Movie Review

  • Burlesque Assassins (2012)

    Burlesque Assassins (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) How can you not like this premise?  In the depth of the cold-war 1950s, here is a trio of deadly… burlesque assassins!  It’s a charming hook, and the film certainly doesn’t forget how silly it’s supposed to be, as three lovely operatives take on Mussolini Jr., Hitler’s clone and what looks like Joe Stalin.  Still, viewers should realize that Burlesque Assassins is a low-budget Canadian film with more interest in showcasing burlesque than in being a polished comic thriller, and so adjust their expectations accordingly.  From the title and plot summary, it’s easy to imagine writer/director Jonathan Joffe’s Burlesque Assassins to be something it’s not.  The ultra-low-budget film is tailored to fit its single-minded burlesque boosterism and it often shows: Much of the film’s action, absent two prologues and three flashbacks, takes place in a single cabaret on a single night, the dialogue is often ham-fisted, the film’s plot is slowed down by burlesque numbers and the conclusion makes a mess out of whatever motivation the characters had.  There’s also quite a bit too much gore for the film’s tone.  Still, Burlesque Assassins has something that many more polished films don’t: charm.  The acting is more endearing than convincing, but it doesn’t matter given how likable the entire film becomes.  Armitage Shanks is constantly hilarious as the gruff-but-sensitive Johnny Valentine (it takes a strong man to do drag this badly), while Roxi D’Lite is pitch-perfectly doe-eyed as the new recruit in this trio of assassins.  Of the standalone burlesque numbers, Scarlett Martini has the most interesting performance –the rest sort of blurs together despite the big numbers and small patsies.  Still –and I can’t underscore this point enough– Burlesque Assassins makes up in likability what it doesn’t have in scope, pacing or polish: It’s the kind of let’s-get-the-gang-together small-budget filmmaking that’s hard to dislike or even dismiss.

  • The Hangover Part III (2013)

    The Hangover Part III (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2013) As someone who had a mixed reaction to The Hangover and an annoyed one to its nearly photocopied sequel, I’m almost unsurprised to find out that I don’t completely dislike the third installment in “The Wolfpack trilogy”.  At the very least, it disposes with the narrative scheme of the first two films and attempts something new.  It also brings back Ken Jeong’s unleashed character, a force of chaos that ends up driving much of the entire plot.  The result certainly has its moments, as it zigzags from Los Angeles to Tijuana to (much to the characters’ dismay) Las Vegas once again.  The comedy certainly is of the hit-and-miss type: some stuff works, some stuff doesn’t and viewers just have to wait for the next gag if one isn’t to their liking.  With this series, it doesn’t pay off to be offended, but it actually takes a while (arguably until after the credits) for this third Hangover to get overly graphic.  Perhaps the film is mellowing along its characters; perhaps it’s a recognition that you can only go back to the same raunchy source so many times.  Much of the film’s success has to go to the actors under Todd Phillips’ direction.  Bradley Cooper is still as preposterously charming as ever, while Ed Helms continues to undermine his own straight-laced image.  Zach Galifianakis remains annoying, but even that annoyance seems lessened here, largely because his character does get a bit of emotional growth along the way.  The Hangover III benefits from a few good comic set-pieces (the best of which taking place atop Caesar’s Palace), and manages to re-use a lot of material from the previous two film, even if only in passing.  The result may not be great cinema, but it’s decent comedy and it brings this would-be trilogy to a decent close.  It could have been worse, or at least far more similar to the first two films.

  • Sinister (2012)

    Sinister (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) There are so many average horror movies out there that finding a decent one always seem like an achievement.  Sinister may not be exceptionally made or all that elegantly plotted, but it’s effective at what it tries to accomplish, and it manages a few dreadful moments along the way.  The story of a true-crime writer who comes to discover a supernatural serial killer, Sinister effectively sets up its premise and doesn’t waste a lot of time before unspooling its horror.  Audiences are likely to be as fascinated and repulsed as the protagonist in watching grisly Super-8 movies showing a few families’ final moments.  Sinister is a knowing horror film in that it manages to exploit a few well-establish tropes, upend a few others and twist a few more.  It doesn’t break out of the genre and has little meaningful social commentary to offer, but it creates a great atmosphere, a few jump scares, a relatively fresh take on classic material and some disturbing visual imagery.  The ending may be unsurprising, but it builds to a crescendo that matches good visuals with a fine sense of pacing.  Ethan Hawke doesn’t embarrass himself as the obsessed protagonist, while writer/director Scott Derrickson hits his intended targets –an underestimated skill in the horror genre.  Worth seeing, although perhaps not by the entire family!

