Movie Review

  • The Fall (2006)

    The Fall (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2010) Writer/Director Tarsem Singh’s first full-length directorial effort was the somewhat simplistic The Cell: great visuals, underwhelming story.  Much of the same can also be said about The Fall, which presents fantastic images from the very first moments but doesn’t quite wrap up its story as efficiently as it could have.  Balancing on the screen performance of a very young actress, The Fall tries to go back and forth between a base reality set in a 1920ish Los Angeles hospital and a globe-spanning tall tale spun by one of the characters.  Allusions go back and forth between the two realms, and The Fall’s fantasy-world climax may be unique in that it depends on the mental state of a suicidal narrator for a happy ending.  What rankles a bit about the film is the way it will teeter back and forth between finely elliptical dialogue and a dull-as-dirt repetitive exchange between protagonist and child (eg; “Are you trying to save my soul?”).  The back-and-forth between the two levels of storytelling suggest far many more opportunities than are shown on-screen.  Fortunately, there’s a lot more to The Fall than story: the film really stretches to its fullest potential in presenting the fantastic vision of an imaginary quest taking place in a landscape coming from two dozen countries.  “Visually spectacular” doesn’t quite come close to describing the splendour of the film’s visuals, not when the Taj Mahal is one of the least impressive sets…

    (Second viewing, On DVD, February 2011) After looking at The Fall twice more while listening to the audio commentary, I must say that film has grown a lot on me along the way.  Many of the things that bothered me about the film’s script turn out to be the by-product of a long and complicated production history that dared balance a quasi-improvisational shooting style to accommodate a six-year-old actress for the “base reality” of the film, and an extended production schedule that spanned four years and two dozen countries for the “fantasy reality” of the rest.  Considering the film’s amazing production, the otherwise disappointing making-of documentary on the DVD is mesmerizing for what it shows to be real.  Elephants can swim, amazing buildings and landscapes truly exist and Charles Darwin can be re-imagined as a fantasy adventure protagonist.  Even though the film’s story may not fulfill its full potential, the visuals certainly do: If nothing else, it’s reason enough to have a look at the film and call The Fall one of the decade’s forgotten gems: It’s a heck of a personal vision.  The DVD audio commentaries will make you like the film even more, as director Tarsem Singh tells us about the film’s amazing production, the personal crisis that led to his ambitiously self-financed effort and the perils of working with a very young actress.

  • True Grit (2010)

    True Grit (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) The Coen Brothers never do anything in a straightforward fashion, and so it is that if their homage to the classic True Grit may be as dirty and unforgiving as we imagine the West to have been, it’s also surprisingly entertaining and even, yes, amusing.  The repartee between rivals Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon is one of the film’s finest points, and the film often acknowledges the absurdity of its own premise.  But for all of its tension-defusing laughs, the film isn’t a comedy: the drama plays without ironic distancing, the characters aren’t completely softened for Hollywood effect, and the finale doesn’t pull any stops in punishing characters for going so deep in the wild.  While Bridges is magnificent as the one-eyed marshal “Rooster” that becomes the film’s true hero, it’s Hailee Steinfeld who makes the strongest impression as the 14-year-old heroine of the film capable of mouthing the Coens’ typically dense dialogue.  This leads us to the film’s main weakness in theaters: The often thick accents duelling on-screen.  Home-video viewers will have the advantage of captions: movie theatre viewers will have to tough it out on their own.  At a time where filmed Westerns are most often anachronistic genre recreations, it’s a bit surprising to find True Grit to be such a true-pedigree Western, spiced but not overwhelmed by comedy.  It’s an old-fashioned film worth watching and savouring.

  • Black Swan (2010)

    Black Swan (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) The difference between genre horror and “psychological drama” is often that in the latter case, much of the monsters can be explained away by the narrator being completely crazy.  That’s certainly one plausible interpretation for Black Swan: In this high-class horror film, a ballerina driven mad by the pressures of performing the lead role in Swan Lake gradually lets themes of repression, doppelgangers and mirror images get the better of her.  It doesn’t end well… or does it?  This murky conclusion is only one of the ways in which Black Swan acts as a companion to director Darren Aronofsky’s previous The Wrestler: Same grainy flat cinematography, same fascination for the psychological impact of intense passion, same look at a performance-driven sub-culture.  Visually, Black Swan looks ugly (with exceptions whenever the performers are on-stage), but it constantly reinforces the visual themes of opposite doubles: the grainy super-16mm cinematography has enough depth to sustain a film-school paper.  It also strips all glossy moviemaking glamour away from Nathalie Portman’s mesmerizing lead performance, instantly credible as a ballerina with enough issues to sustain a film’s worth of delusions.  Mila Kunis also acquits herself honourably in her third significant role of 2010, whereas Vincent Cassel is as deliciously slimy as ever.  But the star here remains Portman, and if Black Swan works, it’s largely because of her dedication to her craft.  As for the ending, well, it grows with time: If, initially, it seems as if the film stops about thirty seconds and a coroner’s report too soon, it also fully commits itself to its unreliable narrator, and eventually lends itself to about three interpretations spanning the entire length of the genre horror / psychological drama spectrum.  Aronofsky may never direct a comedy, but his dramas are growing ever-more finely tuned to their subject, and viewers may as well endure the ride.

