Movie Review

  • Woman in Gold (2015)

    Woman in Gold (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2016) Ryan Reynolds tends to play comic motormouths or action heroes, so it’s not surprising if part of Woman in Gold’s interest in seeing him in the strikingly different role of an earnest and nebbish lawyer who discovers his conscience while helping an elderly Jewish woman recover long-seized family belongings. That the belongings in question are Gustave Klimt painting confiscated by Nazis isn’t immaterial, and enable the film to play in various modes, from historical drama to art appreciation to legal drama to family history. The star of the film isn’t Reynolds, but rather Helen Mirren, revisiting painful family history when she becomes aware that she could reclaim part of her family legacy, abandoned when they fled Nazi Austria. Much of the film’s first half is entirely hers—Reynolds’ character only develops later on. While Woman in Gold feels too long, and derivative in the way it portrays the flashbacks to 1930s Austria, it does build quite an amazing true story and should appeal to an interesting variety of audiences. For Reynolds fans, it’s a reminder that he can act beyond his usual charm, and hold his own against a veteran such as Mirren.

  • Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

    Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2016) It’s a minor miracle that the Mission: Impossible series is still going strong after five instalments, but after the near-death-by-ridiculousness of the second movie, the series has managed to hit upon a winning formula that still keeps it going nearly twenty years later. The formula is getting a bit repetitive (can we stand another of those “Ethan Hunt must operate without official support!” plot point?) but nearly everyone understands that plotting in this series is really about getting from one action set-piece to the next, and in this regard Rogue Nation is as good as any other instalment in the series. Tom Cruise’s ridiculously effective charisma helps, and so does the work of the series’ usual supporting players, but this time around the film can count upon a fully fleshed action heroine played by Rebecca Ferguson (too bad she won’t show up for the next instalment, as is custom), straightforward action direction by Christopher McQuarrie, and a pretty enjoyable supporting performance by Alec Baldwin, making the most out of a villainous persona. Good action set pieces include a complex opera house sequence and a frantic car chase in which the pursuer isn’t completely back from the dead. On the flip side, the computer break-in sequence is piled-up nonsense that borrows a bit too much from the first movie, and the final act of the film doesn’t have a strong action sequence as a send-off. The fantasy version of the espionage craft displayed by the series also cuts both ways, either as an escapist bonus, or as a regrettable absurdity when a bit more plotting realism would help anchor the delirious action sequences. This being said, Rogue Nation has the benefit of meticulously planned sequences and a controlled tone throughout—making it stand a bit above most of the other spy movies of 2015’s anno furtivus—yes, even better than Spectre, with which it shared a striking number of plot points. What’s left to do but anticipate the next instalment?

  • Stuck on You (2003)

    Stuck on You (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2016) The touch of the Farrely brothers is obvious in Stuck on You, another of their comedies in which disability is seen sympathetically, North-eastern United States represents and comedy springs from uncomfortable situations. To wit: Stuck on You is about conjoined twins linked at the hip, and how they try to achieve one of them’s success as a Hollywood actor. As a physical comedy, Stuck on You milks a lot of laughs from suggesting the practical reality of its characters (one of them donning black clothes as the other perform a one-man show, the other wearing a teddy bear suit in bed when the other meets a romantic prospect), then goes for gentle Hollywood satire when a truly awful TV show becomes a rating darling. Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear are rather good in thankless roles, while Cher gets a few laughs in a relatively unflattering role. (Eva Mendes and Meryl Streep also show up successfully in small roles) Stuck on You is a film of small moments rather than overall storytelling: the plot is familiar, the beats are predictable and what sets it apart is some degree of success in delivering the small laughs that populate the larger but blander framework. In retrospect, it’s almost amazing that Stuck on You manages to last more than ninety minutes without quite wearying what could have been a one-note premise. Interestingly enough, the film manages to avoid most gross-out gags, which may be surprising given some of the Farrelly Brothers’ filmography. But they would have been out of place in a film that generally plays things sweetly and without meanspiritedness. Better than it could have been, Stuck on You isn’t particularly sophisticated entertainment, but it holds its own against most odds.

