Movie Review

  • How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

    How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, April 2010) There really isn’t anything new or all that innovative about How to Train Your Dragon, at least from a first glance at the script: The story about a teen outcast discovering inner reserves of courage along with secrets about a terrible menace will feel intensely familiar to anyone over the age of ten.  But it’s all in the execution, and once the end credits roll, the film feels like a satisfying success.  While the film takes a while to accelerate, and too-often passes its time treading over familiar sequences, everything becomes better once we’re in the air along with the dragons.  Jay Baruchel’s creaky voice performance adds a lot to the lead character; while the 3D is so well done that it looks fine even in 2D.  While one may quibble about the pro-dragon propaganda, or the traumatic use of an amputation trope, this “boy and his pet dragon” is slight but competently made.  Older viewers may not remember much of How to Train Your Dragon after a few days, but they’re not its target audience… and they’ll tolerate repeat viewings well enough.

  • Kick-Ass (2010)

    Kick-Ass (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) Every year, there are now a few movies that make me feel old.  Old, as in having finally escaped the sociopathic, bloodthirsty, surface-obsessed 16-32 age bracket.  Old, as in rolling my eyes at conscious attempts at shock spectacle.  Old, as in not being overly amused by films catering to the comic-book crowd that thinks that R-rated films in which they have to sneak into are necessarily better than anything else.  Old enough, in short, to be left cold by Kick-Ass’s deliberate crassness, buckets of spilt blood, titular profanity and general hypocrisy.  Nominally a “realistic” attempt to fit super-heroes in the real-world, Kick-Ass ends up in the same super-heroic fantasy world it claims to avoid in the first few minutes.  Compared to Mark Millar’s original comic book (which is quite a bit harsher, although not that much more respectable), the film is generally lighter, often better-structured and ends on the kind of conclusion fit to leave anyone exit the theatres whistling happily.  Never mind the sociopathic 12-year-old girl that murders without remorse, the convenient Mafioso villains or the jaundiced view of an alternate world where super-heroism is needed.  There’s a reason why I never fit into comic-book culture, and Kick-Ass only reminded me of about a dozen of them.  And yet, despite everything (and the blood-thirsty jackals braying for gore and laughing inappropriately during my screening at the Brighton Odeon), I still found a lot to like in this film.  The rhythm is energetic, Matthew Vaughn’s direction shows moments of inspiration, Chloe Moretz is more adorable as a tween killer than you’d expect and the movie features not one, but two tracks from The Prodigy’s Invaders Must Die album.  When it works, Kick-Ass is a darkly comic film that almost has something to say about superhero power fantasies.  When it doesn’t, though, it’s just another reminder that I’m now over the hill in terms of pop entertainment.  Now let me shake my fist at those lawn-trampling younglings and mutter unintelligibly in my creaky rocking chair.

  • Repo Men (2010)

    Repo Men (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) In a generous mood, I would probably praise Repo Men for its satiric vision of a future where synthetic organ transplants are common and expensive enough to warrant repo men going around repossessing deadbeats, leaving them, well, dead on the floor.  I would congratulate Jude Law, Liev Schreiber and Forrest Whittaker for thankless roles playing unsympathetic characters and Alice Braga for something like a breakthrough role.  I would say something clever about the film’s forthright carnographic nature.  I may even have something affable to say about Eric Garcia, who sort-of-adapted his own novel for the screen (the story, as described in the book’s afterword, is far more complicated) and wrote one of the most bitterly depressing movie ending in recent memory.  Heck, I would point out the numerous undisguised references to Toronto (where the movie was shot): the inverted TTC sign, the Eaton center complete with Indigo bookstore, the streetcars, even the traffic lights and suburban streets.  But I am not in a generous mood, because Repo Men is an unpleasant and defective attempt at a satirical action SF film that fails at most of what it attempts.  The characters are unlikable, their actions are despicable, the chuckles are faint and the Saw-inspired gory violence isn’t warranted by anything looking like thematic depth.  It is a literally viscerally repulsive film, and even trying to play along the grim sardonic humour gets increasingly difficult to swallow during self-congratulatory action sequences.  Once the film’s none-too-serious credentials are established, it’s hard to care –and that includes a wannabe-romantic sequence in which internal organs are exposed and fondled.  The ending wants to be witty, but it just feels absurd before it is revealed to be cheaply cynical.  The Science Fictional elements don’t even fit together and the result is a big bloody bore.  Instead, just give me another shot of Repo: The Genetic Opera!: at least that film knew how to balance arch seriousness with a sense of camp.  The irony is that Garcia’s novel is actually quite a bit better than the film –don’t let the adaptation scare you from a novel that does what the film wanted to do in a far more palatable fashion.

