Movie Review

  • Warrior (2011)

    Warrior (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) Being neither a fan of combat movies nor family drama, the most remarkable thing about Warrior is how well it managed to keep my attention.  After a shaky first fifteen minutes, the stakes become clearer: These are two brothers from a broken family picking up Mixed Martial Arts and eventually facing off in the ring.  The story isn’t much more complicated than this (and the repetitive third act contains very few surprises), but the film itself is well-made, with strong performances to lure viewers in.  Nick Nolte earned an Oscar nomination for his role and Joel Edgerton turns out a strong performance as a family man forced to return to the ring in desperate circumstances.  Still, it may be Tom Hardy who gets the thankless role of the younger brother cast adrift in his own isolation.  It all amounts to a fairly predictable, but well-executed story, one that doesn’t suffer as much as you’d think from an improbable sequence of contrivances.  There isn’t much to say about the grainy cinematography (except that some shots of Atlantic City look pretty nice), but the direction is a straight-ahead affair.  Heavily slathered in the usual Americana sauce (family, military, sports), Warrior takes itself a bit seriously, but in doing so manages to avoid many of the traps that a less-earnest approach to the same subject would have encountered.  It’s manipulative, of course, but baldly so.  It’s arguably best seen as a double-bill with The Fighter.

  • From Prada to Nada (2011)

    From Prada to Nada (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) Nearly everything about From Prada to Nada‘s marketing (title, poster, premise) can lead anyone to expect a sub-par brainless comedy not far away from superficial dreck such as The Hottie and the Nottie.  The surprise is in finding out that this is a textured look at Los Angeles’ Latino community based on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.  It starts on a rough note, as two sisters are expelled from their house after the death of their insolvent father.  Forced to an exile in East L.A., they find that… oh, let’s face it: surprising plotting really isn’t one of From Prada to Nada‘s strong points. This romantic comedy is almost entirely predictable even if you haven’t read Austen, and much of the charm of the film lies in how well it hits the expected plot points.  Camilla Belle is adorable as the sensible sister, and while it take a while for Alexa Vega’s Lindsey Lohan-lookalike to develop some audience sympathy, events eventually manage to win her over to the audience’s side.   Otherwise, the real strength of the film is in its upbeat look at the South Californian Mexican-American sub-culture (The fact that the Latina protagonists don’t initially speak Spanish is one of the film’s running gags.)  The dialogue isn’t anything special, the jokes are lazy, the character are stock figures and the direction is rarely inspired, but the film is nonetheless quite a bit warmer than expected.  Austen fans will like the flavour given to this adaptation, while those looking for a middle-of-the-road romantic comedy won’t be too disappointed.

  • Four Rooms (1995)

    Four Rooms (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) Sketch comedy seldom works in movies, and Four Rooms isn’t much of an exception to the rule.  Four stories loosely set on a busy New Year’s Eve at a Los Angeles hotel; it’s a mash-up of four writer/directors with different sensibilities and a long list of actors playing small parts. Only Tim Roth provides a bit of continuity as the bellhop who ends up becoming the unwitting protagonist of the film, but his tendency to play the role at full intensity as a perpetually-manic oddball can be as grating as it is peculiar.  The four segments aren’t created equal: From the sex-romp of the opening segment’s coven of witches, we go to a twisted game of role-playing between a married couple, turbulent kids playing while their parents are away, and a small group of rich men having too much fun with a lighter and a butcher’s knife.  Robert Rodiguez and Quentin Tarantino, collaborating together years before Grindhouse, each bring their recognizable style to their segments.  Interestingly, the film seems to have been shot in TV-style 1:1.33 aspect ratio, perhaps as homage to some of the source material.  The humor is definitely quirky, and while some of it feels forced, other gags seem funnier.  Tarantino fans will also appreciate a little bit of his motor-mouth dialogue in the last segment.  Otherwise, Four Rooms exists as an increasingly-historical curiosity, the kind of intriguing idea that falters in production.  Not a disaster, but of primary interests to fans of the directors.

