Movie Review

  • Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

    Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2010) As someone who’s on record as writing that the original Wall Street was “the definitive film of the eighties”, it goes without saying that I had been dreading the idea of a sequel: why mess with quasi-perfection?  As seductive as the idea was to revisit those characters in the context of another financial meltdown, there’s no need to say that the idea of a sequel was entirely useless.  After seeing the film, I still feel the same way: While director Oliver Stone’s film (he didn’t write it, curiously enough) is a lucid treatment of the 2008 financial crisis and has some interesting things to say about the shared hallucination that are today’s financial markets, it merely plays on the existing Wall Street brand and quickly becomes bogged down in a superfluous romantic drama featuring perhaps the blandest young couple in contemporary cinema.  (Shia LaBeouf’s continued acclaim remains a mystery to me given his lack of on-screen personality, but he’s a charismatic powerhouse compared to Carey Mulligan.)  With serial numbers filed off, Wall Street 2 is a lucid high-stakes drama skillfully dramatizing a difficult subject… but as a sequel, it lacks some oomph and magic.  Still, occasionally, it shines a bit brighter than usual.  One fascinating facet of the film’s direction is the blatant use of infographics to illustrate what the characters are saying, reflecting the way our world has become far more abstract since 1987, to a point that we even think in information being presented as computer graphics.  While Gekko’s character has been considerably softened (a good creative choice, given the character’s age and his prison experience), Michael Douglas’ august performance still makes him one of the film’s chief attraction –to say nothing of a delightful cameo from another character in the Wall Street universe.  What may be missing from the film, however, is the kind of dripping popular outrage that keen observers of the recent meltdown have felt at the way corruption, sociopathy, greed and sheer criminal behaviour are endemic in the financial sector.  Wall Street 2 never gets angry the way the original did, and seems content to play with money as long as the right people get some.  But wouldn’t that, in itself, be the most damning indictment of our times as seen from 1987?

  • Easy A (2010)

    Easy A (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2010) I have a big soft spot for clever bubbly teen comedies, and those aren’t as frequent as you may think.  Never mind how long it’s been since Clueless, Bring it On or Mean Girls: Easy A is now here to make us believe again in the power of a good script, decent direction and capable actors having fun in redeeming a high-school setting.  Paying explicit homage both to classic works of literature and to John Hugues’ work, Easy A’s starts out with a witty and literate script, but it’s the actors that really bring it to life: Emma Stone is immediately compelling as the picture’s lead character, a sassy/cynical/smart teenage girl who takes on lying about carnal trysts as a path to social success.  Around her, Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci shine as an endearing mature couple who can’t stop trading sarcastic barbs: the rapid-fire delivery of their lines is one of the film’s sustained pleasures, and it show how confident Easy A can be in unloading its polysyllabic dialogue.  There’s a lot of really funny material in here that doesn’t call attention to itself, and that will reward viewers with enough attention to keep up.  Director Will Gluck showcases the script with zippy direction, but his technique wisely keeps the focus on the actors.  While the film has a bit of a third-act problem in trying to bring everything together (the real-life answer would be “nobody will care as soon as you graduate”), the rich writing more than makes up for whatever longer moments can be found on the way to its conclusion.  This is one teen film that everyone has a decent chance to enjoy.

  • The Town (2010)

    The Town (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, September 2010) Who would have thought that barely seven years after the nadir of Gigli, Ben Affleck would re-emerge as a significant director of Boston-based crime dramas?  Strange but true: After wowing reviewers with Gone Baby Gone, Affleck is back with another Boston thriller in The Town, this time taking a look at a gang of professional bank robbers as one of them begins a relationship with an ex-hostage of theirs.  Deceptions accumulate alongside complications as the gang keeps planning heists, the FBI is tracking them closely and the lead character wants out of his own life.  It’s the complex mixture of crime, action, romance and drama that makes The Town work, along with a clean direction, a good sense of place and a few capable actors.  Jeremy Renner is once again remarkable as a hot-headed criminal, whereas Jon Hamm gets more than his fair share of good lines as a dogged FBI agent.  The script feels refreshingly adult, full of difficult entanglements, capable performances and textured moral problems.  The adaptation from Chuck Hogan’s novel is decent, although most readers will be amused to note that a movie theatre heist has been replaced by something else entirely.  More significant, however, is the flattening of the FBI agent character and the far more optimistic conclusion of the film –in the end, the movie feels more superficial in general but also more satisfying in its closure.  The Town isn’t flashy, though, and this may be what separates it from a longer-lasting legacy.  No matter, though: it’s a good a satisfying film, and one that confirms what Affleck is now capable of accomplishing.

