Movie Review

  • Final Draft (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) I’m normally a very forgiving viewer when it comes to movies about writers. I’d like to think that I share some kinship with that avocation, and fiction-about-fiction often delves into the fascinating frontier between reality and fantasy, often with characters popping to life to make life difficult for the writers. That is certainly the case in Final Draft, a horror film about a screenwriter (James Van Der Beek, not bad) who voluntarily locks himself in an apartment in a desperate effort to force himself to complete the draft of the film he’s supposed to be writing. It does not go well — his imagination gets the better of him, and soon enough his characters are making him crazy. There’s some promise here, but it’s almost entirely extinguished by limp, unsympathetic, overly glum execution. The long prologue leading to the protagonist locking himself up in his apartment does very little to make him likable or even apparently competent: he comes across as a schmuck who lucked out on getting a script produced (admittedly a cool thing that I envy) but otherwise a terrible young man with few redeeming qualities. You won’t exactly root for him to overcome both his writer’s block and his demons in order to produce a quality script, and indeed it’s not all that disappointing when he ultimately fails to do so. As for the madness inside the apartment and his head, it’s all handled with a great deal less energy than it should — the delusions aren’t particularly witty nor funny nor sexy nor anything interesting. There’s a killer clown that takes up a lot of space and time without much of a payoff — almost as if the screenwriter (of Final Draft) didn’t have enough confidence in his own material not to bring in another cliché to round things up — even if acknowledging it as such! There is a tremendous amount of wasted opportunity here: director Jonathan Dueck’s execution is limp and never even starts taking advantage of the elements it has to play with. By the time the film reaches its downbeat conclusion, well, who cares — Final Draft makes a powerful case that one less mediocre horror screenwriter isn’t such a terrible thing.

  • Cathy’s Curse (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) I saw Cathy’s Curse for one single reason: The TV guide log-line said it took place in Montréal. As this horror film limped to the finishing line, I concluded that it remained the only reason to watch it. A Canadian/French co-production, it features a French citizen heading to Montréal to follow her father’s new job, and both of them are living in a house where very strange things are happening. Don’t bother hoping for too much originality: it’s the standard dolls-making-people evil kind of stuff. Demonic possession, evil dead relatives, friendly neighbourhood psychic, trash-talking young girl, and telekinetic powers used for evil, you know — the usual. Extremely derivative even by the standards of cheap horror films, Cathy’s Curse isn’t as much a sustained narrative as a series of allusions to better movies. Writer-director      Eddy Matalon’s film is not interesting to watch, although it apparently has a modest following in that so-bad-it’s-good tradition. (Although I’ll argue that it remains on the side of so-bad-it’s-bad.)  Even the Montréal aspect is lacking — there’s not a whole lot here to make anyone look fondly upon the city as of the mid-1970s. But Cathy’s Curse’s log-line did not lie: it’s a horror film set in Montréal. It never promised anything good.

  • Morocco (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2021) I can read about Morocco’s historical meaning as an early blockbuster as well as anyone else, but it doesn’t mean that I appreciate the result. I’ve always had mixed feelings about Marlene Dietrich and director Joseph von Sternberg — there’s something about their acclaimed collaborations that doesn’t work for me. Perhaps it’s because I arrive to their idea of gender-bending with, oh, a perspective that is decades removed. Perhaps there’s something in Sternberg’s approach that doesn’t quite work. Perhaps I just don’t like Dietrich. Perhaps I find lead actor Gary Cooper to be the blandest of the bland stars of early sound cinema. Perhaps I’m not quite as taken by the Moroccan setting as I should be. No matter the reason, I’m not overly impressed by Morocco. Oh, there are still a few good things here: Dietrich is captivating, and the cross-dressing sequence is not bad at all. The Moroccan scenery is a historical document, and it’s not as if you can dislike Cooper. But the overall impact is flat — there’s a lot of fluff to get to what’s interesting about Morocco, and I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