  • El secreto de sus ojos [The Secret in Their Eyes] (2009)

    El secreto de sus ojos [The Secret in Their Eyes] (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2016) Much-lauded Argentinian import El secreto de sus ojos does take a while to get going: Much of the first hour is spent laboriously setting up the chronology of a crime twenty years past, with characters seemingly reflecting upon their past histories for little compelling reason. (For North-American audiences, part of the film’s early issues is also trying to understand the Argentinian criminal system and the interactions of the various roles presented on-screen, as well as the ominous implications of Argentina’s past history on the actions of the characters.) But then, as a brightly-lit stadium shows up in the night and we’re abruptly dragged into an amazing long-shot takedown of a suspect, El secreto de sus ojos suddenly kicks in high gear, and a competently-made crime drama suddenly takes on an increasingly distinctive feel. By the time the ending wraps up, we’ve been taken places that few criminal dramas touch upon, the framing device makes sense and the characters come into their own. (And never mind that the stadium shot sticks out as atypical from the rest of the film.) It’s not to anyone’s advantage to know more about the story, except that it does go somewhere after a slow beginning. El secreto de sus ojos won a Foreign-Language Academy Award for a good reason: originally conceived and competently executed by director Juan J. Campanella, it’s an accessible crime story with just enough difference to make things fascinating.

  • Mississippi Grind (2015)

    Mississippi Grind (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2016) I’m famously risk-averse, so gambling movies are really my only way to vicariously try to understand the mind of high-stake gamblers. But if casino scenes in James Bond are one thing, movies like Mississippi Grind are fit to scare me straight from any kind of gambling. Much of the film revolves around a gambler at the end of his tether: divorced, unable to do well at the office, our protagonist (a striking performance by Ben Mendlesohn) lives to gamble and has lost far more than he’s won. One day, however, he spots a good luck charm in the form of a chatty young man (Ryan Reynolds, in a role with more depth than he usually plays) and decides to travel from Chicago to New Orleans in the hopes of turning his life around. Mississippi Grind is certainly not part of the heroic gambling movie lineage: most of it takes place in dingy river casinos, with fairly sad characters dressing up for the occasion. Our protagonists’ fortunes go from bad to worse, and even an upbeat ending isn’t quite enough to mask the character study of a degenerate gambler. There’s little to enjoy here, although the film does act as a reminder that Mendlesohn and Reynolds can act when they’re given the chance. As for the rest, Mississippi Grind acts as a terrific Public Service Announcement against the evils of gambling—notwithstanding the ending that justifies everything, of course.

  • Trumbo (2015)

    Trumbo (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2016) Screenwriters are my Hollywood heroes, so it makes sense that I’d like Trumbo a lot more for its depiction of a screenwriter as a two-fisted creative brawler than for its on-the-nose take on the evils of the McCarthytism and its Hollywood black list. Bryan Cranston is very likable in the lead role of Dalton Trumbo, left-wing screenwriter blacklisted by Hollywood during the fifties, sent to prison, and making a living by anonymously writing movies both bad and good, even winning two Oscars under pseudonyms. Perhaps the best sequences in the film detail Trumbo’s living and business arrangement as he created a system of delegate writers to satisfy the prodigious appetites of a B-movie studio looking for affordable quality. Of course, even if Trumbo is handled by veteran comedy director Jay Roach, it gets its respectability by hammering at Trumbo’s blacklisting. That part of the film feels far less satisfying, going over familiar material about McCarthy’s red scare in a way that doesn’t feel remotely subtle. Fortunately, the film picks up toward the end as Trumbo reintegrates the Hollywood elite, thanks to people like Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger. Trumbo may fail in trying to present a hefty respectable drama about the dangers of political profiling, but it partially recovers by taking us within the world of a top-level screenwriter.

