Movie Review

  • Inescapable (2012)

    Inescapable (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) There’s something admirable in trying to deliver a foreign political thriller on a low budget and that’s exactly what Ruba Nadda attempt with Inescapable, as a Canadian man goes back to his native Syria in order to find his missing adult daughter.  It soon turns out that she was there in order to investigate her father’s past, and that he had made a number of enemies before leaving.  Alexander Siddig stars as a man with a tumultuous past who has to get back in the covert operations mindset in order to find and free his daughter.  The surprise here is Marisa Tomei, surprisingly convincing as an aging Syrian woman bitterly helping her ex-fiancée against the multiple enemies he still has in Damascus.  Inescapable has a number of interesting elements, but it may not have the means to make them work effectively: despite the tangled web of allegiances and secrets shared by the film’s characters, the film takes forever to heat up, and ends without a satisfying coda.  For all of the film’s accomplishment in evoking a spy thriller set in Syria (despite being filmed in South Africa with Canadian money), Inescapable is a bit too bland to be interesting as more than a home-grown curiosity.  The action sequences are filmed without particular flair, and the stand-offs don’t have enough energy to resonate.  Some secrets look far-fetched (how long did the daughter spend with the diplomat?) while others don’t have much of an impact.  There’s little tension to the proceedings –it’s tough to even believe that the daughter is in danger, and the ending seems wrapped in mystery more than precipitated by the protagonist’s actions.  As much as world-aware Canadian efforts such as this one are to be applauded on general principle, Inescapable’s execution is a bit too ordinary to warrant much attention.

  • Ted (2012)

    Ted (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) After seeing many comedies so grounded in realism that they only qualified for the genre label by virtue of not killing off anyone, it’s almost refreshing to see a comedy so unapologetically dedicated to letting big laughs as Ted.  From the high-concept opening (boy wishes for his stuffed bear to become alive; bear obliges), Ted is shameless in trying for the maximum number of laughs in the time it has.  Alas, this usually means going for the lowest common denominator, so don’t be surprised at the film’s crass and unsubtle humor: Much of Ted is about seeing a cute teddy bear swear and behave badly, and while that works for a while, it’s a strategy with limited potential.  Mark Wahlberg is quite good as an ordinary guy trying to find a way between adult life and the remnants of his childhood, with a good voice performance by writer/director Seth MacFarlane and a fine supporting performance by Mila Kunis.  (Nora Jones’ cameo is also pretty funny.)  Some of the jokes work well (ie; the hotel room fight), and when they don’t (ie; much of the specific pop-culture references –who else can be so fascinated by Flash Gordon?) there’s usually another mildly-funny gag a few seconds later.  Boston also has a nice role playing itself, with enough picturesque checkmarks to make the local tourist board happy.  Still, this is a film aimed at blue collar guys, and those with low tolerance for penile jokes (some of them bordering on homophobia and others on misogyny) may want to lower their expectations.  While Ted definitely has some thematic potential in the way it literalizes the process letting go of one’s immaturity, it’s not in itself mature enough to commit to a satisfying conclusion: I was actually disappointed at the feel-good no-changes conclusion, mostly because the film demands otherwise (and tries to have it both ways as well.)  While Ted is well-made enough, and occasionally charming in its relentless attempt to be funny, it’s not quite the film it could have been with just a bit more wit and depth.

  • Gasland Part II (2013)