  • It’s a Gift (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s really not a good sign when you finish watching a movie only to wonder if that’s it — if there’s not something missing. To be fair, It’s a Gift is not a movie made for the narrative experience. Barely clocking in at 68 minutes, it’s a collection of vaudeville sketches arranged around a very thin plot. Trying to watch the film for its story is a losing proposition, so clumsily does the film make its way from problem to conclusion before you even expect it. Somewhat more successful are the comic set-pieces — the film features WC Fields acting the way he best knew, reprising some of his theatrical routines for the cinema and mugging throughout. A strong irritant is the misogynistic portrayal of marriage, with the male character being hounded almost non-stop by a shrewish wife and ungrateful children as he chases his dream of a Californian orange grove. He gets it almost accidentally, with a windfall raining down on him as part of a happy conclusion. I have a higher-than-average appreciation for mid-1930s comedies, but I’m at a loss regarding It’s a Gift — is that it? Have I missed anything?

  • Black Christmas (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2021) I’m clearly a sucker for punishment, considering that I sat down to watch a third version of Black Christmas despite disliking the two others I’ve seen. But having seen the 1974 and the 2019 version, I couldn’t pass the challenge to complete the set and see the 2006 version for myself. I steered myself for a terrible 2000s teen horror slasher and to the film’s credit that’s exactly what I got. Once again, the cute members of a sorority are stuck in their house over Christmas, with a killer making the rounds and taking them out one by one. There are a few known names in the cast: Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert and even Andrea Martin in a callback to the original. Surprisingly, despite my obvious loathing for all three slasher films, this is probably my least loathed one. Unlike the 1974 version, it sports slicker cinematography and a definitive (if lame) explanation of why the killer kills. Unlike the 2019 remake, it goes light on the screeching holier-than-thou messaging that makes a mess out of the film’s moral stance. Instead, it’s a straightforward gory slasher film, exactly what it says on the tin. Writer-director Glen Morgan has a disgusting fascination for dismembered eyeballs (so… many… eyeballs…) and clearly apes better movies in the amount of gore and nihilistic kills, but his film is fundamentally stylish and honest about itself, which almost makes it refreshing compared to the deficiencies and excesses of its brethren. Don’t be fooled: this Black Christmas is still a terrible use of your free time, and won’t change anyone’s opinion if they think that slashers are a blight upon the world that should be erased as thoroughly as possible. But, you know, there’s a difference between a two out of ten and a three out of ten, and it’s only by such a tiny measure that this 2006 version wins by a nose.

  • Ji qi zhi xue [Bleeding Steel] (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) Despite loudly announcing his retirement, it’s obvious that a workhorse like Jackie Chan can’t be held back indefinitely, and it’s been interesting (if not always fun) to see him pop up in other films — clearly not the swift comic daredevil of his youth, but still an elder statesman of the action movie genre able to hold his own given a bit of CGI, stunt doubles and careful shot composition. In the messy science-fantasy film Bleeding Steel, he plays an aging policeman trying to protect his daughter from a mad scientist who literally wants to tear her heart out. (The heart is a cybernetic marvel and he needs it because of reasons not really worth thinking about.)  The plot is an incoherent mixture of Science Fiction, Fantasy, action-movie clichés and plain incomprehensible narrative choices — from a relatively techno-edged opening sequence, the film jumps into cross-dressing comedy, blood-themed fantasy, romance, betrayal, touches of body horror, silent-guardian sentimentalism and nearly everything in between. If you’re used to the slapdash narrative drive of Chinese films, you’ll feel right at home — otherwise, be prepared for a bit of a wild ride. Fortunately, you don’t have to like, or even pay attention to the plot, as it multiplies useless complications in a bid to extend its running time and annoy viewers. You can watch Bleeding Steel for its handful of action sequences and it would be a far better use of your attention than trying to piece together the meandering wrinkles of the plot. A good police takedown opens the film, and this is followed by the expected car chases, stunts, shootouts and climactic sequence set aboard the villain’s flying fortress. As much as Chan is obviously working with a safety net, it’s still a thrill to see him high atop the Sydney Opera House for a great photo opportunity and a fight sequence whose close-ups are handled with digital studio trickery. There’s clearly a place for Bleeding Steel among Chan’s post-retirement filmography—nowhere as good as the movies that made him famous in the 1980s–1990s, but still worth a look if there’s nothing else to do. I sure wish the various science-fictional elements of the script would have been tightened up and made more tonally even, but that’s the price to pay for such a film. Like the weird narrative tangents and the dodgy special effects, it’s the kind of film that Chan makes nowadays.