  • Omertà (2012)

    Omertà (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2013) I have fond memories of the original “Omertà” TV series that was broadcast back in 1996: A muscular police thriller set against the backdrop of Montréal’s organized crime, it put Michel Côté on the map, brought Hollywood-like production values to Québec TV and showed that home-grown entertainment could be remarkably enjoyable.  Omertà-the-movie obviously banks on name recognition, as it purports to follow Michel Côté’s character more than a decade after the conclusion of the third series.  The links between TV series and film aren’t thicker than two common characters, though: much of the rest is original, so that viewers without any knowledge of the series won’t miss much.  What follows is a tangled, even opaque, mess of double-agents, organized crime figures, corrupt law-and-order representatives and the occasional victim.  It’s not uninteresting (even featuring a daring death midway through) and filmmaker Luc Dionne’s work is generally solid… but the script leads to a big so-what of an inconclusive ending that doesn’t show bravery as much as it elicits frustration.  While the film has its moments, it seems to lead nowhere, and mishandle its own strengths.  As Québec’s “big movie” of 2012, it offers the usual casting gags and fixtures: Michel Côté and Patrick Huard are omnipresent on the French-Canadian big screen for good reasons, while comedian Stéphane Rousseau is a revelation as a villain (sadly, his characters is repeatedly qualified as a psycho without much on-screen confirmation, and his exit is a big disappointment) while husband/manager-of-Céline-Dion René Angelil as a mob boss is just… funny.  Alas, Rachelle Lefebvre is far less interesting than she should have been in her role.  While Omertà is a decent piece of filmmaking, it’s not quite the slick crowd-pleaser that it aimed to be.  It may be worthwhile to revisit the TV series, though, and I’m still interested in whatever Luc Dionne wants to work on next.

  • Cloud Atlas (2012)

    Cloud Atlas (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) At a time where big-budget filmmaking seems to retreat in familiar narrative structures and a complete lack of daring, Cloud Atlas comes as a welcome break from the usual.  Clocking in at nearly three hours, it features six loosely-linked narratives spanning centuries and several known actors playing different roles in each story.  Heralding the return of the Wachowskis siblings to the big screen after a few quiet years (they co-direct three of the six stories, with Tom Tykwer directing the remainder of the film), Cloud Atlas is big, ambitious and offers things that cinema doesn’t often get to showcase.  It is, in many ways, a singular movie experience, and one that deserves to be contemplated rather than simply liked or disliked.  As an adaptation of David Mitchell’s sprawling novel, it’s an excellent, even audacious re-working: the film’s structure works in ways that the novel couldn’t, and still ends up a fiercely cinematic work.  Most of the actors playing multiple roles seem to have a lot of fun, with particular notice to Tom Hanks (who gets to tweak his usual good-guy persona), Halle Berry (who gets one of her best roles yet as a 1970s journalist), an often-unrecognizable Hugh Grant, as well as gleefully multifaceted Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving –who even gets to play both assassin and nurse. (Some roles don’t work as well, such as when actors get to play outside their ethnicity or gender, but that happens.) The six stories interlock in subtle ways, suggesting both reincarnation of personalities and malleability of interpretation once truth becomes fiction.  For all of the good things about Cloud Atlas, it’s almost too easy to forget that this is not an easy or even completely successful film: You have to give it at least 30 minutes for the six stories to earn narrative interest, and there’s a sense that the film is definitely not tight or focused: it often appears to run off on tangents and forced similarities, and certainly will not please anyone looking for solid links between all elements of the picture.  Still, for jaded moviegoers, Cloud Atlas is as close as it gets to a truly new experience within the big-budget framework: it tries many new things, succeeds spectacularly well at some of them and leaves hungry for a bit more.  I could go on, but the film is too big to be adequately described within the constraints of a capsule review.

  • Gravity (2013)