  • The Ghost Writer aka The Ghost (2010)

    The Ghost Writer aka The Ghost (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) Roman Polanski may be a runaway convicted pedophile, but he sure knows how to direct a movie.  Faithfully adapted by Robert Harris from his own unusually accessible novel, The Ghost Writer starts with an intriguing premise and then accelerates into a full-blown political thriller.  As a ghostwriter asked to help a former British Prime Minister finish his memoirs after the untimely death of his predecessor, Ewan McGregor is sympathetic enough to hold our interest.  Meanwhile, Pierce Brosnan is convincing as the conniving politician.  The fascinating aspects of ghost-writing are strong enough to allow us to settle in the film’s increasingly frantic pacing.  Once our protagonist starts finding clues about his subject’s past, palace intrigue develops and modern accusations come to besiege their quiet beachfront house.  Added interest can be found in The Ghost Writer’s not-so-subtle political allusions to Tony Blair’s administration.  The film’s plot is nearly identical to the book, but it’s really Polanski’s deft touch with suspense that ties up the film in a neat bow.  A number of showy sequences present familiar developments in refreshing fashion, and the deliberate pacing keeps things neither too slow nor too fast.  Some plot kinks are best explained in the book (which is also a bit more aggressive in political themes), but overall The Ghost Writer is a well-made thriller for adults, bringing back memories of classic seventies movie paranoia.  You can say what you want about Polanski, but the result up on the screen is unarguable.

  • Alice in Wonderland (2010)

    Alice in Wonderland (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) The good news with Tim Burton is that he is guaranteed to put a vision on screen.  Alas, it may not be the vision you would prefer.  So it is that this loose sequel to the classic Alice in Wonderland is an affront to my aesthetic preferences: At the exception of the oh-so-cute Cheshire Cat, I found the film’s artistic choices ugly.  This is partly intentional; after all, the point of this follow-up is that Wonderland has grown tainted; the magic has fled the land and been replaced by corruption.  {Insert heavy-duty genre fantasy narrative schematics inspired by John Clute here.}  No wonder everything is so repulsive.  The showy use of 3D makes moments of the film look even more incomprehensible and overdone to 2D audiences.  But as hard as it is to ignore Alice in Wonderland’s visuals, the real snore comes from the plot, which feels as Alice filtered through the Lord of the Rings plot template that has informed almost a full decade of genre cinema fantasy by now.  It’s dull, and the overdone shot of the two armies running to clash together has become almost parody.  Alice in Wonderland becomes duller as it goes on, and not even Johnny Depp’s increasingly active Mad Hatter (or Anne Hathaway’s regal presence, for that matter) can do much to redeem the rest of the picture.  It’s a middling fantasy film at best: when “dull” and “ugly” crop up in the same review, there’s little room for favourable quotes.