    Gasland Part II (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) Writer/director/activist Josh Fox made headlines in 2010 with Gasland, a feature-length documentary that exposed environmental concerns surrounding the rapid development of hydraulic fracturing gas extraction in the United States.  Overnight, “fracking” became a cause célèbre, Gasland ended up nominated for an Oscar and environmentalists everywhere got a new thing to worry about.  Gasland Part II pick up the story three years later, and the result is even depressing than the original: Practically everyone who had problems in the first film still has them in the second, fracking has actually increased and enough time has gone by to see the gas industry counter-attack its critics.  Gasland Part II may sport Fox’s mixture of information and entertainment, but it doesn’t have much to say: much of its running time is spent either re-establishing the film’s points, or recognizing that there hasn’t been any significant progress on the issue.  It feels rather more than an episode in a series (or a second film in a trilogy) than a wholly new documentary.  Combined to the doom-and-gloom atmosphere of the subject matter, it makes for a documentary that’s interesting without being particularly pleasant.  While the film isn’t without humor (there’s a moment, three-quarter through, where Fox essentially says “So, congress is corrupt.  What else is new?  Roll the credits!” and actually does so for a short time.) Gasland Part II is, perhaps paradoxically, definitely aimed at those who already don’t need to be convinced about its central thesis.

  • Phil Spector (2013)

    Phil Spector (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) Given how little TV-as-TV I watch, I never expected to mark an entire Emmy category as “complete”, but in-between HBO’s Behind the Candelabra, Parade’s End, The Girl and now Phil Spector, I’m all caught-up with the 2013 “Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie” category even before it’s awarded.  There’s certainly no finer reason to watch Phil Spector than to see good acting from Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, facing each other down as, respectively, a powerful music industry executive accused of murder and one of his defense lawyer.  It’s based the true story of Spector’s first trial (although not really, as the opening disclaimer sort-of-clarifies), but it’s perhaps best appreciated as a standalone court drama, featuring a pair of highly unusual characters.  Al Pacino is his usual intense self as Spector; he even gets a change to indulge in his signature rants late in the film.  Meanwhile, Mirren is in a class of her own as a hypochondriac but steel-nerved lawyer with an uncanny ability to defend her client no matter the circumstances.  (Phil Spector’s look at a high-priced defense, with war room and expert-driven strategies, is worth a look by itself.)  The film may indulge in showing the most eccentric aspect of Spector’s personality, but it’s also somewhat sympathetic to him, creating reasonable doubt that he may not have actually committed the murder for which he was accused.  Phil Spector remains a made-for-TV movie, but with David Mamet writing and directing for HBO, it features high-quality dialogue and decent production values: if nothing else, it’s a good way to enjoy good actors playing interesting people.  Al Pacino as Phil Spector?  That’s always worth watching.

  • Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

    Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, September 2013) As a confirmed but not dogmatic Star Trek fan, I find this new movie-reboot-series interesting: It’s not quite the same Star Trek that established the reputation of the series, but it holds its own as an ongoing series of action-based SF adventures.  This second entry builds on the first one in that it doesn’t really have to re-establish all of the characters, giving more time and freedom to tell a new story.  That it’s pieced together from bits and pieces of other Trek miscellanea (I recognized at least three minor references to the original series, and I wasn’t paying that much attention) is a bit unfortunate, as it constantly invites comparisons that may not work to its favour.  There certainly are a few problems with Into Darkness: As in the first film, the screenwriters clearly don’t understand anything about science or basic plausibility (A spaceship plunging into the sea?  A major engagement in lunar orbit and no automated defense mechanism says boo?) and can’t be bothered to think twice about their universe-changing plot contrivances (Trans-warp? Resurrection serums?).  This laziness keeps Into Darkness from being taken seriously as some of the finest recent examples of filmed SF: this isn’t 1983, and there’s a lot of good original SF on-screens to pick from.  In order to compete, even a Star Trek reboot has to bring something to the table, and what Into Darkness has in spade is action: Director J.J. Abrams’ film is filled with high-end sequences mixing top-notch visuals with fast-paced tension and quite a bit fewer lens flares than the first film.  The characters don’t hurt either, as it’s almost ridiculously entertaining to watch Chris Pine as the impulsive Kirk play off Zachary Quinto’s cool Spock.  The rest of the crew also does well, proving the virtue of that particular cast selection back in 2009.  This time, though, the addition of Benedict Cumberbatch as the villainous super-man Khan makes for far better drama than the first film: Cumberbatch is delicious as an antagonist, and there’s enough tension for an entire film in seeing him work alongside the Enterprise crew for vastly different reasons.  Despite the departure from Trek’s all-optimism canon, I’m not unhappy to see tensions within Starfleet used as primary plot devices: This reboot is setting a nice bar in terms of dramatic interest, and fractious inner politics are a good measure of this pseudo-realism.  So it is that while it’s possible (and maybe even necessary) to nit-pick this film to shred, I’m not dissatisfied at all with the result.  My biggest wish for the inevitable third entry, though, would be to move farther away from Trek canon: a contemporary action-driven film series isn’t the same as a low-budget sixties serial, and any attempts to keep the two tightly linked can only frustrate everyone.