    Gravity (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In Theaters, October 2013) I’m going to take a break from reasoned movie criticism and indulge myself in a few freefall back-flips about Gravity: This is a movie I’ve been waiting a long time to see, at least ever since I wanted to be an astronaut while growing up.  Alfonso Cuarón’s latest film takes us in orbit for 90 minutes, and I loved every moment of it, jaw hanging open in astonishment for much of that time.  The narrative setup couldn’t be simpler (accident in space; astronaut wants to go home), but the execution is almost perfect: Seen in 3D, Gravity is the definition of an immersive experience.  From the impressive 17-minutes-long opening take, this is a film that attempts something ambitious and manages a delicate balance between showing something new while trusting its audience to follow along without excessive dumbing-down.  It’s not scientifically impeccable (the orbital mechanics are simplified, the plot armor a bit thick at time) but most of the compromises are conscious ones made in good faith so that the story can work on a more emotional level.  Sandra Bullock is spectacular as the quasi-civilian thrust in an impossible situation, while George Clooney is his usual charming self as an old-school “Right Stuff” veteran doing his best to keep the situation under control.  But it’s writer/director Cuarón who earns most of the praise here, because Gravity is an insane gamble that works: A technically-complex film that features grand thrills, thematic depths, beautiful visuals and new ways of telling a story on-screen.  There are a few remarkable moments in this film, from seamlessly going to-and-from subjective perspective, soundless mayhem, zero-gravity fire and strong emotions conveyed without histrionics.  It’s both a science-fiction film (despite the lack of speculative elements, it’s a classic “Analog story”) and a memorable thriller, and it arrives in theaters as an invigorating antidote to the kind of cookie-cutter moviemaking that big studios seem all too eager to present.  It’s worth seeing in 3D, and it’s worth seeing in theaters: how many other films can claim the same?  Assured of a top-ten spot on my year’s end list, and most likely headed straight to the top spot, Gravity isn’t just a great movie: it’s one that makes it worth feeling excited about movies again.

  • Life of Pi (2012)

    Life of Pi (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) As someone who read Yann Martel’s novel a while ago, Life of Pi held few surprises from a narrative point of view: The big-screen adaptation faithfully recreates the novel’s structure, its main plot beats (including the slap-back ending) and a good chunk of the story’s thematic concerns.  As a result, I’m not overly bothered by the overdone spiritual content, or the trickster nature of the ending.  It remains, at its most basic level, the story of a teenager’s survival ordeal as he’s stuck for most of a year on a lifeboat with a full-grown Bengal tiger.  Still, as with the novel, I was far more interested with the detailed practicality of the protagonist’s lifeboat ordeal than with the multiple levels of interpretation, the spiritual content or the work’s boastful assertion that it will make audiences believe in God.  Much of Life of Pi is immediately accessible as a succession of terrific imagery, you-are-there details of lifeboat survival and good old-fashion resilience in the face of terrible adversity.  The special effects are terrific (the two storm sequences are simply amazing) and director Ang Lee’s skill in making the film both visceral and ethereal is something to behold.  You’d think that the film would start to repeat itself given the limited setting, but Life of Pi remains engrossing for as long as its characters are drifting at sea.  While I suspect that more spiritually-minded audience will get more out of the film, I’m sufficiently impressed that it can still manage to reach and fascinate audiences such as myself, purely as a survival thriller.

  • Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

    Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) Oh, we’ve seen this movie before: College kids go deep in the wood for a weekend party, meet creepy hillbillies and numerous deaths ensue.  But the scenario is familiar enough to have spawned parodies, and after The Cabin in the Woods, here’s Tucker and Dale vs Evil, which follows two good-natured rednecks on a weekend outing as they find themselves attacked by college kids following an escalating series of accidents and misunderstandings.  Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk star as the unlucky pair of heroes, bringing a good-natured charm to already-sympathetic roles.  But the star of the film really is the script, which manages to balance a tricky mixture of gore, comedy, trope inversion and self-aware idiot plotting.  It works, even though there is a moment around the half-way mark where it seems as if the premise runs thin and the gory deaths become a bit too gory for the comedy: Tucker and Dale vs Evil knows what it’s doing, and there’s considerable amusement in seeing would-be antagonists and protagonists switching roles.  Writer/director Eli Craig’s script isn’t bad, and the entire film is a great deal sweeter than anyone could have expected.  (That’s not entirely good, as the largely-useless final scene suggests.)  Of course, as with The Cabin in the Woods (which you can now purchase as a recommended double-feature DVD with Dale and Tucker vs Evil), this is a film that is perhaps best appreciated by those who are aware of the whole “hillbilly horror” subgenre, and who can stomach often-excessive amount of gore with their comedy. 

  • Les Misérables (2012)