  • Fast Food Nation (2006)

    Fast Food Nation (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2010) Adapting a book to a movie is a gamble even in the best circumstances, but adapting a well-regarded non-fiction classic into an ensemble drama is really asking for trouble.  To its credit, Richard Linklater manages to touch upon much of Eric Schlosser’s critique of the fast-food industry: We get a taste of its reliance on students and migrant workers, the bloody mass butchery required to keep those burgers flowing, the external costs inherent in cheap food and even details such as made-in-laboratory flavours.  What the film doesn’t do as well is in dramatizing those issues: Often, Fast Food Nation feels like a talky issues show in which every scene mentions a problem or two.  (Even a quick walk through school corridors can’t help but feature metal detectors and drug-sniffing dogs.)  Some characters are more interesting than others (there are plenty of cameos and small roles for familiar faces, the best of which being a single-scene semi-villainous turn for Bruce Willis), but the film shuts down before it can tie up most situations adequately: it’s all setup and little payoff, although it leads, Heart of Darkness-style, to a revelatory climax showing the gruesome nature of the “Killing Floor” discussed so often during the rest of the film..  This unflinching moment, filmed in a real Mexico butchery said to be cleaner than US ones, is meant to disgust –but it may not be the film’s intended climax for viewers who already understand that animals become meat become burgers.  Still, Fast Food Nation generally sticks close to reality, and its failings as a piece of narrative fiction are profoundly linked to its strength as a semi-documentary exposé.  It could have been much stronger by including a third act, presenting its messages more carefully (although, thanks goodness, it avoids the most obvious “fast food will make you fat”) and sticking closer to its characters.  But even with its flaws, it’s a worthwhile film: the issues are there to ponder, and there are a handful of scenes good enough to make the film compelling.  Don’t plan on eating much fast-food right after, though.  Appropriately, viewers may come to appreciate the film more after listening to co-writers Linklater and Schlosser on the audio commentary track: they discuss what material was kept from the book, the nature of low-budget moviemaking and some of the themes they were tackling.  A handful of other extras round up the DVD, the most memorable of them being the now-classic Meatrix Flash animation short films.

  • Green Zone (2010)

    Green Zone (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) Politically-motivated action films are rare and precious, so I am unapologetic in liking Green Zone a lot more than I should given my distaste for Paul Greengrass’s shaky-cam style.  His politics are in the right place, but his habit of giving jobs to spastic cameramen can be tough to tolerate, especially in early dialogue scenes.  Yet despite the firefights, this story is largely about the way a loyal soldier comes to realize the ways the US government has lied about WMDs in Iraq.  It’s also a damning portrait of the way the US acted during its first year as an invader: Using Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City as inspiration for its setting leads to one of the best digitally-enhanced portrait of occupied Baghdad so far.  Matt Damon is surprisingly credible as the soldier whose questions lead to unpleasant realizations, and one action sequence featuring helicopter surveillance feels as uniquely contemporary as Greengrass’s own Bourne Ultimatum London chase sequence.  Still, this may be a film not only for those who can spot the Judith-Miller-inspired patsy journalist or the not-Ahmed-Chalabi puppet figurehead, but those who can both explain De-Baathification and why it was so badly implemented.  For savvy political observers, Green Zone feels like a swift Cliff’s Notes version of recent history, or a version of No End in Sight with far many more gunfights.  While the dramatic arc of the script feels ordinary (although the American-on-American conflicts are a nice touch), it’s its dramatization of recent bleeding history that’s most rewarding.  It so confidently states what many Americans are still reluctant to affirm despite piles of evidence to the contrary that it becomes a minor revelation of what filmmaking can still do –especially in non-American hands.  In this context, trolling the politically-driven negative reviews for the film becomes entertainment in its own right.  In the meantime, Green Zone goes to join The Kingdom and Lord of War as examples of how enjoyable action filmmaking can back up a socially-conscious theme, and not be much more than half a decade behind current events.

  • The Crazies (2010)

