Movie Review

  • The Boss (2016)

    The Boss (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, July 2016) Five years after her breakout role in Bridesmaid, Melissa McCarthy has become an authentic movie star, to the level where she’s able to put together her own vanity projects. The Boss couldn’t be any more purely McCarthy, revolving around a character she created, co-written by her husband Ben Falcone (who also directs), and featuring her in a role that takes up most of the film. The result, on the other hand, may be too much McCarthy. While not a disaster, The Boss does feel meandering, overlong and curiously unfunny. While the structure of the script is conventional enough in a comic-underdog way, the rest of the film doesn’t come together. McCarthy’s character is unpleasant (although not as actively irritating as some of her previous roles), the jokes don’t reach for much and the surprises are few. Other players such as Kristen Bell and Peter Dinklage do their best to keep up, but this is the McCarthy show and while she’s OK as an actress, she gives herself no favours as a writer. Some bits work even then they feel familiar (such as the slow-motion girl scout fight sequence) while others just flop aimlessly. What’s unfortunate is that the McCarthy persona is fundamentally irritating, and pushing it too far ends up alienating viewers (See Identity Theft), while not taking advantage of it leads to boredom and restlessness. There’s an ideal balance to strike, but it’s not to be found in The Boss, which (at best0 merely works as a run-of-the-mill comedy.

  • Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

    Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2016) Watching this movie without much knowledge or affection for either the Friday the 13th or the Nightmare on Elm Street series had me feeling as if I was attending a very strange party to which I hadn’t been invited. The concept of horror villain fandom baffles me—I had the impression that Freddy vs Jason was trying to get me to cheer for one mass murderers of children or another, which just seems wrong. It doesn’t help that Freddy vs Jason is, in most aspects, a thoroughly forgettable slasher: Here are a bunch of teenagers, there are the monsters, watch as they get picked off one by one until the final girl. Yawn. The film’s sole distinction is the amount of worship that Freddy vs Jason has for either Freddy Krueger (cackling one-liners) or Jason Voorhees (silent brute), which doesn’t translate into anything meaningful. Again: I’d like a horror movie that doesn’t make me feel like a psychopath, please. Some aspects of the film warrant mention due to imperfection: the CGI effects, in particular, look fake and dated. Some of Ronny Yu’s direction has some high-energy moments (with Robert Englund clearly having fun in a familiar role), even though the Crystal Lake third act feels far too long for its own good. I almost certainly could have gotten more out of Freddy vs Jason had I watched the interminable series that inspired it. But frankly, I have better things to do.

  • Carol (2015)

    Carol (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2016) Let me tell you how little I cared about Carol: After renting it via video on-demand, I fell asleep midway through and didn’t come back to it before its 48-hour availability period expired. Six months later, I happened to catch its second half on Cable TV just to say I’d seen it to the end. To be fair, it’s a good film. Competently directed by Todd Haynes, it convincingly re-creates wintry 1950s New York in presenting the then-scandalous love affair between a high-class wife and a humble shopgirl/photographer. Strikingly enough, Carol manages to avoid the aren’t-we-better-now back-patting, or the tragic-forbidden-romance angle in which so many historical same-sex romances run aground. Even though it features stars such as the always-exceptional Cate Blanchett and It Girl Rooney Mara, it doesn’t shy away from explicit love scenes. As such, it’s a quiet triumph. Still, movie viewers with shorter attention spans will fiddle a long time while the film glacially moves through its story, rarely surprising or exciting. While there’s a bit of a thriller-ish subplot later on, Carol otherwise behaves almost exactly as it would have had it been put together in the 1950s. It would, of course, have been far more scandalous then, but that’s sort of the point of the film. I don’t think Carol will mind all that much if it leaves me cold: other reviewers have liked it a lot more than I did, and that’s good enough—it’s a big movie universe, and there’s a place for everything.