    Les Misérables (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) A quick trawl through these reviews will reveal that when it comes to movie musicals, I’m a very forgiving reviewer.  I have embraced the musical in its post-Moulin Rouge era and a few disappointments aside, I’m usually fond of the genre.  So imagine my surprise when I found myself annoyed, bored and exasperated by Les Misérables, surely one of the most instantly recognizable examples of the genre to come down the Broadway-to-Hollywood route.  I groaned when I realized that Les Misérables would not only be wall-to-wall singing, but that nearly every song would sound the same and drag on forever.  More than once, I left the living room for errands and came back minutes later to characters expressing the same emotion.  For all of its nice cinematography and convicting re-creation of a troubled period in French history, Les Misérables plods on for more than an excruciating two hours and a half, on a musical register than barely varies from one song to the next. Perhaps my powers of concentration are gone; maybe I’m just picky when I should be forgiving.  And it’s not as if the actors are slacking, given how many of them do well with parts that exceed their signing range. Seeing Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen and a thoroughly unglamorous Helena Bonham Carter voice their miserable condition is interesting as in we-haven’t-seen-this-too-many-times-before, but they can’t make the pace move more quickly, or change the film’s intention to make nearly every line of dialogue sung.  (Still, I note that the most memorable performance comes from musical-cast-member Samantha Barks, who makes the most out of a limited role as Éponine)  Les Misérables is lavish filmmaking on the highest level –but it’s annoying for idiosyncratic reasons that I can’t fully articulate.  Upon reflection, through, it occurs to me that I’m fonder of original-movie-musicals rather than straight-up adaptations of existing Broadway shows.  Let’s keep the musicals on Broadway, and use the cinema screen for something that fully exploits cinema as a medium.

  • Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

    Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) Buzzwords from Silver Linings Playbook’s script read like a bingo card of stuff I don’t particularly care about: mild mental illness, ballroom dancing and rabid sports fandom.  So it’s perhaps a relief more than anything else that this dramatic comedy ends up being better than expected.  Much of the praise should go to Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who manage to navigate a tricky path in portraying badly-flawed characters that nonetheless become endearing.  Lawrence, in particular, portrays a character far beyond her age, rounding an increasingly multifaceted screen persona.  The rest of the film’s success should go to writer/director David O. Russell, who doesn’t specialize in easy movies and here manages to deliver a refreshing blend of independent sensibilities with Hollywood A-list actors.  The mixture is tricky and doesn’t always work (Anyone bored with sports fandom will find lengthy stretches of the film almost interminable, although Lawrence does get a laugh out-playing superstitious armchair statisticians.) but Silver Linings Playbook does work more often than it should and that’s enough to qualify it as a success.

  • Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

    Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2012) Now that 1980s kids have not only climbed the ladders of pop-culture production, but also form a substantial part of the paying audience, it’s no surprise that eighties nostalgia should pop up everywhere.  (It’ll get worse; we’re within ten years of a nineties revival.)  Given that video games were The New Thing for eighties kids, it’s no surprise that something like Wreck-It Ralph should make it to the big screen: An animated film exploiting videogame history seems like a natural fit, perfectly adapted to the kind of stories in the Pixar/Disney mold.  Clearly, Walt Disney Animation Studios have learned a lot from stable-mates Pixar (and creative director John Lasseter) because Wreck-It Ralph is as good as most of the Pixar films at exploiting a high-concept premise and setting a solid narrative within strange environments: As eight-bit villain Ralph sets out to become a hero in other newer games, we get a look at the inner life of videogame characters, plenty of cameos from thirty+ years of gaming and a rather solid story as well.  The film flows easily, and while it spends a bit too much time in Sugar Rush, there’s plenty to see and laugh about every few moments.  The visuals are spectacular, but Wreck-It Ralph never forgets that it needs a story and compelling characters.  Even non-gamers should be charmed by the film even as they miss many of the big and small in-jokes that pepper its running time.  As far as corporate exercises in nostalgia are concerned, this is actually pretty good.  It makes a powerful argument, alongside Bolt, The Princess and the Frog, Tangled and Winnie the Pooh, about Walt Disney Animation Studio’s surging relevance at a time where more and more animation companies are vying for attention.

  • Frankenweenie (2012)

    Frankenweenie (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) There’s something intensely familiar with Tim Burton’s Frankenwwenie, and that’s a good thing: After nearly a decade in the wilderness, here he is revisiting old obsessions and directing a film that’s close to the goth-suburban aesthetics of his early work, most particularly the classic Edward Scissorhands.  Inspired by two short films from Burton’s early career, Frankenweenie depicts a boy’s adventures after resurrecting his pet dog.  His secret doesn’t hold, his friends all try to emulate him and soon enough the entire neighborhood has problems with undead pets.  Filmed in sharp black-and-white stop-motion animation, Frankenweenie becomes homage to Frankenstein and Burton’s work, obviously, but also to sub-genres of horror cinema including kaiju monster cinema.  It’s not exactly a breath of fresh air, but it’s competently executed, somewhat charming for audiences with some horror-film background and a welcome return to form for Burton after a string of mystifying misfires.  It’s worth a look, even though it may ultimately prove to be forgettable.