  • Flatliners (1990)

    Flatliners (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) For years, I wondered if missing out on Flatliners had led to an embarrassing omission in my movie-going culture.  Hadn’t this film earned some interest as a science-fiction film?  Didn’t it star a bunch of actors who went on to bigger things?  Wasn’t this one of Joel Shumacher’s best-known movies from his earlier, better period?  The answer to these questions is yes… but the film itself seems a bit of a letdown after viewing.  Oh, some things still work well, and may even work better than expected.  Of the five main actors, Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and Oliver Platt have all gone on to big careers –with poor William Baldwin being left behind.  Schumacher’s direction is backed-up with Jan de Bont’s impressive cinematography: the visuals of the film may not make much sense, but they evoke a modern-gothic atmosphere that remains distinctive even today.  The high-concept of the film remains potent, with genius-level medical students voluntarily defying death to investigate the mysteries of the afterlife.  Unfortunately, all of these elements don’t quite add up satisfyingly.  The jump from the high concept to the characters’ personification of those concepts is weak, and the contrivances become almost too big to ignore.  The idea of atonement being closely linked to death is powerful, but the way this variously follows the character is more difficult to accept.  (As Platt’s character knowingly remarks, those without deep-seated traumas will end up with some fairly silly phantoms.)  There is quite a bit of repetitive one-upmanship in the way the plotting unfolds, and Flatliners sadly goes too quickly from provocative idea to ordinary morality.  Still, it’s easy to argue that the film is worth a look: Roberts, Sutherland and Bacon look really good in early roles, and the visual style of the film is still an achievement twenty years later.  There are some good ideas in the mix (witness the visual motif of “construction” -reconstruction, deconstruction- underlying nearly each scene), the portrait of intelligent characters interacting is charming and some of the suspense still works surprisingly well when it doesn’t descend in silliness.  There are a few films that qualify as “minor classics” of their era in time.  While Flatliners certainly won’t climb year’s-best lists retroactively, it’s a film that remains more remarkable than many of its contemporaries.  I don’t regret seeing it… and I may even have liked to see it a bit earlier.

  • That’s What I Am (2011)

    That’s What I Am (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, April 2012) As far as mid-sixties coming-of-age films go, That’s What I Am has almost all of the usual elements: Life lessons, befriended outcasts, wise teacher and eighth-grade first love.  It plays without surprises (although some of the expected plot beats aren’t dwelled upon –I was sure that something was going to happen to the car, for instance) but it does so with warmth and wit.  The narration is better than usual, the characters are nicely defined, there are quite a few moments of decent humanity (something that’s perhaps a bit too rare nowadays) and the film does have a certain narrative energy in finding out what’s going to happen next.  Ed Harris shines as the protagonist’s influential teacher, but the child actors all turn in some good work as the students.  I’m still trying to figure out why the film was produced by Word Wrestling Entertainment, but never mind that logo: That’s What I Am is the kind of small-expectations movie that fills up a nice quiet evening.  It’s perhaps not special enough to warrant an effort to seek, but it’s absolutely fine at what it attempts to be.

  • Hall Pass (2011)

    Hall Pass (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, April 2012) I’m never too sure whether I should be annoyed or relieved when mainstream Hollywood comedies end up neutering their daring premises with innocuous plot developments.  Audiences don’t like to be unnerved when they’re supposed to be laughing, and I suppose that I’m no exception.  Nonetheless, there’s something maddening in seeing a film about married couples agreeing to mutual indiscretion racing to a conclusion when nothing really happened.  (Actually, it may be best to ignore the fact that the one woman who did something, albeit briefly, ends up punished by a car crash that ends up not much more than a plot point for her husband’s emotional growth.  But such is the way of Hollywood, and this includes the emotionally-retarded male protagonists who are supposed to earn our sympathy. The gender politics here aren’t particularly even-handed here, which is keeping in mind the target audience of the film.)  Still, Hall Pass has a number of laughs in reserve, especially when the protagonists can’t even begin to imagine how to take advantage of the freedom they’ve bargained for themselves.  Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis (who, in-between this film, Horrible Bosses and A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, is carving himself a bit of a niche as a sex-obsessed protagonist) are both as charming as they can be in characters who are barely emotionally adults, although it’s Richard Jenkins who gets the biggest laughs in short appearances as an even older and less mature professional bachelor. The problem is that by ultimately playing it safe, Hall Pass doesn’t do anything that warrants any lasting attention.  Despite a few out-of-place graphic gags, it’s a disposable comedy destined to the bargain bin.