  • An Education (2009)

    An Education (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2016) It doesn’t reflect well on me, but I’ve long believed that Carey Mulligan is one of the most profoundly uninteresting thespian working at the moment. I don’t find her likable, attractive or impressive—most of her roles could have been played just as well by other actresses, and she doesn’t seem to have any innate distinction to her on-screen persona. But here comes An Education to make me question that long-held loathing: Mulligan is the clear protagonist of the movie, and she more than manages to be interesting, likable, attractive (a flattering haircut helps) and impressive as a young woman undergoing real-life schooling in 1960s England. Going from grade-A student to dropout under the influence of a conman, Mulligan portrays the withering innocence and mounting maturity of her character, and hold her own against capable actors such as Peter Sarsgaard (as the charming antagonist) and Alfred Molina (as a father who cares a lot). It’s not a complicated story, nor much of an original one, but it works well at what it tries to do, and ends up considerably more captivating than it looks on paper. An Education is a small surprise, not the least of them being Mulligan’s unexpectedly compelling performance.

  • Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008)

    Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2016) Absence does make the heart grow fonder. After spending much of the early 2010s getting gradually fed up with Michael Cera’s persona, I forgot about him for a while. Watching him being quite likable as his usual screen-self in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist reminded me that, overexposure aside, there is a reason why he was pigeonholed in that kind of role: it works well at what it’s meant to be, especially if you’re going to make an underdog romantic comedy. More or less tightly structured around a wild night in New York City’s streets chasing an indie band’s pop-up concert, this hipster teenage rom-com works largely due to the freshness of its script and the likability of its stars. While the story isn’t particularly innovative, there’s some wit in the dialogue and the small-scale moments of the film. Meanwhile, Kat Denning s earns good notices for her performance in the female lead role, with a decent supporting turn by Ari Graynor and Jay Baruchel popping up in an extended cameo. I’m not a fan of the specific kind of mewling indie “rock” favoured by the film and its character, but their love of music itself is infectiously charming. The NYC location shooting is a highlight at a time where most movies will have other cities play New York—this is the real deal, painstakingly captured night after night. Director Peter Sollett, adapting a young-adult novel, is warm and sympathetic toward its sometimes-misguided characters. Containing the entire story overnight works in the film’s distinctiveness, much like its positive outlook and sweet disposition. Worth a look, especially if you’re in the mood for a likable teen romantic comedy … even if you think you’ve grown used to Cera’s persona.

  • Stargate (1994)

    Stargate (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, on TV, July 2016) I remember seeing this in theatres (opening week!) and feeling let-down by the way a first act promising the mysteries of the universe led to an underwhelming film about primitive tribes rushing into revolution with our band of heroes. Watching it again twenty years later, with adjusted expectations, I’m still disappointed. I suppose that if it’s space opera that I want, the subsequent TV series and novelizations will suffice, but it doesn’t make the original film much better. And yet, there are a few things to note here: James Spader as a likable nerd, a prime-era Kurt Russell acting tough as a military operative, an early eye-catching role for Mili Avital, and primitive CGI being used in obvious ways. The familiar triumphant-rebellion angle is guaranteed to be rousing, and director Dean Emmerich does manage one or two interesting visuals. Historically, this Emmerich/Devlin production works best as a bit of a bigger-budget rehearsal for the more accomplished madness that was Independence Day. Even with good intentions, I still feel underwhelmed by Stargate.

  • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2016) Slick, loud and utterly forgettable, 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot exemplified early on the defining characteristics of the recent (and hopefully disappearing) craze for remaking classic horror movies. The technical values are quite a bit better than the originals, but while the story structure remains the same, it’s filtered through a homogenizing process that removes nearly all the rough edges and quirks of the inspiration. The result usually feels lifeless, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake couldn’t be more representative of the trend. Featuring young protagonists facing down hillbillies, it’s a predictable by-the-number exercise in genre horror, with largely forgettable set pieces that are executed well enough to measure up to current production standards, but not so memorably as to warrant any sustained attention. It’s purely a teen slasher in backwater country, and there’s nothing worth pondering in terms of themes or style. Nobody will care about the limp attempt at framing the movie as a true-crime story. Jessica Biel is the notional protagonist here, but this won’t figure on her filmography as anything more than a stepping stone to more visible roles. Gorier yet less disturbing than the original, this Texas Chainsaw Massacre also shares another crucial characteristic of remakes: It’s unnecessary, and will quickly be forgotten in favour of its predecessor.