  • The Possession (2012)

    The Possession (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2012) Sometimes, you can judge a film by its title.  So it is that The Possession’s bland, forgettable, overused title also reflects a film that is, in most ways, absolutely unremarkable: From the something-awful-happens opening to the evil-survives-to-strike-again conclusion, all the way through a tiresome demonic possession plot, The Possession is by-the-numbers horror filmmaking, occasionally effective as earning an ouch or an eeew, but never quite working its way down in the murky basement of primal fears.  It’s safely conventional, and the film’s best moments aren’t in the sometimes-gratuitous violent supernatural episode as much as in the character work within an estranged family pulling apart.  Jeffrey Dean Morgan isn’t bad as the protagonist, a divorced father trying to hold on to his daughters’ affections even as one of them is taken over by a demon.  And there’s something rather unusual in seeing Hassidic Jews being brought in to help.  Still, there isn’t much more in The Possession than we haven’t seen before.  Director Ole Bornedal, in interviews (and in-between the usual twaddle about this being “based on a true story”) attempts to draw parallels between demonic possession and divorce, but the evidence for this thematic ambition just isn’t shown on-screen.  No amount of moderately successful execution manages to fill the big empty void in the middle of the script.  While there are many worse horror films out there, they are also plenty that are more engaging, more meaningful or better executed… so why waste time on something so disposable?

  • Pain & Gain (2013)

    Pain & Gain (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on-demand, September 2013) Anyone with an interest in director Michael Bay’s career was eagerly anticipating this film: While Bay usually works with stratospheric budgets, wall-to-wall explosions, wild chases and omnipresent special effects, how would he deliver a low-budgets crime drama?  Fortunately, the result turns out to be interesting: Filmed with a relatively-paltry 22$M, Pain & Gain is a high-energy, low-morals crime thriller that harkens back to Bay’s Bad Boys films more than anything else.  Set in Miami, the film ends up playing like of those Florida-noir comedy-crime novels, with stupid criminals, reprehensible victims, duped collaborators and misguided law-enforcement officials.  Everyone is a bit crazy in Miami, and as our idiotic bodybuilding antiheroes get seduced into a life of crime, the plot gets loopier and loopier.  Mark Wahlberg is effective as a hustler (over-)taken by a self-improvement mindset; meanwhile, Dwayne Johnson is also remarkable as a self-destructive ex-con periodically restrained by his faith.  The film, however, really belongs to Bay, as he uses his usual glossy rapid-fire style to enliven an already-colorful story.  Pain & Gain moves quickly, seldom bores (although it occasionally disgusts) and is frequently hilarious as well.  There’s even a critique of the “American Dream” rhetoric if you look closely enough, which may be the deepest intellectual content in a Michael Bay film so far.  It won’t take much to make viewers regret the fiercely amoral thrust of the story (Bay is more likely to celebrate excess than to reign in good taste, and the gory excesses of Pain & Gain are similar to those in Bad Boys II), something that may weaken the film’s crazy-Florida-noir appeal.  While based on a true story, Pain & Gain takes a lot of liberties with the material… so don’t trust everything you see on-screen.  Heck, Bay even gets to throw in a car chase and an explosion.  The film is a bit long, which becomes a bit of a problem with Bay’s in-your face brashness: the second half isn’t quite as much fun as the first.  Still, the result is interesting, making anyone welcome Bay’s efforts whenever he gets a break from his mega-budgeted special-effects epics.

  • I Think I Love My Wife (2007)

    I Think I Love My Wife (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2013) Marriage isn’t easy, and as the sorely tempted protagonist of I Think I Love My Wife discovers, nobody has the answers leading to perpetual bliss.  Written and directed by Chris Rock, this comedy is an honest (if uneven) look at the life of a bored husband suddenly seduced by someone from his past.  Rock keeps the lead role for himself, giving the female lead role as the temptress to Kerry Washington.  (Meanwhile, poor Gina Torres is stuck as the nagging shrew, but that’s how the script goes.)  Much of the film’s best laughs come from its cynical observational humor, especially in the first part of the film as the protagonist can’t help but let his domestic disillusionment contaminate even his fantasies.  (But then again, the film is co-written by Louis C.K., who’s made a career out of domestic disillusionment.)  Rock is sympathetic enough as the lead, and the film does toy, as expected, with how far it can go while keeping our sympathy.  The one single biggest false note of the film comes late as the married couple inexplicably launches into song, killing what should have been a heartfelt moment with dumb silliness.  Much of I Think I Love My Wife is a bit messy (in that some tangents quickly go nowhere) and it’s considerably tamer than Rock’s stand-up act.  Fortunately, Rock isn’t too bad as a director, and the film does have a decent comic timing.  While the result is bland enough to have sunk back in obscurity six years later, it’s not a bad film, and there are enough good laughs here and there to make it worth viewing.