  • A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011)

    A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012)  Don’t be fooled by the pornish title; this R-rated ensemble comedy is about as good-natured as sex-themed mainstream comedies can, er, come.  Never mind the “pervasive sexual content” promised by the film’s R rating, the mostly-amusing nudity, porn film snippets or the standard-issue profanity: This is a movie about thirty-something post-teenagers trying to hold on to high school friendships in the face of increasing “adult” commitments by putting together an orgy before a summer getaway destination is taken away from them. To its credit, the film does confront the uneasiness of such a situation, and the way such an event is likely to alter friendships along the way.  (It’s a comedy, though, so don’t worry over-much.)  The laughs are closer to chuckles, but they’re numerous enough to make the film worthy a look for those in the mood for an amiable but not-too-explicit sex comedy.  Jason Sudeikis is likable as the lead, but it’s really an ensemble effort that makes the film work as a comedy.  Don’t expect wall-to-wall indecency, and the film eventually works itself to a good-natured conclusion.

  • The Smurfs (2011)

    The Smurfs (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) As someone who grew up on Les Schtroumpfs in their original French, both on TV and in comics, I suppose that I can’t be surprised if I’m not entirely enthusiastic about Hollywood’s The Smurfs live-action adaptation.  There’s something… wrong… about the way the Smurfs are rendered on-screen, the clean glossiness of the comics incarnation made a bit too real by 3D textures.  Thus unfairly prejudiced against the film, it’s no stretch to find the script rote, dull and juvenile even by kids’ movies standards.  While the occasional self-aware line is good enough to earn a smile, it’s not enough to excuse the tired slapstick, the badly-animated CGI cat or the Scottish Smurf making a constant stream of testicle jokes.  By the time the film features Smurfs rocking “Walk this Way” on Guitar Hero, I’m left shaking my head and muttering “Smurfs are not supposed to even try to be cool.”  Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays are cute as the New York couple hosting the little blue characters, and some of the thematic ties to the prospect of imminent parenthood strike an unexpected chord.  It’s not quite enough to offset the continuing annoyance at the antics on-screen, or the uncanny valley uneasiness of the Smurfs themselves… but it’s just enough to avoid throwing this film in the bin of irremediable failures.  At the very least, The Smurfs will keep the kids entertained, and some of the throwaway lines will entertain the adults.  Despite everything, it could have been worse.

  • The Warrior’s Way (2010)

    The Warrior’s Way (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, April 2012) Where have all of the stylish martial-arts movies gone?  Watching the hit-and-miss The Warrior’s Way, the first thought coming to mind is that I used to see a whole lot more of those films ten years ago than today.  Am I simply not looking in the wrong places? Are these movies still being made?  From its first highly stylized shots, The Warrior’s Way creates its own sense of reality and dares viewers to keep up.  Beautifully-colored skies, sweeping camera action shots, stoic heroes and a blend of Asian sensibilities in a Western setting (with a bit of circus as color) will either frustrate viewers or make them swoon.  The script seldom deals in subtleties: Our hero is without reproach, his love for the heroine is pure, and all of the antagonists are beyond caricatures of evil.  (Which becomes a problem when the violence is carried just a bit too far for the rest of the film’s intentions.)  I quite liked some sequences, such as a very long-shot sword-fighting sequence, or the crazy attack sequence featuring a half-built Ferris wheel, but the film itself could have been tightened up and concluded more optimistically: The Warrior’s Way is just good enough to remind us of the way martial art movies can be good, while not good enough to completely satisfy those expectations.  Fans of the sub-genre will no doubt appreciate it more than those coming in cold to those conventions.  It is very pretty to look at, though.