  • 7 Guardians of the Tomb (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) There’s a been a dearth of adventure movies lately, but if you’re looking for more, 7 Guardians of the Tomb will not be anything more than a momentary satisfaction. Putatively an Australian/Chinese collaboration, this is a film that owes nearly everything to the way Chinese blockbusters are put together these days, from slapdash uneven narrative tone to cheap imperfect CGI to western actors being thrown in the mix in the hopes of opening up the film to western audiences. None other than Kesley Grammer (!) takes up the mantle of an adventure film here, as he plays a pharmaceutical executive who goes looking for missing employees in the newly discovered tomb of an ancient emperor. The film often becomes more of a horror than an adventure film thanks to its main critters: giant CGI spiders that explode in goopy slime whenever the heroes look harshly in their direction. Underground room after underground room (don’t bother looking for the seven guardians), the spiders bite the characters and transform them into not-zombies, leading to a dwindling head count and plenty of icky special effects. The repetitiousness of the script highlights its lack of ideas, and not even Li Binbing’s presence is enough to make the film any more than intermittently interesting. At least there’s some comedy value in seeing an actor like Grammer trying to play the heavy in a horror/adventure film. For all the flack that Hollywood gets, a decent-enough budget with professional cast and crew probably would have done better than this version of 7 Guardians of the Tomb, or at least in not being so ridiculous. It does work if you want a quick hit of Tomb Raider-inspired moviemaking, but there are plenty of better movies even if they’re not recent ones.

  • House of the Dead (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) Curiously enough, it took me almost eighteen years to watch House of the Dead — it’s certainly not an essential movie, but it felt weird having written so much about writer-director Uwe Boll without mentioning his best-known (and perhaps highest-budgeted) film. House of the Dead in infamous in movie circles as a terrible film, one that showed Boll’s limitations as a director, announced the rest of his career and established his lack of care in delivering a movie. It’s adapted from a videogame, and Boll won’t you let you forget it: the opening credits are set against distortions of footage from the original 1996 game, and scene transitions throughout the film are awkwardly spliced with more game footage — it’s as visually repellent as you can imagine. Not that this is the worst of the film’s problems, given its characters going to a rave held on an ominously-named island and somehow not freaking out when nobody is there upon their arrival. This means zombies, of course, and House of the Dead briefly becomes enjoyable once the protagonists gear up for undead-shooting action: the techno music pumps up along the number of cuts per minute, and the bullet-time camera rig gets a workout as every character gets a spinning hero action shot. (It’s a low-budget bullet-time rig, though: the one pointing up rather than the horizontal-facing one that requires a studio greenscreen and CGI to hide the other cameras.)  As overlong and in-your-face as that sequence is, it’s probably the strongest claim to cinematic style that Boll can make, and it’s ever-so-briefly enjoyable… especially for those with a nostalgic kick for early-2000s techno music. The rest of the film is not good at all: terrible dialogue that makes you doubt the sanity of the screenwriters, awkward staging, nonsensical narrative, exploitative costumes and low-budget production values all make House of the Dead a bad movie. Perhaps not as bad as many would like—there’s a difference between theatrical-bad and streaming-bad, and 2003 critics were grading against the theatrical curve—but still not good. Oh, there are a few fun things — aside from the graveyard war sequence, sharp-eyed viewers who know what to look for will spot Canadian rock singer Bif Naked as the rave DJ. But an absence of excruciating pain is not exactly a strong compliment, and so House of the Dead generally lives up to its reputation as the film that announced that Uwe Boll was up to no good. Of course, the joke would be on reviewers, since Boll then proved that he could do much, much worse than House of the Dead.