  • The American (2010)

    The American (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, September 2010) Art-house character drama and audience-baiting hit-man thriller collide unhappily in this glacially-paced adaptation of Martin Booth’s novel A Very Private Gentleman.  (The re-titling of the adaptation as The American is hilarious in itself, as the book’s narrator pays painstaking attention to not revealing his precise nationality.)  While the book is a study of a character who happens to be a recluse gunsmith for assassins, with little in terms of action or thrills, the film rearranges, changes or adds elements in order to pump up the suspense (even flipping the book’s character to suggest that he is primarily an assassin with a sideline in gunsmithing), a manoeuvre that doesn’t manage to overcome the loose plotting, lengthy silences and static shots of Anton Corbijn’s direction.  The American feels like a very European film thanks to its contemplative mood and frequent female nudity, but it’s lessened by attempts to momentarily turn it into a genre picture when it’s most comfortable at a slower pace.  George Clooney is good and slightly atypical as the lead character, but it’s Violante Placido who’s the film’s revelation in a somewhat friendlier role.  The American is far better as a placid character piece than a limp action thriller: Either adjust expectations accordingly, or skip the film entirely.

  • Takers (2010)

    Takers (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, September 2010) Keeping expectations low is one way to best appreciate Takers given how this surprising California-noir crime thriller recycles a bunch of familiar elements into a watchable whole.  The story, about a crew of Los Angeles professional bank robbers pulling off one last heist even as the FBI is closing on them and dissention strikes within their ranks, is so generic as to approach cliché: You can pick bits and pieces of Heat, Cradle 2 The Grave and even The Italian Job out of the finished result and it’s not as if the dialogue is anything special.  Worse yet is the direction, which feels forced to use an incoherent shaky-cam style every time something interesting is happening, undercutting our ability to make sense of what’s going on.  But despite the problems, it works: Takers features a fine multiracial cast (with special mention of Idris Elba, Michael Ealy and Paul Walker), a snappy rhythm, a few surprising stunts and a compelling sense of place for Los Angeles.  What may sour the impression left by the film is a curiously off-balanced moral center, with fairly unpleasant cops taking on glamorous criminals with crime-financed luxurious lifestyles: The ending provides plenty of bloodshed and little reassurance as to who, if anyone, actually fulfilled their objectives.  Still, if Takers may not be original… it’s entertaining enough.

  • Machete (2010)

    Machete (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2010) When a trailer for then-fake film Machete appeared attached to Grindhouse three years ago, the joke worked pretty well.  But would it survive being turned into a feature-length film?  As it turns out, Machete the film is what Machete the fake-film trailer had promised: A fully entertaining mixture of exploitation filmmaking, populist indignation and self-aware cinematic winks.  Bolstered by one of the most amazing cast in recent memory, Machete finally gives a much-deserved featured role to the mesmerising Danny Trejo, with fun parts for such notables as Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal, Lindsey Lohan, Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez.  Everyone looks like they’re having fun, which is in keeping with the film’s mexploitation theme: if you’re going to make a movie that plays to the audience’s bases desires for nudity, action and revenge, why not do it well?  Writer/Director/Editor Robert Rodriguez certainly knows what he’s doing: the editing lingers on the nudity, stays long enough on the action and flashes past the goriest violence so that we can enjoy the film’s dark humour without being repulsed by its excesses.  (Rodriguez may not have been the film’s sole director, but it’s unmistakably his film.)  It’s a terrific piece of grindhouse cinema, but it comes with quite a bit of populist decency.  The Latino diaspora is colourfully represented by food, more food, Catholic symbolism and a distinctive aesthetics: Add to that a striking case for respecting immigrant rights, and Machete becomes a film that speaks loudly about basic human rights while still delivering a hefty dose of disreputable entertainment.  In short, it’s a film that works on a number of levels, not the least of which is a considerable amount of sheer movie-going pleasure.  Knowing Rodriguez’s considerable personal charm and fondness for explaining the movie-making process, I can’t wait until it comes out on video.

  • Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

    Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In-flight, September 2010) The facts, as presented by Exit Through the Gift Shop, seem to be these: Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman living in Los Angeles starts following graffiti artists with a video-camera as the “street art” scene gets going, gathering the trust of such notables as Banksy and Shepard Fairey.  Challenged by Banksy to make art, our hero-videographer reinvents himself as “Mister Brainwash” (MBW) and designs his emergence on Los Angeles’ art scene through a staggeringly deliberate show in which most of the actual art is sub-contracted to a team of artists working to his specifications.  The impression left by the film is one of tables being turned; the videographer making a film about Banksy turning up as the subject of a Banksy documentary.  It’s a terrific story, but is it true?  There are enough niggling details to make a sceptic out of even the most forgiving viewer: This is, after all, “a Banksy film”, and the horror-show of a sufficiently driven non-artist manufacturing themselves as a major talent in today’s contemporary art scene has a very Banksyan quality of subverting bourgeois artistic assumptions.  The film asks us to believe in a uniquely driven amateur videographer assembling footage in bulk, but who is truly making the documentary?  The result, on screen, at least has an irresistible quality, both as a privileged look at the street art scene, as a cautionary tale about the insanity of commercializing art, or even (if rumours of a hoax–or at least engineered performance art–are confirmed) as an ambitious piece of faux-cinema.  Guerra alone is a character in maybe two senses of the term, and his antics alone are a reason why Exit Through the Gift Shop deserves a look.  It’s certainly eloquent: I pretty much hate graffiti, yet still ended up purchasing Banksy’s first art book after seeing the film.

  • Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010)

    Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2010) Chances are good that you will never see Tomorrow, When the War Began in North-American theaters: Despite its generous production values and good action sequences, this is an Australian production based on a series of young-adult books largely published for Australian audiences.  (I was lucky enough to be in Australia when it was released, with a strong marketing push that included public transit buses plastered with the film’s promotional art.)  A quick summary of the film would probably be something like “Red Dawn for Australian teenagers”, as a group of plucky teen protagonists comes back from a quick bush holiday to discover that their country has been taken over by a foreign invader.  Stuck behind, they strike back… with the expected action sequences and fast-paced growing-up that active resistance involves.  As such, it’s really not bad: Some of the writing feels forced and everyone keeps making stupid decisions to advance the plot, but the entire film is entertaining, and many sequences pack some punch.  The characters are sympathetic, and the development of the links between the six protagonists is fascinating to watch.  A few details feel different from the Hollywood standard: The emerging leader of the group is female, she gets involved in a romance with a male of Asian origins, and the ending isn’t a triumph as much as it’s a victory with potentially dramatic consequences.  As a piece of slick blockbuster entertainment, Tomorrow, When the War Began is ripe for worldwide success… pending distribution deal and favourable word-of-mouth.  As for the rest of the series, there are five more books in James Marsden’s “Tomorrow” cycle and three more in the “Ellie Chronicles”: even if the rest of the series isn’t adapted, the story as written will always be there.  Will the film ever make it to North America, even as a straight-to-DVD film?  I’d bet on it.  There’s certainly many worse home-grown movies out there.

  • Vampires Suck (2010)

    Vampires Suck (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 2010) Given that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have one of the most pitiful filmographies in cinema history, any savvy filmgoer willingly choosing to go see their fifth film has only themselves to blame if it ends up a terrible experience.  (Even if one’s excuse is, ahem, “I’m on a different continent, I want to see a movie and I’ve seen all of the others at the neighborhood theater.”)  Their concept of “spoof comedies” is closer to “dumb retelling”, and even if Vampires Suck takes on the much-deserving Twilight series as a target, it’s not necessarily any more interesting than its Epic Movie or Disaster Movie predecessors.  They simply re-create a few key sequences, add in more profanity, violence and pop-culture references and expect that the simple shock of recognition is enough to make audiences laugh.  There is little commentary on the source material: both times that Vampires Suck attempt to say something insightful about Twilight, it’s instantly followed by self-congratulatory “I’m so smart!” punch-lines that makes it feel dumber.  Otherwise, the film jerks from one familiar reference to another, occasionally scoring a smirk in the same way a thousand shots from a thousand shotguns will eventually hit something worthwhile.  (That the source material is so poor and so ripe for satire isn’t much of an advantage: I have seen several Livejournal posts from fans getting better laughs out of the series’ problems.)  What’s most striking, I suppose, is the poor quality of the humour and the imagination surrounding the parody: The actors do OK (Jenn Proske is particularly on-target spoofing Kristen Stewart-as-Bella) and the technical qualities of the film are good enough given its budget, but both the writing and direction aren’t anywhere near feature-film quality.  The good news, writing this review after weeks of therapy, is that Vampires Suck didn’t make all that much money: Reviewers can bark and growl impotently, but studio executives looking at financial statements can be far more effective in ensuring that we never see anything from Friedberg/Seltzer again.