  • Megamind (2010)

    Megamind (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) Comic-book culture is so pervasive by now that films such as Megamind can just file the numbers off the subgenre’s most familiar archetypes and run with the concept.  The derivative nature of such premises is obvious –but given that derivation is Dreamworks Animation’s specialty, it’s perhaps better to be happy at the end result than to expect fresh premises and concepts from them.  Surprisingly enough, Megamind actually has one or two things to say about super-villainy and its need for super-heroism: Our protagonist isn’t evil as much as he’s misunderstood and bored: by the time he’s had a few weeks to rule over Metro City, his lack of challenges is such that he sets out to reinvent a superhero… with hilarious results.  The action set-pieces have a welcome kinship with Monsters Versus Aliens; unfortunately, the angular character designs owe more to the Madagascar films in that they are distinctive but not particularly appealing.  Fortunately, most of the film feels bright, bold, clean and contemporary: The action sequences have a fondness for large-scale destruction, and the film moves at a pleasantly rapid pace.  There are a few twists and turns: nothing shocking, but a pleasant reconfiguration of dramatic situations every twenty minutes or so.  In doing so, Megamind manages to be the best think-piece about superheroes since The Incredibles and The Dark Knight, and it’s partly that vivaciousness of ideas that makes it so much fun to watch.  In this context, the derivative nature of its premise isn’t as much a problem as it is scene-setting for second-order questions… and that’s not bad, especially for a film supposedly aimed at kids.

  • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

    The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) I’ve had a particular lack of affection for the Narnia series so far, and while this third entry is a bit better than the first two, it’s not enough to make me think any more fondly about the trilogy: it’s still a colossal waste of resources in the service of fantasy adaptations that have been hammered in a generic Hollywood fantasy-film plot template.  This time, it’s less Lord of the Rings and more Pirates of the Caribbean as the adventure shifts locales to a boat going from island to island.  Taking the two most annoying Pensieve children and adding a quasi-insupportable twerp of a cousin to the mix, Dawn Treader, like its predecessors, patiently waits for Aslan to show up so that the series’ usual deus ex leo and religious allegory quota can be neatly fulfilled.  What saves the film from a complete lack of interest are the more diverse nature of the adventures at sea and on land, culminating in a familiar battle between heroes and sea monster.  Numerous nods to the two previous volumes help wrap up the Pensieve trilogy of the Narnia series, leading one to hope that this may act as a natural stopping point for any effort to adapt more of C.S. Lewis’ novels to the big screen.  Dawn Treader already creaks under a complete re-structuring of the novel’s plot in order to fit a standard Hollywood plot formula.  There’s no need for more.

  • Tron aka Tron: Legacy (2010)

    Tron aka Tron: Legacy (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) Given the impact of the original Tron over the generation that went on to build the Internet, it’s a wonder that it took so long for a sequel to arrive.  It’s not much of a surprise, however, to find out that the follow-up is best appreciated as a visual-arts piece than a narrative film: special effects have advanced enormously since 1982’s original, and the impact of all-computerized imagery isn’t what it used to be.  On the other hand, Tron: Legacy puts most of its budget on-screen, and it’s the visuals of the action pieces that hold them together more than the narrative tension.  Never mind the tedious many-against-one videogame battles: just enjoy the swooping lines and cubic destruction.  The plot, merely serviceable, is just an excuse to keep together an exercise in nerd nostalgia.  While that occasionally works (there’s something retro-cyberpunkish in contemplating late-1980s technology creating fully-virtual worlds), it’s not quite enough to offset the tedium of the film’s neon-on-black visuals in which the character’s faces literally fade to dark.  Ironically, perhaps Tron: Legacy’s most achieved visual effects is the way Jeff Bridges manages to play two roles, including one with the face he had almost thirty years ago.  Also worth noticing: Daft Punk’s distinctive electro-synth soundtrack.  Otherwise, this sequel suffers from an overstuffed plot (only explained if you get the graphic novel and the video game), hazily-motivated character actions (let’s hope they understand why they’re doing things, because we don’t), dull dialogue and a merely-satisfactory effort in sketching out the virtual world and why we should care about its liberation.  Tron: Legacy certainly adds up to something interesting, but not in the conventional sense: it’s a film to be stared at rather than enjoyed, and while that’s good enough for a casual viewing, it may not be what’s required to ignite nerd audiences as much as the original did.