  • High Fantasy (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) Messages should be part of popular entertainment. Art is self-expression, and artists who are not trying to tell others how they feel about the world are missing the point of art. But messages (especially political messages) are to be handled with a light touch: I’d rather play with ideas and viewpoint than being explicitly told who to vote for. So it is that writer-director Jenna Bass’s High Fantasy is often undone by its very reason to exist: a harsh, not especially optimistic look at race relations in late-2010s South Africa that often feels like an unfiltered, poorly-presented screed. I have to admire the high-concept at the heart of the movie: while on an outing in a rural area, four teenagers of different ethnicities somehow (it’s never explained) switch bodies, allowing them to explore being the other. By itself, it’s a lovely (if not entirely original) premise, and several writers would have been able to run for miles on this idea. The added wrinkle here is that our teenagers are from the influencer generation, meaning that the film is presented as found-footage of the trip, with the actors sharing writing and cinematography credits as they improvise and film themselves with their phones. The good news is that this means an intriguing, even provocative film on a threadbare budget. The not-so-good news is that High Fantasy often feels like a slapdash mixture of half-developed ideas, naturalistic cinematography (sometimes beautiful in taking in the natural landscape, but usually suffering from the usual indignities of amateur filmmaking), and bad dialogue. It gets even more irritating considering that for a group of friends heading out for a weekend of fun, nearly all of the shown dialogue is a political screed on racial issues and not the kind of stuff that friends would discuss among themselves. Yes, we understand the resentment between races in South Africa — yes, there are valid points to be made all around. But the unrelenting way those issues are always at the forefront quickly becomes annoying, especially since there seems to be no natural progression of ideas, simply the same topics raised in different ways. Here, I squarely suspect the improvised dialogue is to blame: there’s no building argument, logical synthesis or deliberate examination of facets here — it’s all thrown together, repeated and rehashed to the point where everyone and everything becomes irritating and juvenile. Even as a reality check on the illusions of Rainbow Nation, it’s better than nothing but still feels like a wasted opportunity. The lack of a clear climax is even more damageable — High Fantasy feels like a film without a point, which is too bad because it does have a lot to say.

  • Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) I don’t think that Nine 1/2 Weeks is nearly as culturally omnipresent as it was back in the late 1980s, but I’m a man of my time, and watching the film today, I was struck by how much of it was referenced, satirized or quoted by other films of the time. (Hot Shots being a specific source of many, many jokes.)  To the extent that the film is remembered today, it’s as one of the few good movies of Mickey Rourke’s first act in Hollywood — he was young, trim and handsome at the time, and the perfect man to play the domineering lead in an erotic thriller. (So much so that he’d essentially reprise the same role in Wild Orchids three years later.) Kim Basinger makes a great foil for him as a submissive art gallery employee who gets caught up in his increasingly wild impulses. Decades before the Fifty Shades of prudish excitement, director Adrian Lyne was the foremost purveyor of titillating erotic thrillers, and Nine 1/2 Weeks remains one of his best claims to fame. Alas, it’s an incredibly dull film once you strip away the lengthy erotic sequences: The predictable plot fits on a paper napkin, and don’t ask where that napkin’s from: the point of this film is a series of music-video-like sequences in which the female lead is progressively controlled and abased by her dominant partner until it all breaks apart. (Many will point at the kinship between this and Lynne’s later Fatal Attraction or Unfaithful, but I found an even stronger connection with the way Flashdance presents its dance numbers as near-standalone sequences.)  What does help in finding Nine 1/2 Weeks boring is, as I’ve mentioned, all the jokes and parodies and references to the film that have popped up since then. It’s practically impossible to watch the film and see its pretentious eroticism punctured by the way it was laughed at. (And if your kinks don’t run along the same lines, well, all dullness is forgiven.)  In other words, I don’t think I received Nine 1/2 Weeks in the same way it was designed: I don’t think it’s meant to be a comedy interrupted by lengthy moments of boredom. I’ll at least recognize that both Rourke and Basinger are game in playing their characters the way they do — lesser actors would have held back. Still, it’s considerably duller than I was expecting, and frequently more ridiculous than alluring. I don’t see it as a tragedy if younger audiences have no idea about Nine 1/2 Weeks any more.