  • Last Action Hero (1993)

    Last Action Hero (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, on Cable TV, March 2016) I remember seeing Last Action Hero in theatres in 1993, days after graduating from high school, and liking it quite a bit better than the reviewers did at the time. I approached it again with nostalgia-tinted intentions, ready to make a bold claim that its action movie self-referential satire would have been far more successful in today’s vastly more irony-friendly culture. But after actually watching the film, I reluctantly concede that the critics were right then and are still right now: Despite an engaging premise, some spectacular set pieces and a self-deprecating performance by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Last Action Hero ends up as a film too flawed to be considered successful. Reading up on the film’s troubled production history certainly helps clarify why the result seems so haphazard: the involvement of so many people in writing the script explains why it feels so disjointed and underwhelming. The rushed post-production certainly led to the slack moment-to-moment pacing. Worse: Last Action Hero takes a sky’s-the-limit concept and beats it down to a dull rooftop rainy climax, ignoring dozens of better ideas along the way. It fatally chooses to set its climax in the dingy real world rather than the sunny fantasies of the movies. It doesn’t just make jokes, but underlines each of them twice to make sure that we get it. The kid protagonist is more annoying than sympathetic, the all-evil portrait of New York feels dated (although that one isn’t the film’s fault—NYC’s murder rate is now an astonishing 15% of what it was back in 1990) and much of the plot mechanics should have been simplified to focus on the fun-and-games of the premise. I still like much of Last Action Hero: some moments work really well as comic throwbacks to a specific type of early-nineties action film, director John McTiernan manages to make some of the movie-world action sequences a lot of fun (most specifically the hotel rooftop sequence) and some of the individual jokes do land. But the key word here is “some”: As a whole, Last Action Hero doesn’t manage to achieve what it sets out to do. Why doesn’t anyone think of remaking this film rather than successful ones?

  • Fools Rush In (1997)

    Fools Rush In (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2016) One of the underrated aspects of movie watching as a hobby is the time-travelling (or perhaps more accurately time-fixing) aspect of seeing actors at variable times throughout lengthy careers. The case in point here is Salma Hayek, a remarkably beautiful woman at any age, as proven by films such as 1997’s Fools Rush In. She’s the best and most distinctive thing about this relatively humdrum romantic comedy. Matthew Perry (also looking incredibly young) also stars in this tale of cross-cultural love set in Mexico and Las Vegas. It’s not much of a film at the story level: much of the plot is intensely familiar when it doesn’t suffer from severe tone problems. (I’m surprised to have to repeat this, but: Abortion plot points don’t belong in romantic comedies. Never ever.) Hayek, on the other hand, gives a spirited performance as a Mexican signer trying to find success north of the border, only to find herself inextricably linked to an American man after an impulsive fling. Fools Rush In does have its share of issues over tone: the premise doesn’t lend itself to consequence-free laughter, and elements of the third act get dark, clashing with the somewhat more ridiculous elements of the plotting. It’s not, in other words, much of a success. But as an opportunity to see younger Hayek and Perry riff off each other, it’s worth a look for fans of those actors.

  • Playing It Cool (2014)

    Playing It Cool (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2016) The small independent Los Angeles-based romantic comedy subgenre is interesting: By virtue of sticking close to Hollywood and going over intensely familiar ground, it can often become a showcase for new directors, established actors trying something different, stylistic experimentation and small-scale enjoyment. So it is with Playing It Cool, a somewhat average romantic comedy set in Los Angeles, starring no less than Chris Evans as his usually likable self, albeit in a far more comic and down-to-earth capacity than many of his starring roles so far. (Other smaller roles are filled by other people you’d recognize.) The film goes for a fair amount of insider meta-jokes by making its protagonist a screenwriter in search of inspiration as he’s trying to write a comedy. But the tone remains light throughout, and director Justin Reardon occasionally indulges in a number of small stylistically interesting touches (such as a “doorway” sequence zipping from one scene to another). Michelle Monaghan is just as likable as the romantic interest, and even though Playing It Cool tries to pretend that’s cooler than its own genre, it’s actually quite mannered in how it reverts to form and delivers exactly what’s expected. While the film does stink a bit too much of the male gaze in the way it approaches its female characters, Playing It Cool does the job as a gently amusing romantic comedy. It’s not meant to be more than a likable goof, and it succeeds modestly at that goal.