  • The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

    The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2016) It’s amazing how I get more mini-epiphanies during mediocre films than from great ones. The takeaway lesson from The Hills Have Eyes, as far as criticism theory is concerned, is this: I like horror movies that don’t make me feel like a sociopath. To unpack this a bit: When I’m watching a horror film, do I get the impression that it’s telling me to cheer for the villain? Have more time, attention and money been spent on the antagonist(s) rather than the heroes? If I shuffle through my favourite horror films of the past few years (It Follows, The Babadook, The Conjuring, etc.), it’s clear that they care for their protagonists and that they mean something beyond throwing gory violence on-screen. “Bad stuff happens to young people” isn’t a plot fit to make me like the result. Where this remake of The Hills Have Eyes comes in is that despite considerable effort designing and showcasing its mutated villains, it does have the decency to step back from the abyss just early enough to avoid complete nihilism. It is rather well executed for a schlocky creature feature: There’s a particularly unbearable sequence midway through in which three or four horrible things happen at once, and the movie becomes a full-on horror show of atrocities. I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s well done to a disturbing extent thanks to director Alexandre Aja’s savviness. The rest of the film isn’t so remarkable: As an example of the “crazed hillbillies want to kill our heroes” sub-genre, it has the appeal of taking place in a foreboding location and of sparing a larger number of its protagonists than you’d expect. Otherwise, it gets a bit off-putting in how it tries to give more personality to its monsters than its heroes, even painstakingly explaining the whys and hows of their origins when a simple mushroom cloud would have been more than sufficient. Save for the awful middle sequence, there isn’t much more to The Hills Have Eyes than your middling horror film, mass-produced for mindless gore-hound consumption. There’s a public for that … but I’m not included.

  • Jeepers Creepers (2001)

    Jeepers Creepers (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2016) I wasn’t expecting much from the low-budget Jeepers Creepers, which is probably why I ended up pleasantly satisfied. This is not, to be clear, a particularly good or respectable horror movie. Don’t go looking for deeper themes or allegories in the result, which is as straightforward a creature feature as can be. This is nothing more than the story of two teenagers encountering a monster in the backwoods and dealing with the ensuing mayhem. Still, Jeepers Creepers does have a bit of self-awareness and some of the suspenseful sequences are handled well. The terror move deliberately from the rural to the supernatural, and the atmosphere of the result is interesting enough, especially when the protagonists reach “civilization” and find out that it’s not much comfort. The “Jeepers Creepers” song is catchy, and the monster does have some originality to it. The dialogue has its moments, and Justin Long has an early memorable role as one of the teenage protagonists. It does get more and more conventional as it goes on, unfortunately, and the grim ending doesn’t do much to make it any better. Still, Jeepers Creepers knows what it tries to do, and isn’t too bad at it.

  • Sinister 2 (2015)

    Sinister 2 (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2016) I should know better by now than to expect horror sequels to be any good. Too often, the magic spark of the successful original is either never recaptured or beaten to a pulp, the gimmicks (i.e.; death sequences) taking over the particularity of the predecessor. So it is that Sinister 2 focuses on the wrong aspects (such as the home videos of families being killed, the Bughuul myth, the jump-scare from the screen) while being unable to re-create whatever worked in the original. The atmosphere that was such an integral part of the first Sinister feels rote, and the plot, while trying to be fresh, doesn’t offer much satisfaction. Entire swaths of the film pass unnoticed and unremarkable on the way to an ending that doesn’t manage to raise itself above mediocrity. There is still a bit of achieved potential in how the kids become the antagonist’s instruments of execution, and in the manner in which they figure out how to get rid of the evil in the end. James Ransone does his best as the protagonist, and Shannyn Sossamon is a welcome presence even years after leaving the mainstream path. Still, much of Sinister 2 feels like an imposed exercise, running through the motions in the hopes of striking fire again. It is far too well executed to be a bad horror movie, but it’s not much of an achievement either.