  • Burlesque (2010)

    Burlesque (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) Burlesque does quite a few things blandly or badly, but the real test of musical comedies is whether they deliver the expected music, laughs, dance choreographies and smiles whenever the final credits start to roll.  So it is that we can’t really fault the film for an intensely familiar structure, predictable plot developments, weaker tunes or a very PG interpretation of “burlesque”; not as long as it has enough song-and-dance.  There are plenty of good news: Christina Aguilera proves to be a credible actress, Cher looks amazingly good for her age (and you can see this as an invitation to cue all of the usual cosmetic surgery jokes), Stanley Tucci is as good as he usually is, the somewhat better-than-usual banter probably comes from Diablo Cody’s screenwriting and in terms of choreography, Burlesque has more or less what we can expect from a contemporary musical.  Unfortunately, there is little here to set the film apart from more notable musicals: The songs are instantly forgettable (the one exception, a maudlin solo number by Cher, stays in mind because it uses the flimsiest of pretexts to stop the entire film dead in its tracks), the plot offers few surprises, the choreography of each number blurs into an indistinct mush, and the choice to play much of the story earnestly rather than as ironic camp seems like a modestly wasted opportunity.  There’s no risk-taking here, and the film’s family-friendly take on neo-burlesque is a telling clue as to what kind of middle-American target the filmmakers were aiming for.  Fortunately, there are still enough fancy fishnet stockings on display to resort to sheer sex-appeal when the film’s other qualities prove defective.  No matter what, there is at least some redemption in the mud: Burlesque may be ordinary, but it’s not often boring.

  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) For years, I’ve been watching Harry Potter films and commenting that the films are essentially critic-proof.  Fans of J.K. Rowling’s series will see the films no matter what the reviewers say, and the films have been produced with such a consistent level of quality that one review says everything about most of the series.  This, however, doesn’t turn out to be true in this self-indulgent first half of a seventh instalment.  It’s probably the worst Potter yet, in part because it has been split in half with a final instalment still eight months in the future.  The problem isn’t as much the cliff-hanger as the lackadaisical nature of the film’s middle third, which cries out for aggressive editing as the lead trio goes gallivanting across England in search of… something or another. (I didn’t care.)  There are, to be sure, a few things worth noticing about this seventh-and-a-half instalment: The tone is as dark and adult as the series can become, the action never makes it to Hogwart’s, the totality of the budding Voldemort regime is nightmarish and the film dares to present a brief stylish animated segment.  Alas, much of the film is spent waiting for the next thing to happen, with brief squabbles to break up interminable moments in the wilderness as the lead trio figures out the clues handed to them.  There is, as you would expect from the first half of a broken-up film, not much of a climax: most of the action has been deferred to the second film… which everyone will see anyway.  So, in a sense, the film is critic-proof: final judgement on Deathly Hallows Part 1 will have to wait until we see Part 2.

  • The Tourist (2010)

    The Tourist (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) In retrospect, The Tourist doesn’t look like the kind of film that’s difficult to mess up: Take two hugely popular stars, a picturesque location, and a premise that allows for both a bit of comedy and some action.  Easy!  Yet much of The Tourist plays as an introduction for a movie that never ends up on-screen… and the conclusion seems deliberately engineered to vex anyone still looking for some coherence.  Part of the issue is that the film occasionally presents itself as a thriller when it’s not much more than a romantic comedy and its attempts to play up the thrills are misplaced through a depiction of incompetent police operations, tepid action sequences and half-hearted justifications for the cops and criminals acting as plot drivers.  As a romantic comedy, The Tourist can at least depend on the presence of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, even though only Jolie seems perfectly adapted to her role as an elegant woman with secrets: Depp, on the other hand, seems uncomfortable playing a supposedly normal man thrust in the middle of so many shenanigans.  His specialty as an actor is the oddball character, not the kind of bland romantic lead that The Tourist wants him to play.  What doesn’t help is the unremarkable dialogue: despite the star power of the two leads with Venice in the background, the entire film is barely worth a shrug.  Perhaps worse than the result is the almost-there quality of the film it should have been.  Fans of Depp and/or Jolie may find enough of their favourite to be happy with the results, but anyone wanting something more than celebrity tourism may want to look elsewhere first.