  • Miss Juneteenth (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I’m not going to go on at length about Miss Juneteenth — I get the strong feeling that it’s not a film for me, nor should anything I have to say about it be worth more than a moment’s amusement. Still unusually enough for 2020, writer-director Channing Godfrey Peoples’s film is about black mothers and daughters, spanning generations and expectations. It’s nominally about a young black teenager being reluctantly drafted in the local “Miss Juneteenth” pageant by her mom, a past winner eager to live vicariously through her daughter after her own life took a less than triumphant turn. But it’s also about the relationship between the mom and her mom, a matriarch used to getting her way. It’s about reciting Maya Angelou, and a look at a tight-knit black community and all sorts of things that still feel fresh and unusual in today’s cinema landscape. In keeping with the past few years in Hollywood history, it’s a clear example of what happens when you trust filmmakers from different backgrounds to tell their own stories rather than the very narrow demographic of people who directed Hollywood films for decades. Miss Juneteenth has nothing specifically for me, and that’s good — I’m happy just listening in.

  • Assassination Nation (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I’m an optimist by nature, which puts me at a disadvantage in taking in a dark satire like Assassination Nation. Taking modern issues to a caricatural extreme, it’s a Dark Mirror episode given an expansive treatment: What if half the citizens of a small town got their phones hacked and everything they did online was uploaded for everyone to see? In the world of the film, this doesn’t mean embarrassment and saucy Internet searches: oh no, it means dark secrets and—especially—people being willing to kill in revenge. Assassination Nation is a harsh gory nightmare of American values gone awry (or, some would argue, exposed for everyone to see) and it soon turns into survival horror when its four protagonists are targeted by a rampaging mob intent on violent revenge. This is a film that doesn’t make sense on many levels, but that’s the point: it’s a nightmare of unleashed ids and it’s executed with the kind of fast-pacing meant to stop you from asking too many questions as it runs to the ending. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: like many socially conscious films of the past few years, Assassination Nation flips hard into a kind of violent moral rectitude that I find increasingly distasteful. (In another review, perhaps I’ll have a go at the way this is another example of the corroded public discourse in America.)  By the end of the film, the back-patting of the virtuous protagonists gets increasingly ludicrous, but I’ll have to admit that writer-director Sam Levinson’s go-for-broke pacing and sarcastic attitude didn’t make it feel as repulsive as more innocuous such films of the past few years. The satire helps keep in mind that this isn’t intended to be serious — and also explains why the too-earnest conclusion falls flat. I do think that there’s a great movie to be made about the ways the Internet shatters inner and outer personalities, and the consequences of excessive transparency. Assassination Nation isn’t it — but at least it’s willing to engage vigorously with current issues. I just wish the message was more artful and less self-convinced of its righteousness. Or that there would be some acknowledgement that, outside the headline-seeking extremists, humans are somewhat better behaved than we’re often willing to give them credit for. But then again, I’m an optimist.