  • Flypaper (2011)

    Flypaper (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, April 2012) Here’s my new life pro-tip for cinephiles: “Get premium cable TV channels for the big Hollywood movies; keep it for the smaller films that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise!” Flypaper may not have been seen in theaters, but on the small screen it makes for a clever and satisfying crime mystery.  The film does take a while to find its footing, as a quirky savant finds himself in the middle of two simultaneous bank robberies: for a while, Flypaper’s tone remains fuzzy as it veers between a serious crime film and a more light-hearted comedy.  But such initial sputters a common in dark comedies, and Flypaper soon finds itself on firmer footing as the real nature of its convoluted plot becomes more apparent.  Patrick Dempsey is the anchor of the film as a troubled genius investigating the crime in which he’s being held hostage, while Ashley Judd makes for a compelling heroine.  Some of the supporting characters do the best work, though, as with the banter between blue-collar bank robbers played by Tim Blake Nelson and Pruitt Taylor Vince, or a small-but-showy part for Jeffrey Tambor.  The dialogue is occasionally witty, the script is a cut above most crime comedies, and the inspired direction has its moments.  Flypaper is a dark-horse, hidden-gem kind of low-budget film: small cast but a capable script and well-handled filmmaking.  It wraps up on a high note, and leaves a great impression.

  • Holy Rollers (2010)

    Holy Rollers (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, April 2012) There really isn’t anything startlingly original about the dramatic arc of Holy Rollers: You can probably recall a bunch of other “good kid gets involved in drug-dealing, realizes how terrible it is and gets out” movies out there and this one doesn’t structure itself any differently.  What is new here, however, is the context: We seldom see films about the Hassidic Jewish community, and melding the usual kid-becoming-criminal plot template in this environment (it’s based on a true story) is interesting in itself even despite the lack of surprises in where it’s going.  (Actually, the biggest surprise here is that Holy Roller isn’t really interested in criticizing the Hassidic lifestyle.  This may end up being a problem for some viewers as the film tries to show the protagonist both getting away and yet returning to the faith-based lifestyle.) Much of the cinematography aims for drab realism: This is the kind of low-budget film that looks as if it was shot on a low budget, murky colors, shaky handheld camera and accidental shot composition are all on-screen. Acting-wise, Jesse Eisenberg doesn’t stretch far in a very familiar role for him, but he’s as fine as the rest of the cast in giving life to the rest of the story.  Otherwise, Holy Roller is a straight-up dramatic film: it’s good enough at what it does, doesn’t reach out of its comfort zone and doesn’t leave any strong feelings one way or another.  It exists and it’s relatively successful at what it does.

  • You Again (2010)

    You Again (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, April 2012) It feels churlish to criticize a film that’s not meant to be much more than a lighthearted comedy with a female-centric cast, and perhaps even ungrateful to do so when it does deliver a few laughs, but You Again simply isn’t as good as it could be.  While the idea of a decade-deferred vengeance between bully and bullied is interesting and definitely can be mined for comedy, this script seems confused between slapstick, retribution and reconciliation.  The first act is annoying in how it presents a relatively innocuous situation where an easy way out is dismissed through sheer dramatic inevitability: the main conflict of the film exists because the characters are self-destructive, and the ending doesn’t do much to send an anti-bullying or even anti-revenge message.  But, OK, fine: this is not a “message” movie, even though it shoots itself in the foot comedy-wise by trying to reach for a heartfelt moment or two late in the game.  It’s perhaps best to focus on Kirsten Bell’s physical comedy in the lead role, or the casting of Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver as dueling rivals, or the always-hilarious Betty White and Kristin Chenoweth in small supporting roles.  (There are also a few cute cameos.)  Meanwhile, the male performers all wisely take a step back in order to let the actresses shine.  It adds up to a film that’s not too difficult to watch, but goes through a number of fuzzy plot choices that do nothing to bring You Again out of average mediocrity.  Good casting; flat script: could have been much better.

  • Hot Coffee (2011)