  • Steve Jobs (2015)

    Steve Jobs (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2016) It’s a good thing that Ashton Kutcher’s critically-dismissed Jobs (2013) exists, if only as a point of comparison to the far more audacious Steve Jobs. Both try to capture on-screen the life of the famously abrasive Apple co-founder, but the first plays it as straight as it can, while the latter takes a far more experimental approach to its subject. The crucial decision in making this film special is screenwriter Aaron Sorkins’s crucial intuition to structure the film around three key product presentations, allowing the film to focus on Jobs at three moments in his life. The consequences of this choice (including how mini-stories condense around those crucial moments) are nowhere near historically accurate, but they do make the film far more powerful. It helps that Steve Jobs is directed by Danny Boyle, who shoots each act differently and brings just enough of his stylistic experimentation to bear. Michael Fassbender doesn’t look all that much like Jobs, but he creates a mesmerizing performance that carries the character. He’s ably supported by a number of good actors used effectively, but the star of the movie remains the script, with its overlapping dialogues, technically accurate jargon, fast-switching subplots and quotable moments (“I play the orchestra”). It amounts to a surprisingly good film, made even more surprising by how audience may think they already know enough about Jobs. And that may be Steve Jobs’s legacy: a thrilling execution that manages to prove that a fresh angle is often enough to make the familiar fascinating again.

  • Creed (2015)

    Creed (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2016) As a sequel in the Rocky series, Creed is far better than it could have been. Part of the appeal is to shift the perspective from Rocky Balboa to a new protagonist: Michael B. Jordan is very good as the new lead, but Sylvester Stallone turns in an even better performance that taps into the vulnerability of old age, wringing a lot of drama out of seeing a once-invincible protagonist facing down his own mortality. But Creed also works because it’s got a bit more on its mind than simply presenting an underdog boxing story: in its own way, it tackles racial inequality, class issues and romantic entanglements where the two lovers have their own agendas (the woman isn’t simply there as a complement to the male protagonist). It also helps that Ryan Coogler knows how to shoot a movie: The best sequence of the film is a two-round boxing match unbelievably shot as a single take from within the ring, giving a fresh and viscerally compelling look at boxing sequences that are usually stale and familiar. Creed adds up to a worthy generational passing-of-the-torch, an above-average boxing film and a film that dares go a bit beyond the expected to deliver something deeper and better.

  • The Danish Girl (2015)

    The Danish Girl (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2016) 2015 was the year when transgender issues hit the mainstream like never before, but it’s not clear whether this helped or hindered The Danish Girl. Reportedly a very fictionalized account of the first clinically transgendered person, this is also a recognizable piece of Oscar-courting filmmaking, complete with credible historical recreations, flawed but heroic characters, progressive social issues and a self-important tone. It seeks legitimacy through art, blurs the messy inconvenient details of its inspiration and wraps up everything with a sad bow. It usually works: director Tom Hooper is, by now, a veteran at this sort of thing, and effortlessly moves through period sets, and Eddie Redmayne does turn in a showy but compelling performance as a man becoming a woman—although Alicia Viklander is just as interesting as the character who reacts to the transition. The historical atmosphere of the early-twentieth-century European art scene is well executed and the drama goes slightly beyond what we’d expect from the film’s slug-line. The Danish Girl is, in short, a bit more interesting than expected, helping it avoid feeling like it’s exploiting the issue-of-the-moment. It could have been better: At times, the cinematography feels overly staid, feeling like a series of isolated room dramas rather than presenting its world with the bustling energy suggested at the edges. It’s also a film condemned by facts to a rather conventional dramatic arc—comforting given the touchy subject matter, but no less predictable. For all the sympathies we can have for the character’s plight, it’s also locked into the filmmaking template proper to those kinds of movies.

  • Ant-Man (2015)

