took the American genre and reframed it for a French audience, and now he was clearly going in the direction that neo-noir was taking by the turn of the 1970s. If you’re not that well-versed in Melville’s filmography and the genre he preferred, great—Un flic still works as a standalone. But, as with many movies, it does work better in context.

  • The Silver Streak (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) In the large tasting menu of film history, there’s nothing quite like the deliciousness of a techno-thriller from earlier decades, as whiz-bang technology is presented breathlessly to a modern audience that has often seen better. In The Silver Streak, for instance, we have a luscious description of the construction and inaugural use of a high-speed train crossing the country. Our protagonist is an engineer with big plans: a train able to race across the continental United States at a hair-raising speed of one hundred miles an hour. This is all before the popularization of air cargo freight or even the interstate highway network, but don’t laugh too much considering that American freight trains can’t even go that fast ninety years later. The first half of the film sets up the construction of the train against all odds, while the second sets up a race against time, as air lungs must be delivered from Chicago to Boulder City in twenty hours to resolve a polio outbreak. (Polio!)  Much of the last act of the film is all about a train going really, really fast and everything the screenwriters can think of coming up as obstacles. It’s a bit silly to us twenty-first century folks, but these silly elements end up being fascinating. If you’re curious to see footage of the Chicago World Fair, or the construction of the Hoover dam, or have an idea of the limitations of the world of 1934, then The Silver Streak makes for absorbing viewing. Director Tommy Atkins seems to have more fun in the action-driven last act of the film, while Charles Starrett delivers a nice portrayal of an engineer as a two-fisted hero. I’m becoming less and less willing to laugh at outdated portraits of technology—these days, I’m more liable to appreciate them as essential time capsules of an earlier era to help us better understand ours.

  • Le sens de la fête (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) There is something fundamentally compelling in movie narratives structured around a big event—something that requires the efforts of dozens of people that all have to work at peak competence in order to pull it off. You can borrow the ticking-clock nature of a live event to structure the screenplay, throw everyone in a pressure cooker to make their personalities emerge, and even throw in some traditional spectacle if the event calls for it. So it is that Le sens de la fête revolves around an expensive high-society French wedding, an event organized with precision by a wedding planner/caterer with a small army of specialists under his command. Much of the first act of the film consists in introducing the characters and the various pressures that are going to be exploited later on. Then, of course, the event starts and everything goes from bad to worse—even as the characters work their damnedest to prevent any of the rising chaos from being visible to the guests. On paper, Le sens de la fête sounds like a can’t-miss proposition—and since it’s helmed by writers-directors Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache (of Intouchables fame), there’s a reasonable presumption that it can’t miss. But the result isn’t quite the home run we may have expected: for one thing, a lot of characters here are unpleasant with nary a redeeming quality. The lead character himself (played with occasional panache by Jean-Pierre Bacri) is introduced in a scene that, while funny, shows his mean, petty, mocking streak. Then there’s the idea of a high-society wedding—the kind of prodigious waste of resources in the service of privileged moneyed elites: the film doesn’t even come close to questioning that kind of excess. A more serious charge can be made that the film constantly underplays its hand. Despite some effective set-ups, the result is less funny, less outrageous, and less satisfying than we may have expected. The ending isn’t particularly climactic, and everything ends as if this was another episode of a longer series rather than a significant event for most characters. The promising elements are wasted (such as an intriguing performance from Eye Haïdara), the elements are played without energy and even the wilder moments feel all too tame. Far from being an event, Le sens de la fête feels like a dud. I actually watched it twice—halfway convinced that I had missed something the first time. I did like it slightly better the second time, but still not enough to recommend.

  • Larceny, Inc (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) You wouldn’t necessarily expect a gangster movie featuring Edward G. Robinson, Anthony Quinn and Broderick Crawford to be any funny, but that’s exactly the kind of bet Warner Brothers made when it went forward with Larceny, Inc. A small-scale comic caper in which the plans of criminals are threatened by a carnival of freak occurrences, the film was another attempt to capitalize on Robinson’s impeccable credentials playing criminals. The narrative features three hoodlums with a simple plan: Occupy a building next to a bank, and set up some plausible front that will allow them to dig into the neighbouring vault without being disturbed. Except that the drilling hits snags (such as an oil line), and that the front, a luggage store, proves conventionally profitable by itself. (If this sounds familiar, it’s that other films have used more or less the same comic premise.)  It all escalates, of course, and the film being set during the Christmas period allows for some unusual sights. It’s not great material, but director Lloyd Bacon knew what he was playing with, and the film he delivers is entertaining enough. Robinson is very good here and the film’s expansiveness of gags masks its origin as a theatrical play. While Larceny, Inc isn’t a holiday classic, it’s decently enjoyable—and a great showcase for Robinson in a slightly different persona.