  • Lovelace (2013)

    Lovelace (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, September 2013) The story of Linda Lovelace, first-ever porn star thanks to a starring role in the wildly popular Deep Throat, is a classic case of she-said-she-then-said: Lovelace (co-)wrote four autobiographies, and their content varied with time: The first two are very much pro-pornography at a time where she was riding Deep Throat’s popularity, the last two very much against it at a time when she was campaigning against obscenity and free to speak against her abusive then-husband. Lovelace unusually tries to grapple with this complex portrait by presenting Lovelace’s life twice: first as a success story, and then as the darker, more abusive version of it.  It may not completely work (the scenes become sketches rather than flow harmoniously from one another, and the simplification of Linda-the-victim is unfortunate given the complexity of her life after porn and after being used by feminist activism), but it’s an interesting attempt that brings an unusual twist to the usual bio-drama genre.  What is undeniable, though, is Amanda Seyfried’s performance in what may be the first truly adult role she’s played so far –far away from the post-teenage ingénues that fill her filmography.  As for the rest of the film, well, it convincingly re-creates the seventies, features a darkly amusing cameo by James Franco as Hugh Hefner and has a nearly-unrecognizable Sharon Stone in a maternal role (!) alongside a gruff Robert Patrick.  Lovelace may not be the complete story of Linda Boreman, but it goes further than could have been expected in presenting both sides of it.

  • Now You See Me (2013)

    Now You See Me (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, September 2013) I really wished I liked this film more than I actually do.  After all, I’m a near-addict to the kind of fast-paced, slick commercial filmmaking that Now You See Me represents at its best, and I’m fond of thematic parallels between stage magic and thriller moviemaking.  The story of four skilled magicians involved in a revenge caper that they don’t entirely understand, Now You See Me is fun to watch and filled with interesting actors: Jesse Eisenberg is perfecting his alpha-nerd persona, Mark Ruffalo is fast settling as a dependable protagonist, while Woody Harrelson has some of the best lines in the movie as an arrogant hypnotist.  Having both Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman as supporting actors really doesn’t hurt.  (Too bad about Isla Fisher’s bland character, though.)  When it clicks, Now You See Me blends beat-perfect editing with skillful visuals and great audio material.  Director Louis Leterrier loves to move his camera around in order to make even the most ordinary moments seem exciting, and his action scenes are impressively choreographed.  So what’s the problem?  Well, essentially, a lack of restraint: The film often uses blatant CGI trickery in order to fake what are supposed to be real-time stage magic tricks, and in doing so basically blows away its own suspension of incredulity: When the smallest details are so obviously fake, it’s tough to be impressed by the film’s bigger magical set-pieces.  Now You See Me’s plot dynamics are also as overblown as to minimize the impact of its last narrative revelations: by the time the final sequence is supposed to blow our minds with an unexpected reversal, an excess of previous twists is bound to leave viewers’ reaction divided between “That makes no sense” and “Oh, whatever”.  The caper plot is also very unlikely, but that’s part of the charm of the sub-genre.  Despite its flaws, Now You See Me is an enjoyable piece of commercial filmmaking, and I even look forward to the announced sequel.