  • Faster (2010)

    Faster (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) Sophistication is overrated in most movies, as so it is that this exploitation revenge film homage is exactly what it purports to be: a straight-ahead action thriller in which a lot of people shoot at each other.  Dwayne Johnson headlines the film as an ex-convict whose first and last task out of prison is to kill those who betrayed him and murdered his brother: His perpetually-angry expression and shoulders hunched forward in unstoppable motion are exactly what the film needs in order to earn its title.  Faster seldom stops, and yet it manages to juggle a few fascinating characters along the way, including one of the oddest, most sympathetic elite assassin in recent memory.  It’s all no-CGI, muscle-cars, big guns, 70s music until the end.  The action isn’t especially well-directed, but the film itself races forward relentlessly, and it scores a few great sequences along the way: While Faster can’t aspire to depth, it does something interesting with its theme of revenge, a few seemingly disconnected radio sermons eventually leading to a satisfying climactic sequence that wraps up one of the film’s subplots.  Alas, it’s perhaps one of the only threads effectively wrapped up in a messy climax that doesn’t quite know how to deal with its tangled-up ball of intrigue: While Faster doesn’t leave us hanging, it doesn’t conclude as well as it could, and the result isn’t as satisfying as it could have been.  This is a shame, because otherwise Faster is a highly satisfying revenge film that doesn’t try to pass itself as anything higher or lower.  It’s a perfect antidote for the Oscar-baiting films currently tripping over each other in a bid for dramatic meaning.

  • Tangled (2010)

    Tangled (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) There’s nothing revolutionary in this latest offering from the “Disney Princesses” factory.  In fact, much of Tangled (marketed as “Disney’s fiftieth animated feature”) seems to be a conscious homage to the best-known films from the House of the Mouse, down to the use of fairy tales, musical numbers, animal sidekicks and evil stepmoms.  But there’s no need to reinvent everything when it’s possible to do the familiar really well, and so Tangled offers a pretty good times at the movie even without necessarily offering anything dramatically new.  The Rapunzel fairy tale isn’t given a reinterpretation as much as homage and the long-haired blonde heroine is easily one of Disney’s most appealing young heroines in a while.  The story is crisply told, the jokes are funny, the animation is top-notch, the action sequences are terrific, the animal sidekicks are used deftly (they have personalities, but they don’t talk) and the hair-related gags are inventive.  For such a fast-paced film, the irony is that one of the best sequences in Tangled comes when the narrative stops and the film indulges in a lovely “paper lanterns” sequence that does much to reaffirm computer animation as an art form.  The weaknesses of the film are easily overlooked: The musical numbers are bland, forgettable and have none of the snappiness of The Princess and the Frog.  But by embracing a fairy tale without ironic distance and forgoing pop-culture references, Disney may have delivered its first film in a long while with built-in longevity as a family classic.  Even Disney-sceptics may be willing to let go of their accumulated resentment and embrace Tangled.

  • 127 Hours (2010)

    127 Hours (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) I wasn’t really looking forward to the experience of watching 127 Hours.  Survival films strike an implicit deal with viewers in that they’re going to spend much of the film’s length feeling acutely uncomfortable, and this one doesn’t soften the experience of spending five days with a poor guy with a hand stuck between a rock and a crevice wall.  Since there’s only one slightly softer component in that mix, you can guess what’s coming… and steel yourself for it.  Director Danny Boyle’s films have been hit or miss as far as I’m concerned, but his impressionistic direction style here works well at presenting the protagonist’s experiences and keeping the film interesting even as it’s stuck in one location.  If 127 Hours does something very well, it’s to put us inside the protagonist’s every solitary experiences from the irresistible appeal of the outdoors to tasting the last of his water reserves: Indeed, when That Scene comes up, it’s easy to end up seeing stars alongside the hero.  James Franco is exceptional as a self-reliant man slowly discovering the limits of insularity: The film depends on him, and his performance is one of the few this year capable of rivalling Ryan Reynolds’ similar turn in Buried.  But 127 Hours is not a downer thriller, and so viewers emerge from the experience thoroughly uplifted.  Despite the fact that the film stays in one location for about two-third of its length and often resorts to oneiric flights of fancy, it still feels taut, tight and unsentimental.  It’s a minor achievement in filmmaking, and it will win over even the sceptics.