  • The Hunter’s Prayer (2017)

    The Hunter’s Prayer (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) It’s too early to call it a wrap, but Sam Worthington will eventually have an amazing story to tell about his time in Hollywood — assuming he wants to talk about it. Plucked from obscurity and poverty to star in 2009’s Avatar, his first few years as a high-profile leading man were filled with a handful of projects that any actor would kill for, usually playing superhuman characters. And then… his profile dropped along with the quality of the projects. Was he judged not ready for primetime? Did his lack of distinctive charisma do him in? Or did he not want superstardom enough? While Avatar sequels still loom in his future, by the end of the 2010s he could be found making one or two films a year, not always in leading roles. The Hunter’s Prayer is one of those films — one in which he holds the lead, but so incredibly generic that it seems to exist to become one of those good-enough thrillers fit to fill a slot for TV programming directors. The story takes us in familiar territory, as a hitman can’t bring himself to complete a job and leagues with his former target to take down his client. Efficiently directed by Jonathan Mostow (another name who once seemed destined for bigger and better things — this is his first film since 2009’s forgettable Surrogates), it’s a film that works but never reaches for anything more. It’s watchable without being memorable, and doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from genre clichés and conventional execution. In this kind of showcase, Worthington himself looks like set dressing — he’s got the appearance and the rough charisma to be credible, but doesn’t go any farther than that. I’d feel sorry, except that I have a feeling that everyone got what they expected with The Hunter’s Prayer — a paycheque, their name on the movie poster, some renewed attention and a chance to do better next time. Nobody had any illusion about it being anything more.

  • Destroyer (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Anyone who has seen the underseen 2015 thriller remake The Secret in their Eyes won’t be that surprised at Nicole Kidman’s drastic physical transformation in Destroyer. Taking a hint from the previous film’s mixture of dark Los Angeles police drama, deglamorized appearance, neo-noir plotting and merciless ending, Destroyer goes deeper and harder than its predecessor. Kidman turns in an arresting role as a burnt-out Los Angeles cop who gets involved in a murder case with ties to her early days as an undercover agent. The jumbled chronology deliberately obscures events taking place across three distinct periods of time, our only guide being Kidman’s transformation from an adorably round-cheeked rookie to a gaunt middle-aged woman running on borrowed time. The film’s subject matter isn’t any more cheerful, what with her character going on a rampage of personal revenge and hurting a lot of people along the way. The film feels completely at ease in its Los Angeles setting, even when it’s taking bits and pieces of heist movies and removing anything remotely exciting about them. Even the film’s centrepiece action sequence (a completely unprofessional shootout between cops and robbers inside a bank) is bleak, grim and reprehensible. It gets much worse by the end. This unrelenting griminess takes its toll — Destroyer feels far too long at 123 minutes and would have left more of a mark at a lesser length. But then again, there’s probably only so much we can take from seeing Kidman as a husk of her former self being powered solely by revenge and paying a very high price for it. Fans of dark crime fiction will best appreciate the result, as will those who are curious to see glamorous actresses making a strong bid for dramatic intensity by thoroughly giving themselves up to an unlikable character.

  • The Son of Bigfoot aka Bigfoot Junior (2017)

    The Son of Bigfoot aka Bigfoot Junior (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) There was a spate of cryptozoology animated family films in 2017ish, and The Son of Bigfoot is probably the least known of them. This can be explained by the film’s independent European pedigree — rather than being a Laika, DreamWorks or Sony Animation Studio production, it hails from French Europe and was distributed by StudioCanal. Don’t expect a cut-rate production — the budget of the film and the well-worn production experience of nWave pictures are such that the computer animation looks great, easily up to the standards of anyone but the biggest studios in the industry. The story itself is more pedestrian, what with a young boy discovering that he’s getting hairier by the minute, and eventually that his absent father in none other but the Bigfoot himself. Throw in a plot that has to do with an evil businessman capturing the bigfoot for follicular fortune (don’t ask) and you’ve got enough to fill up the film’s 92 minutes. The Son of Bigfoot is not that good of a film: the humour is easy, the concepts only make sense in the context of a family film, and the tone underlines every emotional moment twice. But it’s more than just watchable — it’s fun and frantic and well grounded in its dramatic moments. There are far worse movies out there in the children’s section, whether we’re talking content or execution. Director Ben Stassen has come a long way since his debut feature Fly Me to the Moon, and he’s now cruising at a higher level with The Son of Bigfoot, since then followed by The Queen’s Corgi and sequel Bigfoot Family.