  • Piranha 3D (2010)

    Piranha 3D (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 2010) I can appreciate a good monster film despite not being much of a gore-hound, but Piranha 3D caters far too much to that latter crowd to feel like an entertaining experience for all.  Oh, it starts out promisingly enough: The first half-hour sets up a light-hearted monster movie in purely classic fashion: A few plucky heroes, a town threatened by monstrous creatures, the promise of plentiful T&A and a tone that lets you know that this is all going to be awesome.  The pacing may be a touch too slow, but the direction is sure-footed and the genre’s plot structure is faithfully followed.  Where Piranha 3D is a bit more explicit than usual is in its exploitation factor: Viewers are treated to an artful underwater Sapphic interlude (in three dimensions, no less) and promising portents of doom at the intersection between Spring Break bacchanalia and flesh-eating monster fish.  Self-aware and unrepentant, it initially feels like a good old-fashioned monster feature, good for a few shocks and plenty of blood.  Ironically, it’s what Piranha 3D does too well that kills it: When the Big Scene comes around to show the piranhas attacking the spring break students, the result is so bloody, so gory and so mean-spirited that the cumulative impact of the ten-minutes sequence is more stomach-churning than horrific, let alone entertaining: It put me in the frame of mind of seeing a documentary about a massacre rather than an unpretentious monster film, and enjoying the film after that moment became an exercise in futility: the fun of Piranha 3D had been leeched out as soon as people started being gutted, scalped or gnawed to the bone.  (And that’s not even saying anything of the pacing let-down of the film’s last act.)  But, to repeat myself, I’ve never been a gore-hound –and I’m aging out of that market segment no matter what.  Despite recognizing a good chunk of the film’s up-to-the-moment soundtrack (it even features Hadouken!), I’m getting far too old for gore-fests such as Piranha 3D –and if this is the kind of nihilistic meat-grinder “entertainment” that I’m going to be “missing” from now on, I’m looking forward to old age.

  • Mic Macs à tire-larigot [Micmacs] (2009)

    Mic Macs à tire-larigot [Micmacs] (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In-flight, August 2010) One of the advantages of watching a film by a visual stylist is that there’s always something to enjoy even if the story itself isn’t that interesting.  So it is that Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs is at the same time a typical Jeunet production (quirky characters, ever-shifting visual presentation, elaborate Rube-Goldenesque details, intricate cinematographic polish, etc.) and yet far short of career-best Amélie.  There just isn’t enough universally-compelling material in here to keep things interesting, especially when it feels so one-sided in favour of its protagonists.  The anti-arms-trade message is heartfelt, but becomes too-obvious at its worst.  Still, it’s entertaining to watch, in no small part due to the escalating set-pieces in which events are set in motion with grandiose consequences.  It flies past smoothly and its visual audacity is terrific.  There are a few laughs, but much of the film is just a joy to watch.  A word of warning for francophones watching the film’s original sound-track, though: Micmacs is so deeply set in Parisian argot that non-Parisians may find it more useful to turn on the English sub-title track to understand some of the dialogue.

  • The Trotsky (2009)

    The Trotsky (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In-flight, August 2010) I want a lot of people to see The Trotsky. It’s pleasant enough to discover a quirky comedy with wit and brainy allusions; but it’s even better when you realize that it has been filmed less than 200km away.  So it is that the cheerfully Montréal-based The Trotsky is a comedy starring a young intellectual convinced that he’s the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, fated to recreate his namesake’s biography.  Hailing from the privileged ranks of Montréal Anglophones, our hero tries to organize workers at his father’s factory and ends up at a public school where he eventually leads a student revolution.  The film is too long for its own good and takes a while to truly spark up, but when it’s good –it’s great.  Jay Baruchel turns in one of his best performances yet as the Trotsky-obsessed hero, but he’s surrounded by capable actors (among them Liane Balaban, Geneviève Bujold, Colm Feore and Saul Rubinek) who each get a shining moment or two.  The film is deep in historical allusions, but the script by Jacob Tierney (who also directs) is kind enough to let in most viewers on the jokes.  The rest of The Trotsky doesn’t hesitate to tackle subversive issues of popular rights and authoritarian exploitation, making it a crowd favourite for anyone looking for high-school comedies with more ambitious goals than usual.  The added bonus as far as I’m concerned is that the film is pure Montréal (down to familiar police cruisers) and highlights why it’s such a great city: The freedom to discuss social issues, the endearing mixture of French and English, the European influences in a North-American urban setting… it’s all there, and it couldn’t have been highlighted in a better showcase.