    The Crazies (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) On paper, this film doesn’t look like much: A remake of a 1973 Romero film about people being transformed into zombies, er, crazy psychotics?  Another take on the good old “Government will kill you the first chance it gets” paranoia?  Yet another familiar zombie zombier ZOMBIEST film like 28 Days/Weeks Later?  Not interested.  And yet, even though most of The Crazies plays like a dirt-simple genre horror film, it is –for all of its conceptual lack of originality- well-made enough to hold attention even when it indulges in well-worn clichés and nonsensical set-pieces.  Despite a second act lull and a predictable late-film eruption of zombies, the direction is snappy, the writing is adequate and the actors do what they can with what they’re given.  Unlike the original, the film is sparse with explanations, and (at the notable exception of a few ominous satellite shots) limits its perspective what the protagonists can learn: the minuscule amount of exposition happens at a frantic pace.  The subtext about government intervention is far, far less important that the genre chills and thrills, and takes a back-seat to a convincing portrait of small-town Midwestern America. Timothy Olyphant turns in a fine performance as the sheriff-protagonist, while director Breck Eisner may end up proving that there is life after the underwhelming Sahara.  Until his next film, though, The Crazies is a rare competent horror film remake that rises above a hum-drum premise to deliver a decent entertainment experience.

  • Brooklyn’s Finest (2009)

    Brooklyn’s Finest (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) Brooklyn’s Finest is a profoundly ironic title, but there’s little sly humour in the rest of this deliberately gritty and down-beat police drama that follows three variously-corrupted Brooklyn policemen.  This isn’t director Antoine Fuqua’s first corrupt cop drama (remember Training Day?), nor the first corrupt cop drama in recent memory (Dark Blue?  Street Kings?  Pride and Glory?  Righteous Kill?), so viewers may be spared a sentiment of déjà-vu.  Where this film distinguishes itself is in structure: The three stories rarely intersect, except for a bit of tragic cross-fire at the very end.  In the meantime, we get Richard Gere (far too proud and well-coiffed for his own role) as a disillusioned veteran marking down his last days, the always-fantastic Don Cheadle as an undercover informant with stronger ties to criminals than his own superiors, and Ethan Hawke as an overwhelmed father-of-many who resorts to stealing drug money in order to supplement his pay check.  Brooklyn’s Finest has a patina of unpleasantness that is supposed to transmute into authentic grittiness, but this illusion doesn’t sustain the steadily-increasing body-count as criminals are gunned down in police raids by the dozen.  Few of the film’s characters can be expected to live until the credits.  This sombre tone, alas, creates expectations that the unfocused, moralistic ending can’t match: Since this isn’t a popcorn picture, we look in vain for a deeper message and a stronger conclusion than a final hail of bullets.  The script, while interesting throughout, fails to cohere in its third act and the result is a mild disappointment.  Like many of its corrupted-blue brethren, Brooklyn’s Finest will be another forgettable DVD in the crime section; adequate to satisfy those looking for that kind of film, and insignificant for everyone else.

  • Cop Out (2010)

    Cop Out (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) The most profound irony about Cop Out, as directed by Kevin Smith from someone else’s script, is that the film’s direction is quite a bit better than its screenplay.  This should surprise Smith fans: after all, hasn’t it been a trademark of his movies that their writing frequently rises above their often-pedestrian direction?  Here, through, Smith has a budget and presumably the time to present a more visually ambitious vision.  Alas, the script just isn’t there: As a pair of policemen bumble their way through a dull storyline involving Latin gangsters in Brooklyn, Bruce Willis does well as the veteran leader of the pair but I remain unconvinced by Tracy Morgan’s comedic style.  Worse, though, is the script’s fondness for police intimidation as a plot driver: in Cop Out’s reality, it’s hilarious for heroes to jam pistols and tattoo needles in civilians’ face to extract information.  As for the rest of the film, it’s more miss than hit.  Seann William Scott has an intriguing character that’s played for senseless giggles.  Other characters come and go, with a dramatic plot heavy-handedly jammed in the middle of the comedy.  There’s a noticeable lack of flow to the proceedings, and the spot-the-references-to-eighties-action-movies game quickly grows tiresome.  For a comedy, Cop Out has a noticeable lack of laughs: even what is supposed to be amusing just feels dumb.  On the other hand, the direction feels undistinguishable from most cookie-cutter cop comedies, which marks a step up for Smith.  He’s still not doing it well, but at least it’s not as blatantly bad as in his first few films.  Hopefully it’s a lucrative enough project that he’ll be able to work on something else soon.  Still, even in mercenary work-for-hire projects, he may want to pick material that’s stronger than Jersey Girl.

  • Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

    Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, February 2010) The trailer for this film was unremarkable, so it’s a small surprise that the film itself proves just fine.  No in terms of plotting, which blends “kid with a fantastic origin” with “quest!” and explicitly takes on the good old plot-coupon approach to second-act plotting.  Not in terms of verisimilitude, when some of the dumbest material actually makes it on-screen in what looks like a summer camp that no one would enjoy.  No, the chief saving grace of this adaptation of the first Percy Jackson & The Olympians book is in the way it adapts Greek mythology to a modern-day context.  Part of this package are seeing a bunch of known actors in small roles: While Pierce Brosnan is OK as centaur Chiron and Sean Bean is credible as Zeus, it’s Uma Thurman as a leathery Medusa and Rosario Dawson as luscious Persephone that get all the attention.  They are barely enough to make us ignore more fundamental details about the film’s world-building, and how it doesn’t exactly hang together gracefully.  It’s a good thing that it’s Chris Columbus who directs the film, because it makes the clunky first-act plot similarities with Harry Potter easier to dismiss.  But then again, the fun of the film is in the details, not the overall plot.  A few good action sequences, complete with top-of-the-line special effects, finish off a package that is, all things considered, a bit better and more fun than anyone would have thought.

  • Les 7 Jours du Talion [Seven Days] (2010)

    Les 7 Jours du Talion [Seven Days] (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) Given my friendship with Patrick Senécal, who adapted his own novel to the big screen in this minimalist anti-revenge thriller, don’t expect a completely unbiased review.  (Hey, I’m even friends with the doctor who suggested to Senécal some of the story’s most gruesome moments.)  If nothing else, I’ve had conversations with Senécal about his intent to question the vengeful nature of contemporary movies, and so I tend to judge the film version in terms of how well it manages to avoid turning into the kind of films it’s meant to criticize.  It’s a delicate balance: When the doctor-protagonist’s daughter is kidnapped, raped and killed, he chooses to take justice in his own hands, renounce his Hippocratic Oath and subject the accused to seven days of meticulously planned torture.  But what could have been a run-of-the-mill thriller turns into something far more disturbing chiefly because of what it doesn’t do.  The absence of background music, at first off-putting, eventually becomes disturbing in how it supports the film’s stark cinematography and allows no emotional distance from the events on-screen.  The camera seldom seems to move or give viewers the benefit of cinema-like movement: Everything is meant to be as real, unpolished and brutal as could be in real-life.  Other absences are subtler yet harsher: Torturer and child molester never exchange even a single line of dialogue, and a last whispered “No” abruptly makes the film avoid the cheap moralism it could have embraced easily.  It goes without saying that this refusal to glamorize violence does exactly what it’s supposed to do: While the film’s gore isn’t particularly bloody by horror-movie standards, its contextualization makes it seem almost unbearable.  Many, many viewers simply won’t make it to the end of the film, and those who do may find that the ending isn’t the satisfying revenge fantasy that everyone would be expecting.  As such, the film accomplishes its basic goals, even if that doesn’t satisfy all audiences.  There are, as you would expect, a few flaws: Some of the book’s shakier third-act flourishes feel far less tolerable on the big screen and dilute the intensity of the film.  In more nit-picky matters, the newscasts feel forced.  But Senécal’s third adaptation of his own work is, in some ways, the most successful so far: After Sur le Seuil and 5150 Rue des Ormes, Les Sept Jours du Talion continue to show Senécal moving away from solid but conventional horror into more complex moral dilemmas… something that has become even more obvious in his latest novels.  So when are they going to be brought to the big screen as well?

  • Shutter Island (2010)

    Shutter Island (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 2010) First five minutes: Promising direction by Scorcese.  Last fifteen minutes: Pretty much the same as in Dennis Lehane’s mind-bending thriller.  In-between: Your reviewer slept through a terrible headache.  Consider this a placeholder for a real review coming shortly.