    Hot Coffee (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, April 2012) A lot of people know about Liebeck vs McDonalds, a legal case in which a woman sued McDonalds for burns from a coffee, and received $2.7 million in damages.  Naturally, “a lot of people” don’t really understand the case, and still think it was an example of a frivolous lawsuit run amok. Hot Coffee starts by establishing the damning facts (showing gory burn pictures), and they make it that this certainly wasn’t a frivolous lawsuit: McDonalds had received over 800 complaints about burns caused by their coffee and Liebeck suffered third-degree burns that required extensive surgery.  But this is only the start of Hot Coffee‘s true agenda, which is to expose the ways in which the US civil judicial system has been systematically undermined by powerful corporate interests.  The goal is simple (make sure that business interests aren’t threatened by the judiciary branch) and the methods are many: PR campaigns to discredit civil suits and promote a hollow “tort reform”; lobbying to impose caps on damages; financing an organized effort to elect pro-business judges and discredit those who can’t be bought; and the practice of linking contracts to “mandatory arbitrage”, bypassing the judicial system in favour of conflict-resolution processes stacked in favour of the corporate client.  It’s all damning, and the examples used to illustrate the four pillars of writer/director Susan Saladoff are well-chosen.  Hot Coffee goes well beyond Liebeck vs McDonalds to uncover yet another piece of the vast anti-citizen effort that has noticeably curtailed civil rights in the US over the past few decades, and as such earns a place alongside some of the better-known activist documentaries of the past ten years.  Hot Coffee may not, stylistically speaking, be anything more than a series of talking heads blended with poignant personal stories, but it’s a fascinating piece of non-fiction… which may make you go to bed an angrier, more despondent moviegoer.

  • Repeaters (2010)

    Repeaters (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) The proverbial “low-budget but well-scripted SF movie” is hard to find, but it exists, and if Repeaters isn’t quite a complete success, it’s quite a bit better than the disaster-film swill that often passes for low-budget SF nowadays.  The central idea borrows liberally from Groundhog Day in sticking characters inside a day-long time loop.  The twists are that three characters rather than one are stuck, and that the treatment is much closer to criminal horror than to romantic comedy.  As three teenagers stuck in rehab understand their predicament and the darker implications of days repeated without consequences, the tension goes up, and the three characters end up having to fight each other day after day.  Repeaters doesn’t run all the way with the idea, nor can it escape a certain pat sentimentalism in deciding how characters escape their time-loop, but once the premise is firmly hooked, it’s easy to keep watching the film just to see what will happen next.  The limits of the budget don’t show in the rather good script as much as in the murky cinematography and intrusive handheld camera.  The film’s Canadian origins are more amusingly demonstrated by the fact that a big plot twist hinges on the fact that it’s snowing when it shouldn’t.  There is a lot of trash to be found in the wee hours of cable-TV, but Repeaters isn’t even close to badness –think of it as a nice little surprise.  (And don’t stop watching after the first few credits; there’s a nice little sting buried a few seconds later.)

  • The Andromeda Strain (1971)

    The Andromeda Strain (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, April 2012) I hadn’t seen this film in about two decades, but seeing it today was almost like seeing it for the first time: Much of the film’s impact is to be found not in the basic plot (in which scientists investigate a new and lethal threat from space in a top-secret secure laboratory) but in the ways this plot is presented on-screen.  For viewers deeply steeped in the current storytelling aesthetics of the techno-thriller genre, The Andromeda Strain is a seminal film.  It laboriously presents devices that would be used as shorthand for more than a generation of latter filmmakers.  Much of the film’s first hour is spent laboriously describing details (mysterious deaths, characters being gathered, their gradual introduction to the intricately-protected facility) that would be condensed to the simplest shorthand by latter movies such as Resident Evil.  The pace may be considerably slower than modern films, but some of the techniques remain captivating: The split-screen cinematography, the thick jargon, the post-action framing device, the quasi-documentary appeal to authority, the unflinching dedication to procedural details… it’s a generally-faithful adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel that ended up influencing an entire sub-genre.  The film has certainly struck a nerve in popular culture: I gasped audibly when I recognized the original line of dialogue (“Let’s go back to the rock… and see it at four-forty”) sampled in Apollo 440’s “Ain’t Talking About Dub”.  Some of the changes from the Crichton novel are better than others: The character gender switch that brought Kate Reid in the film have also led to a memorable character, even though the film itself is a bit weaker in explaining the “Scoop” premise of the plot.  Douglas Trumbull’s special effects are impressive for the time, but sometimes fail to accurately represent what’s happening on-screen.  Plot-wise, the film is just as notable as the novel in presenting a non-event; The Andromeda Strain has characters struggling to understand and eventually try to stop a mistake, but (taking its cues from War of the Worlds) doesn’t give them a whole lot to do in stopping the threat that brings them together.  It’s still a fascinating piece of work, though, especially for what it doesn’t do well from a perspective forty years distant.