    (Streaming, May 2025) Let me be clear: I still don’t like most of the things I didn’t like about Now You See Me twelve years ago.  But I still do like what I did like, and I’m just weighting them higher in my overall assessment now — this is a slick piece of fast-paced filmmaking, and director Louis Leterrier’s seldom lets one dull minute go by when he can jazz it up with quick cuts, slick visuals and letting star actors do their thing.  Watching this with its vastly entertaining commentary track is almost information overload — especially as director and producer seem determined to cram as much information as possible about the film’s making-of, themes, inspirations and characters in the time they’re given.  I even respect the film’s last-minute twist a bit more as the director points out the foreshadowing and acting finesse required to pull it off.  Now You See Me has aged pretty well — it’s still a lot of fun to watch.

  • Only God Forgives (2013)

    Only God Forgives (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, September 2013) I wasn’t a big fan of Drive, so the idea of a reunion between star Ryan Gosling and writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn wasn’t the draw that it was for other reviewers.  Much to my dismay, it turns out the Only God Forgives (great title, right?) takes the worst aspects of Drive and magnifies them: The plotlessness, the tepid tempo, the garish color scheme, the brutal gore, the expressionless characters… it just goes on and on without much of a point, even though Vithaya Pansringarm is a force of nature as the vengeful policeman righting the wrongs made by Gosling’s family.  It’s an unpleasant film in tone, approach and material, made worse by a lack of point and the bare skeleton of a plot stretched over 90 minutes.  While the visual polish of the film is undeniable, the directorial flourishes of Only God Forgives can’t save it from pointlessness.

  • Hit and Run (2012)

    Hit and Run (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2012) Oddball films certainly have their share of charm, and Hit and Run shows some of the goofy fun to be found in low-end Hollywood productions that often show up as cable releases or Video-on-demand premieres.  Co-written-and-directed by actor Dax Shepard (who stars in the film along with real-life-girlfriend Kirsten Bell), Hit and Run boasts of an interesting cast of comedians, an amiable rhythm, some amusing dialogue, a love of cars and a script that ends up being a bit tighter than you’d expect from the first half of the film.  Here, an expert driver with a shady past is forced out of his Witness Relocation Program identity by the professional aspiration of his girlfriend.  Going back to Los Angeles means tangling anew with a criminal crowd he thought he’d left behind, but that’s the fun of the film as various groups and people connect on the way to L.A.  The dialogue is pure laid-back California, the tangents are plentiful (although the ending ties a lot of them back together), Shepard anchors Hit and Run with an easygoing protagonist and the result is enjoyable on its own.

  • The Cold Light of Day (2012)

    The Cold Light of Day (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) The risk in relying on familiar thriller tropes is that while they can provide structure, they can’t, in themselves, substitute for wit and originality.  It’s not a bad idea to propose as a premise an American tourist in Spain getting caught in a complex web of espionage thrills and double-crosses, but it has to be handled with some competence.  Alas, The Cold Light of Day is a purely generic product down to its meaningless title, and a roster of familiar actors can’t save the film from by-the-number plotting, familiar plot points, murky motivations and tedious pacing.  Henry Cavill gets (and fumbles) a chance to prove himself a contemporary action hero as he finds himself alone and running in Madrid, but he’s easy to forget when sharing scenes with Bruce Willis (as a father with a hidden second and third life) and Sigourney Weaver (as an immediately-suspicious high-level intelligence officer).  Much of the film is straight out of the “man running for his life” thriller sub-genre, and while director Mabrouk El Mechri has the occasional good eye for filming action scenes, they feel overlong and perfunctory in the middle of such a familiar framework.  (The final car chase definitely has its moments, but it’s too long by at least half its duration)  While The Cold Light of Day will act as a pretty good showcase for Madrid’s tourist attractions, it’s not much of a calling card for anyone else involved: the characters are uninvolving, the narrative excitement is flat and nearly everything about the film seems wasted.  For a film produced with decent means and known actors, there isn’t much here to distinguish it from a run-of-the-mill TV movie.