    Ant-Man (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, March 2016) It had to happen at some point: I think I’ve reached a certain jadedness level regarding the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. The time to wonder at how Marvel maintains such a level of quality has passed; we may have entered the age of diminishing returns. Or I’m being grouchy for no good reason: Ant-Man, after all, is competently made, decently paced, suitably integrated with the rest of the MCU … it’s hard to point at the film and say that something is wrong with it. Paul Rudd is a good choice for the titular role, bringing his usual affability on-screen and setting up an interesting addition to the ongoing MCU serial. The film’s microscopic action sequences feel new enough, and the film’s relatively small scale and restrained ambitions is a welcome change of pace from the usual save-the-world grandiosity of most other comic-book movies. However… Ant-Man does feel quite a bit more ordinary than it ought to have been. The scale-switching action leaves us hungry for more, the usually-enjoyable Corey Stoll seems wasted in a fairly typical villainous role, while Evangeline Lilly seems far more capable than what little she’s given to do here. (But then there’s the sequel to consider.) In short, there’s a sense that as competent as it is, Ant-Man is holding back from its true potential. Without getting into the what-ifs of the film’s troubled production history in which director Ed Wright (whose movies I love) was replaced by Peyton Reed (whose first two movies I love), it seems as if Reed wasn’t able or allowed to push Ant-Man as far as it could go. The result is fine, but the problem with MCU films is that they have to top themselves in order to keep the wow factor: Once you’ve hit The Avengers, Guardian of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier levels, it’s hard to go back to mere competence. Heck, when even Age of Ultron starts smelling like déjà vu, the MCU enters a new phase: how to keep things interesting without necessarily saving the world every time. Ant-Man is a sufficiently different beast to keep things interesting, but it also hints at how difficult it’s going to be to keep up interest at a time when half a dozen new comic-book movies are scheduled every year.

  • Great Expectations (1998)

    Great Expectations (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, March 2016) I went into Great Expectations with less-than-ideal preparation, knowing only that it was directed by Alfonso Cuaron and that it was a contemporary adaptation of a Dickens novel that I unaccountably hadn’t read. That may explain why the film feels so odd at times, especially during a third-act revelation that left me shrugging my shoulders more than anything else. (It doesn’t help that, well, you don’t have Robert de Niro pop up for a five-minute cameo at the beginning of the film without it paying off at some point!) Ethan Hawke is largely forgettable as the main character of the story, a boy-artist who has a brush with Floridian aristocracy before settling for an ordinary life. Everything changes when he’s mysteriously called to New York to pick up his brush once more, and meets a striking figure from his past. On the other hand, Gwyneth Paltrow is radiant as the object of his affections—she has aged well as an actress with occasional sex-symbol claims, but circa-1998 Paltrow was something special and Great Expectations plays it up nearly as well as Shakespeare in Love. Director Cuaron’s talent is obvious enough to be striking even today—his sense of atmosphere is terrific, especially during the film’s first half-hour. As for the rest, well, the Dickens story is adapted to the late twentieth century, but some of the more melodramatic moments of the original remain, to some puzzlement by viewers used to more contemporary plotting devices. The film does run a bit long at times, but it’s not a bad experience thanks to Cuaron’s frequent flourishes. I suspect that my appreciation for Great Expectations would have been more favourable had I been more familiar with the original novel, though.

  • Welcome to Me (2014)

    Welcome to Me (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2016) It quickly gets obvious that Welcome to Me isn’t meant to be a conventional laugh-fest. Specializing in the kind of cringe-inducing comedy that seems all-too-popular lately, Welcome to Me wants to be an absurdist character piece, studying what happens when a woman with deep and complex psychological issues suddenly becomes (thanks to a lottery win) able to do whatever she wants in an effort to find closure. That “something” ends up being producing her own TV show, which she uses to relive her past, interview acquaintances, realize some fantasies and exact revenge on those who have wronged her. Nonchalantly wielding a chequebook to pave over any objections, she purchases the services of a struggling production studio and goes wild in conceiving and hosting the show. In other hands, with other intentions, this could have been very, very funny. But that’s not what director Shira Piven and star Kirsten Wiig are about. As you may expect from Wiig (who seems to be adopting neurotic debilitation as a crucial element of her screen persona), the film induces one wince after another, smothering the comic value of its ideas into a heavy gauze of pitiable narcissism, enablers and aghast witnesses. The ending is more than a little frustrating, showing only incremental progress rather than the all-out catharsis that many would have preferred. Wiig actually isn’t bad in the lead role, which requires a lot more dramatic prowess than comic chops. But that’s in keeping with a film that is considerably sadder than it could have been had the intention been to go for a straight-up comedy. Maybe there’s another, very different film waiting to be made using this exact premise.