  • Police Squad! (1982)

    Police Squad! (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2010) Almost thirty years later, this short-lived TV series still holds up splendidly.  Best-known as the prototype for the Naked Gun! trilogy of police movie spoofs, Police Squad! is an amusing attempt to translate the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker brand of rapid-paced comedy to the TV screen.  The pacing is slower than the films but is considerably faster than most sitcoms and as a result still works pretty well even today, echoing the rhythm of latter series such as The Simpsons and Family Guy.  Leslie Nielsen is great as Frank Drebin, although his TV portrayal is a bit more competent that the film’s doofus character.  One of the ways the series can sustain its rapid-fire stream of comedy is by recycling gags, and it’s hard to tell whether they’re funnier the first or the sixth time: The end-of-episode fake-freeze moments still feel inspired today.  At six episodes, total running time for the series on DVD is slightly over two hours, making it an ideal length for an evening’s viewing.  The DVD contains a generous amount of supplementary material, including three episode commentaries and a gag reel.

  • Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008)

    Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2010) Few contemporary writers elicit a variety of reactions like Harlan Ellison.  With his substantial body of work, long personal history and contentious personality, Ellison can be admired and reviled, often by the same people at various times.  Famously cranky, extremely intelligent, extraordinarily outspoken and connected to a variety of subcultures from Science Fiction fandom to Hollywood professionals, Ellison is an ideal subject for a documentary and Dreams with Sharp Teeth, twenty-five years in the making, is meant to offer an overview of the man and his career.  A compilation of archival footage, interviews with Ellison, readings, testimonies from friends such as Josh Olson and Robin Williams and a minimal amount of on-screen captions for context, Dream With Sharp Teeth is not an objective view of its subject: director Erik Nelson is too much of a fan to seriously question the Ellison mythos (although he lets Neil Gaiman come closest to an objective assessment by leaving a reference to Ellison’s career as performance art) and the film is substantially stacked in Ellison’s favour.  People familiar with the Science-Fiction field will delight in spotting appearances by Dan Simmons, Connie Willis (!), Michael Cassutt and Ronald D. Moore.  (Those same SF fans may quibble with how Ellison’s troubled relation with fandom is illustrated by his presence at the 2006 Nebula weekend: The Nebulas are a professionals’ event; couldn’t Nelson go to the fannish 2006 L.A. Worldcon instead?)   But the star remains Ellison… in all of his overblown personality, important friends, nice house and tortured history with Hollywood and the SF&F field.  Is it an interesting documentary?  Sure.  Is it the best possible documentary about Ellison?  Heck no –but documentaries being works of passion, it would be unlikely to see one made by someone who wouldn’t already be a fan of Ellison.  There are so many fascinating things that could be discussed about Ellison dispassionately, but for that, we will probably have to wait for an unauthorized biography.  In the meantime, Ellison fans and SF readers will be happy with the film as-is.  The DVD comes with a set of generally superfluous readings, but also an overview of the film’s premiere (with unlikely guests such as Werner Herzog and Drew McWeeny) and a curiously interesting pizza chat between Ellison and Gaiman, in which Ellison isn’t being Ellison (much) and in which, if you know what to listen for, you can even hear a reaction to Ellison’s 2006 L.A. Con IV fiasco.  As SF fans with poisonously long memories (or even a look at Ellison’s Wikipedia page) will tell you, Dreams with Sharp Teeth only tells a chunk of the full Ellison story –which can’t be solely told by his friends.

  • The Next Three Days (2010)

    The Next Three Days (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) One of the keys behind a successful thriller is being absolutely, indisputably, unarguably behind the main character.  Moral ambiguity may be fine for dramas, but for straight-ahead thrillers, it’s better to be on-board from the get-go.  Alas, it’s one of The Next Three Days’ biggest flaws that it never completely allows the audience to get behind the protagonist as he reinvents himself as a criminal in order to save his wife from a life imprisonment murder sentence.  It says far too much about my own views of law-and-order to confess that I spent two-thirds of the film silently disapproving of the hero’s jailbreaking plans.  Even at the end, I was actively cheering for the police to bring them in, and for at least one of the so-called heroes to kill themselves.  Once you’re at that point in moral allegiances, it’s hard to come back.  Part of the problem is also that The Next Three Days leaves far too much time for the audience to ponder morality: At two hours, the film is too long for its own good, and part of the problem is director Paul Haggis’ lack of commitment to thrills: The screenplay can’t decide whether it’s marking time as a ruminative drama or if it’s moving forward as a suspense film, and no amount of clever planning can overcome the lassitude of a film that doesn’t quite know how to get going.  Russell Crowe is fine as a schoolteacher who reinvents himself as a mastermind criminal, but Elizabeth Banks isn’t particularly sympathetic as the object of the film’s affection.  The result is, even if you can go along with the protagonist’s descent into criminality, a bit of a waste of talent for everyone involved: A pile of contrivances amount to little more than a fairly dull way to spend much of two hours.