  • Our Brand is Crisis (2015)

    Our Brand is Crisis (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2016) As a political junkie (with acute flare-ups in election years like this one), I’m perhaps more enthusiastic than most at the thought of movies seeing political operatives as heroes. Our Brand is Crisis (adapted from a true story) follows a group of American consultants as they are hired to help during a Bolivian election pitting a few bad choices against each other. But it’s not just candidates battling it out when the operatives have their own grudges to nurse against each other. In South American politics, nearly all tricks are allowed, and so much of the movie is spent following the twists and turns of the campaign as the consultants try to outwit each other. It sounds fun, it should have been hilarious and somehow … isn’t. Too contemplative to deserve a full “black comedy” qualification, Our Brand is Crisis falls short of the potential it had set up for itself. It’s also remarkably pat, as if it didn’t know about the audience’s political sophistication. Oh, so your candidate lies, cheats, won’t hold his promises and is widely disliked? Well, start with that rather than lead up to it, or be shocked when it happens. Otherwise, there seems to be a distinct lack of energy in David Gordon Green’s execution of the material, or maybe a dearth of substance itself. Sticking too close to the true story may have been a mistake. At least Sandra Bullock is enjoyable as a genius-level political consultant reluctantly dragged into the mud of a campaign once again. (She’s particularly funny early on, not so much afterwards.) Billy Bob Thornton gives her capable repartee as a longtime rival, while Anthony Mackie, Zoe Kazan (captivating in a woefully underdeveloped character) and Joaquim de Almeida are serviceable supporting players. Still, Our Brand is Crisis doesn’t reach its full potential and mishandles its ending by being far too falsely outraged after its own shenanigans. Just as there have been plenty of movies about political consultants, others are sure to follow. But it may be a good moment for newer and fresher narratives than “protagonists discover that their candidate is terrible” and “protagonists contemplate the damage they’ve done to democracy” because those have been done enough times already.

  • A Time to Kill (1996)

    A Time to Kill (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2016) There was a time, before the McConnaissance, before the Decade of Rom-Coms, when Matthew McConaughey was hailed as a promising young actor, and A Time to Kill (alongside Contact, Amistad and Lone Star) was part of the evidence. Watching it today is like unearthing vintage McConaughey, made even better by the calibre of the cast surrounding him. Samuel L. Jackson in a genuinely unsettling angry father role? Kevin Spacey as a slimy prosecutor? Sandra Bullock as the brilliant girl who comes to save the day? Ashley Judd, Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Chris Cooper as part of the scenery? Not bad at all. While director Joel Schumacher lets the film run long, he knows what he’s doing in giving it a sweaty high-polish gloss. (Do I need to highlight once more the disappearance of the big-budget standalone thriller in today’s Hollywood industry?) The story is adapted reasonably faithfully from the John Grisham novel, including the uncomfortable considerations of vigilantism. In fact, the movie may be a bit more upsetting in the way it squarely places its sympathies with the justice-seeker and conflating it with a victory for the oppressed (as in; racists are bad, so they get what they deserve and never mind the judicial process.) There’s unpleasant stuff going just under the glossy surface of the story, and it’s not clear whether this is entirely intentional from either Grisham or the screenwriter. Still, A Time to Kill can coast a long time on the charm and persona of its stars. In the end, it’s a film best seen for its cast and execution than for moral questions left untouched.

  • Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

    Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2016) There are many things I don’t like about stupid humour, and one of them is the way it curdles the older its practitioners are. Watching Jim Carrey and Jeff Bridges goof off in 1994 when they were in their thirties is bad enough, but seeing them act like big doofuses in 2014 when they’re in their fifties is adding a substantial layer of melancholy on something that’s already pretty sad. It gets worse considering how Dumb and Dumber To tries to bring in issues of fatherhood (flirting far too long with the stomach-churning idea of a character having designs on the other one’s daughter) in-between wasting one’s life on dumb jokes. The film starts badly, builds setpieces that aren’t as funny as the screenwriters think and sort of peters out at some point before the end. There are a few high notes, although one of them (the brief return of the iconic dog van) is notable in how quickly it speeds by. As in the original, dumb humour abounds, but very little of it has the kind of panache that made the first film so memorable and grudgingly funny. It doesn’t help that, in twenty years, the comedy zeitgeist has moved away from the original’s model. Carrey can’t very well return to the same kind of humour he did twenty years ago without looking ridiculous in unintended ways, while Bridges doesn’t completely abase himself. In that chaos of dumb taste, only Kathleen Turner emerges gracefully, although having one of the most level-headed characters in the film helps a lot. After so many modest efforts and all-out misfires, you’d think that the Farrelly Brothers would stop making movies at some point, but clearly the box office results show that I’m wrong and my opinions on the matter don’t mean anything. In the meantime, Dumb and Dumber To exists, and you only have yourself the blame if you end up watching it.

  • Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

    Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on Cable TV, July 2016) As an entry in Martin Scorsese’s filmography, Bringing Out the Dead is often forgotten alongside his classic movies. Which is weird, considering that it’s a drama featuring Nicolas Cage as a paramedic at the height of the New York City crime epidemic of the early nineties. Directed with some of Scorsese’s flamboyance, it portrays NYC nights as barely repressed war zones in which paramedics are helpless to help their dying charges. Crime, drugs, heart attacks and accidents kill scores of victims, while Cage’s character goes crazy knowing that he hasn’t saved anyone in ages. As a Cage performance, it’s a rare blend between his Oscar-winning dramatic intensity and his borderline-insane grandiosity. The overall nightmarish atmosphere of the film seems just as unhinged as its lead actor, with the film taking place nearly entirely at night, in-between a hospital where everybody’s is shouting and bleeding, and the streets where the only people they meet are doing badly. Cage’s paramedic colleagues (the pretty good trio of John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore) are even more screwed up than he is and what’s more, he can’t quit even when he asks. Stripped of its showy hallucinatory sequences (including a flipping ambulance that should have been held in reserve for later during the film) Bringing Out the Dead isn’t much more than the story of a protagonist undergoing a nervous breakdown and picking himself up thanks to romance and a few ironic epiphanies. Set to Scorsese’s own rhythm, it’s a bit more than that, even though the pacing of the story severely slows down at times. It’s worth noting that the film was written by Paul Schrader, and fits squarely in the rest of his filmography as well. Scorsese’s affection for his city is obvious even when he’s portraying it as its lowest (and who doesn’t have a soft spot for the hellish NYC of the 1970s?), and it’s that kind of pairing (alongside Scorsese/Cage and Cage-the-actor/Cage-the-scenery-chomper) that makes Bringing Out the Dead interesting to watch even fifteen years later, perhaps as a time capsule yet unseen by many.

  • Hyena Road (2015)

    Hyena Road (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2016) The Canadian film industry is so cash-strapped and the country so reluctant to military intervention that the idea of a Canadian war epic seems almost impossible. But considering the near-mythology that has sprung from the Canadian intervention in Afghanistan and the zeal with which writer/director/actor Paul Gross has pursued Canadian myth-making throughout his career, it was inevitable that the two would meet. The result in Hyena Road, an attempt to portray the Canadian Afghanistan war experience on the big screen à la Hollywood. Much of the film is by-the-numbers war-movie stuff: the band of heroes, the heroic sacrifices, the forbidden romance, the shootouts… Unfortunately, Gross can’t help but reach for a tragic ending in an attempt to heighten the impact of his story. Too bad we can see it coming from far away, along with the double-crosses, tangled allegiances and “what are we even doing here?” musings. On a certain level, it’s a wholly average film even in the way it frustrates its audience and really wants them to cry at the end. On another level, it’s hard to be Canadian and not feel at least a frisson of national pride at the result. Consider: the Big Mission of the film is building the eponymous Hyena Road. That’s right: infrastructure building as a national priority in foreign intervention! Still, much of the film actually works just well enough: screenwriter/director Gross leaves the young-sniper hero role to Rossif Sutherland, keeping for himself the far more interesting character of an intelligence officer trying to navigate the dangerous Afghan politics and history, while being the voice of cold hard experience for his protégé. The action sequences are well handled and the production values are convincing (especially on the film’s modest budget). As much Hyena Road’s ending smacks of melodrama, it is remarkably far, far less self-important as Gross’s previous Passchendale. That may take away some of the mythic grandeur of the previous film, but it makes the result more palatable. As Canada reflects upon its afghan experience in the coming decades, I expect more war dramas to make it to the big screen—but as a first attempt, Hyena Road is a modest success.