  • The Oracle (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) I’m sure someone, somewhere, will be in the mood for The Oracle today. It is, by almost all measures, a wretched film. Low production values, unimaginative premise, terrible acting, unintentionally funny moments… wait, did we just say unintentionally funny? Well, yes: this is the kind of junk filled with clichés, rubber-faced monsters, inept suspense sequences and awful production values. Nothing to cheer for, except when they combine to make up something with more entertainment as criticism than enjoyment. There’s an added attraction, I suppose, in watching bad movies from an earlier age: much of what’s acutely terrible about The Oracle becomes charming under a period sheen of analog editing machines, film grain, practical effects, and much lower horror literacy. People actually had to work hard to get such lousy results, but director Roberta Findlay was known for churning out such drivel in copious quantities. The Oracle jumps straight from a warning-from beyond-the-grave to latex monsters killing people and doesn’t really bother to make sense, a feeling of aimless drifting that arguably enhanced the result. The catch is that you have to be in a generous mood or have a built-in liking for cheap horror films in order to get the most out of The Oracle. For everyone else, there are better choices out there.

  • Eraser: Reborn (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) What’s with the recent spate of cheap made-for-streaming sequels to long-ago commercial successes? Well, I suppose this question answers itself, but it doesn’t make for rewarding viewing. The latest victim is the 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller Eraser, which gets updated to a no-name cast, low production budget and vastly less ambitious set-pieces in Eraser: Reborn. Dominic Sherwood sleepwalks through the titular role—it was probably intended to be a portrayal of a dour neurodivergent character, but he just comes across as a bad actor. The story itself is a blend of stale clichés: the protagonist whose organization wants him dead, the strained relationship between the two leads, the chase sequences, and the shootouts. Sounds intriguing but really isn’t—there’s a laboriousness to the proceedings that suggest that director John Pogue either wasn’t interested or wasn’t capable of doing any better. Some of the action sequences are almost competent, which is an improvement on the rest of the film. While Eraser: Reborn may fill up a boring evening, there’s really nothing to recommend in it. The joke about the film being better when erased comes up by itself.

  • Terror Train (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) I’m not sure anyone was really asking for a remake of the Canadian slasher “classic” Terror Train, but producers have their own mercenary motives and so now we have another updated piece of Can-Con ready for looping cable-TV showings. (I’m not kidding—the credits reveal that the film was partially financed by Canadian cable-TV channel Crave.)  The ludicrous premise of the original remains intact, as a bunch of college-age students (plus a magician and a few train workers) board a non-stop train on New Year’s Eve and then suffer through both a magic show and a psychotic killer stabbing everyone unlucky enough to be alone. There’s a logic to it all, of course, as suggested by the non-railway prologue, and a logic that does change from the original to borrow from one of the most famous slashers of all time. But you’re not really watching Terror Train for the plot, right? If you’re a gore-hound, you’re really interested in the escalating kills. If you’re slightly less of a horror fan, you may get to enjoy the atmosphere of a train on a long nighttime trip with everyone getting slaughtered inside. For those with good memories of the original, there isn’t much to see here—there have been updates to bring the setting forward by forty years (most notably ditching the idea of an all-white cast, although cell phones are not allowed for plot reasons), the patter is more contemporary and Jamie Lee Curtis has been replaced by the rather more attractive Robyn Alomar, while Canadian comedy icon Mary Walsh gets a decidedly non-comic role as the train conductor. Elsewhere in the cast, I rather liked Nadine Bhabha as a helpful train employee, while Tim Rozon has a nicely rumpled edge as the magician (although he can’t quite displace the fact that David Copperfield played the original character). Otherwise, this remade Terror Train is very much a low-budget slasher lightly updated. The gore didn’t strike me as extreme (always a plus), but there’s no hiding that it’s still a slasher. Saying that I didn’t hate it is actually praise from me in that genre, but I won’t try to pretend it’s much more than an easy casual cash-in with no ulterior ambitions. Amazingly enough, there’s a Terror Train 2 already on the schedule, which tells you much about the true intentions of this one.