  • The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)

    The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) Writer/director/actor RZA’s The Man with the Iron Fists is a welcome throwback to the historical martial-arts fantasy subgenre, with good performances from people you wouldn’t necessarily expect in that kind of film.  While the back-story of RZA’s historical universe is complex, the plot itself becomes a well-assorted series of fights between characters, often with super-natural powers.  RZA himself is a bit dull in the honorific title role, but the film’s most remarkable performances come from scene-stealing Russell Crowe (as “Jack Knife”, a hedonistic western knife-fighter) and Lucy Liu (as a bordello madam not to be crossed), alongside such notables as Rick Yune, Cung Le and Byron Mann.  It’s all meant in good fun, although the strong gore factor takes away a bit of the enjoyment for viewers who like their fighting action to be a bit cleaner.  While The Man with the Iron Fists isn’t all that special in its own subgenre, it’s an endearing attempt as a pastiche, and the American origin of the film doesn’t really betray its indebtedness to an entire genre of Asian cinema.  It may best be seen by viewers who, like me, used to like a lot of that stuff and are now looking for some more.

  • Oblivion (2013)

    Oblivion (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, September 2013) For all of the nice things I have to say about Oblivion, there’s something just… off in the way it comes together.  The first few minutes don’t quite establish the required suspension of disbelief required for it to work smoothly: The visuals it presents don’t make a lot of sense and the pandering to modern lowest-denominator audiences seems blatant (let’s see: Yankees cap, Football stadium, dog, motorcycle and a cabin in the woods.  Yup, just one regular guy, no wacky sci-fi to see here…)  For viewers used to prose science-fiction Oblivion seems to pivot entirely on a familiar cognitive breakthrough structure, and the way it self-importantly reveals its secrets is a bit annoying, as if it expected audience’s minds to be blown apart by fairly obvious reveals.  The plot doesn’t quite seem to hold together the longer you look at it, and the visuals it shows (combining a ruined New York with what looks like epochal landscape alteration) are so nonsensical as to make anyone’s head hurt.  But let’s focus on the positive for a moment: It’s a science-fiction film that’s not explicitly based on existing intellectual properties, it features relatively original imagery (the “house in the clouds” is particularly nice) and it has the willingness to combine familiar tropes into a somewhat cohesive whole.  For writer/director Joseph Kosinski, it’s certainly a step up from the pretty-but-vapid Tron: Legacy.  Tom Cruise is overbearingly Tom Cruise-ish in the lead role (see “Yankees cap, football, motorcycle” above), but the supporting performances by Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko bring a bit of balance in the film.  While there’s little that’s objectionably wrong in Oblivion, it doesn’t click either, and that’s a more crucial problem in SF movies than in other genres due to the required suspension of disbelief.  While it certainly looks nice and feels more original than yet another sequel of a comic-book movie adaptation, it doesn’t seem to have enough heft to it, and given the nature of the film’s revelation it’s hard imagining watching this a second time for fun.

  • Olympus has Fallen (2013)

    Olympus has Fallen (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, September 2013) For everyone who thought that overly patriotic high-concept action movies had gone out with the nineties, the good news is that Olympus Has Fallen doesn’t merely exist, but is the first of two “White House taken over by terrorists” films released in 2013.  We’ve come a long way from 9/11 when such big-budget high-concept action movies can be released widely, and that’s a good thing.  Whether the films are any good is another subject entirely, and watching Olympus Has Fallen, it’s clear that while it occasionally hits its mark, it doesn’t quite understand part of what made those 90s action movies so enjoyable.  In a few words: PG-13 action over R-rated violence.  Olympus Has Fallen, rated R, seems overly violent, profane and humorless for what is supposed to be popcorn entertainment in the Die Hard mold.  It tries to be broadly amusing with funny quips and overdone action set-pieces, but then it plasters its dialogue with useless profanity and revels in showing gory violence (some of which perpetrated gleefully by the so-called hero).  The result can’t very well be watched with the kind of carefree fun that PG-13 action films usually create: you’re always on guard for the next excursion in violence and gratuitous language.  It doesn’t help that Olympus Has Fallen has little wit, charm or grace: Gerald Butler is merely OK as the lone operator chasing down the terrorists within the White House –anyone else could have done just as well.  Morgan Freeman sleepwalks through another presidential role, and while it’s good to see Angela Bassett get another role, this one won’t leave any lasting impression.  Director Antoine Fuqua is a seasoned veteran who knows how to put together an action scene, but he seems hampered by sub-standard CGI work (some of the C-130 gunship sequences look unfinished) and a script that never exceeds the perfunctory and seems to forget how to tie up (or even acknowledge) loose ends.  Olympus Has Fallen is watchable, but it’s not hard to complain about various elements that could have been improved to produce a better film.  Now let’s see if White House Down does any better… [January 2014: Yes, White House Down is quite a bit better.]