    (In theatres, March 2010) As suspected, staying awake during the film does improve the experience quite a bit.  While I can’t see the film anew without any idea of what’s coming (first having read Lehane’s novel, then having caught the big end revelations during my first sleepy viewing), it’s not such a bad way to evaluate the film.  Even knowing the ludicrousness of the underlying premise, the film is still satisfying: it’s a brilliant illustration of what a skilled director like Scorsese can do with pulp-thriller plotting.  There are, as it turns out, plenty of subtle and unsubtle clues about the real nature of the film even from the get-go, and the filmmaking itself is compelling: The cinematography is clean, the scenes move well, the actors are interesting and the stormy atmosphere, so important in thriller, is all-powerful.  At times, it feels like a realistically-presented waking nightmare, and that’s already quite a bit better than the average cookie-cutter thriller.  The premise is still as aggressively nonsensical as it has even been, but that doesn’t matter as much: Shutter Island is an engaging thriller built upon a flimsy foundation, and it works a lot better than a flimsy thriller built upon an engaging foundation.  Even those who feel “spoiled” by knowing the film’s twist may end up liking it better than those who come at it perfectly cold.

  • Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

    Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2010) For years, I avoided this sequel to the imaginative low-budget Canadian SF film Cube on suspicions that it would be more of the same.  I was half-right: While Cube 2: Hypercube manages to be, substantially, the same film as its predecessor (a group of people are trapped in a repeating cubic structure they come to deduce is a prison; some gruesome deaths; one of them flips out and starts killing other members of the group), it doesn’t look the same, has a few new tricks up its sleeve, and is even a bit more dramatically satisfying than the first film.  Some of the first film’s best quirks have been kept: the nightmarish nature of the endlessly repeating environment is there, as is the high concept of making a film that feels much bigger than its eight actors and single set.  White has replaced black as the cube’s base color and as the subtitle of the film suggests, the structure is quite a bit more complex.  It’s also far heavier on purely science-fictional concepts, from variable time and gravity to dimensional extrusion to parallel reality collapse.  Alas, those tricks are used more as arbitrary stingers than elements of a carefully put-together environment or plotline: A gifted SF prose writer could have built an intricate puzzle-box with those elements, but in Cube 2 they seem subservient to the whims of the plot.  It gives an unfocused, unsatisfying aftertaste to the entire film, even as the film seems far more generous than its predecessors in providing a satisfying semi-closure.  Still, it’s more intriguing than many other low-budget SF sequels, and it’s relatively successful in reaching its own objectives.  The DVD contains an instructive audio commentary track, as well as a lengthy making-of documentary that focuses almost exclusively on the special effects –which may tell you something about the nature of the film.  There’s a profound irony in that the film’s CGI is used for both unconvincing traps and flawless set extension (some shots of the cube are virtual, and indistinguishable from the physical set).  But all in all, Cube 2: Hypercube is an unassuming and surprisingly decent film that I should have seen much earlier.

  • The Princess and the Frog (2009)

    The Princess and the Frog (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, February 2010) It’s difficult to see The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s first animated featuring starring an African-American lead character, without thinking about Disney’s troubled relationship with race, from the eternal embarrassment of Songs of the South to its tradition of whiter-than-white lead characters.  But this is a new decade, and it seems that Disney has caught up with the times and if the result is recognizably another Disney princess fantasy, it’s also a film that has a lot more to offer.  By taking place in 1920s New Orleans, the film is able to draw upon rich sources of inspiration for visuals and music: At its best, The Princess and the Frog is quite unlike anything else seen from Disney, with art-deco segments, and jazz, soul, blues and gospel music.  That’s when the film reaches its top velocity, and act as an old-fashioned crowd-charmer.  Unfortunately, the entire film’s not like that: More conventional segments are, well, more conventional, and while they tie the film together, they don’t do much more than connect the narrative dots in a plotting fashion.  Still, through it all, it’s almost too easy to forget that this is Disney’s first 2D feature after the resurrection of their hand-drawn studio.  The Princess and the Frog is a creditable success for the 2D division, and a proud successor in a long line of Disney features.  One that, indeed, will make believers out of even the most hardened Disney-basher.