  • The Great Gatsby (2013)

    The Great Gatsby (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, September 2013) As a certified Moulin Rouge fan, I had been waiting a while for Baz Luhrmann to return to the same overblown wide-screen film style.  Fortunately, the wait is over: The first half of his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is crammed with visual excess, lush 3D cinematography, frantic energy and flashy camera work.  As a way to portray the excesses of the Roaring Twenties (along with a not-so-anachronistic hip-hop soundtrack), it works splendidly and I can see myself gleefully revisiting that part of the film before long.  The film reaches an apex of sorts as it magnificently introduces the titular Gatsby (a perfectly-cast Leonardo DiCaprio) with fireworks and a wink.  Toby Maguire makes for a good everyday-man audience stand-in through this madness and the film eventually calms down during its increasingly somber second half as the true themes of the story play out and reach their tragic conclusion.  Luhrmann is the real star of The Great Gatsby, but the actors he brings on board all have their chance to shine.  I’m not a fan of Casey Mulligan, but she couldn’t have been better that she is here as a flapper; Joel Edgerton also does well as he goes toe-to-toe with DiCaprio.  As an adaptation, the film faithfully keeps the plot, overplays the symbolism, dispenses with a few subtleties, adds a framing device that’s not entirely useless and provides enough of a thematic slant on the material to keep fans of the book arguing in depth about intended meaning.  On a surface level, The Great Gatsby is well worth-watching for its visual sheen (especially its first 30 minutes): this is an indulgent, no-budget-limits style of filmmaking that I enjoy tremendously, and as a way to present a classic curriculum novel, it’s invigorating.

  • Dirty War (2004)

    Dirty War (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) Watching this HBO/BBC film docu-drama about the possibility of a terrorist “dirty bomb” detonating in central London occasionally feels like an educational obligation: Dirty War is a procedural thriller trying to stick closely to consensual reality, and the result is a gritty, down-to-earth depiction of things that could happen at the expense of more conventional suspenseful thrills.  While the first half-hour is occasionally tedious, it does create an atmosphere of verisimilitude that becomes engrossing once the truly bad things start happening.  There are only a bare number of heroics here, with a conclusion that seems as grim as potential reality once containment breaks down and everyone has to acknowledge the consequences of the detonation.  Dirty War certainly isn’t feel-good film, and writer/director Daniel Percival’s grainy handheld cinematography sells the illusion of a quasi-documentary better than expected.  The film also has the merit of reflecting, in a non-hysterical but still highly sobering fashion, an entire decade’s worth of bottled anxiety about nuclear terrorism –and the somewhat measured tone helps the film stay current and effective a decade later.  (It helps that it’s somewhat ambivalent about the official government party line: hopeful about the abilities of the people involved, but somewhat skeptical about the ability of the government to manage a crisis)  There are even a few remarkable performances here, most notably Alastair Galbraith as a street-level worker stuck in an impossible situation, and Koel Purie as a voice-of-moderation Islamic policewoman.  Dirty War amounts to a slow-burn film that works quite a bit better than expected from the first few minutes… and certainly sticks in mind longer than the average shoot’em up Hollywood terrorist action movie.