    (Second viewing, on DVD, April 2011) I like the film even more after a second viewing: It’s fresh, funny, clever and endearing at once. The director and editor’s commentary track shows that the filmmakers fully intended the film’s political content (director Tierney has an… interesting background), and their anecdotes about how the film was shot are interesting. The making-of featurette is a bit thin, but the various deleted scenes each get a chuckle or two.

  • Garage Days (2002)

    Garage Days (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2010) Writer/Director Alex Proyas’s filmography is filled with spectacular SF/fantasy hits, but in the middle of The Crow, Dark City, I, Robot and Knowing, his musical comedy Garage Days always gets short thrift.  That’s a shame given how it features a fun script, good performances, a cool look at Sydney, some great music and Proyas’ typical gift for fast-paced visual storytelling.  Centered on a group of friends involved in a small struggling rock band, Garage Days soon spins out to include romantic complications, quirky supporting characters and the even-popular quest for the “Big Break” so beloved by other similar films.  Things don’t all end up as expected, however, and it’s one of the film’s minor triumphs that it still ends on a great note despite honouring its tagline of “What if you finally got your big break and you just plain sucked?”  Garage Days is a charming film despite its faults (many of them the kind of things you’d expect from a generally low-budget film made outside Hollywood), and it’s a good way to spend an evening.  The occasional flashes of high-concept style are welcome, Kick Gurry is particularly enjoyable as the protagonist and so is the somewhat run-down contemporary look at Sydney’s music scene.  The music is fine, as you’d expect from a comedy about a rock band: the film even features a high-energy concert sequence to the tune of 28 Days Later and Apollo’s 440 “Say What”.  For Proyas, it’s a very different film from his usual dark downbeat visions, and it’s a welcome interlude.  The story, characters and presentation may feel familiar (expect visual parallels with British movie-makers such as Danny Boyle and Guy Richie), but Garage Days is handled with a decent amount of verve, and it may even have something to say about how we don’t need to be rock stars to be happy.

  • Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

    Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2010) For a moment, I nearly hated this film.  Keep in mind that it’s a pure product of the French new Wave, which set out to challenge viewers’ expectations about the nature of films.  Here, writer/director Jean-Luc Godard takes the usual SF/thriller formula (ie; a secret agent sent to a foreign city to rescue/kill a scientist) and subverts every single facet of it.  Shot in black-and-white, the film makes references to SF plot points but blandly takes place in undisguised Paris, featuring sixties technology and clothing.  The pacing is glacial, the dialogues don’t quite make sense, the fight sequences are handled in a curiously lackadaisical fashion: clearly, it dares viewers to question themselves about what they’re expecting of a film –a process that remains as effective today than in 1965.  It quickly becomes obvious that Alphaville is as much a satire of lazy SF movies than an attempt to say something in a new way.  It’s not always enjoyable: I may have thrown my hands up in exasperation twenty minutes into the film, but the wonder of such experiments is that there’s always a reason to keep watching… just to see what else is in store.  Amazingly, Alphaville eventually clicks, not just as a screw-you to complacent audiences, but also as a modest piece of thematically deep SF filmmaking: Random flashes of equations, inverted nodding gestures ( “No” meaning “Yes” and vice-versa), disconnected bits of dialogue and heavy-handed dystopian clichés all pile up and fuse into a statement about humanity in the face of technological authoritarianism that works in part because it’s not presented like a genre film.  Other small pleasures abound, from some unusual camera work to Eddie Constantine’s wonderfully deadpan performance as the sort-of hero of the film, to a few eerie sequences that show how good SF doesn’t need special effects.  But Alphaville’s foremost quality is the very thing that makes it so unapproachable at times: The sense that a gifted filmmaker took a look at a genre and set out to mock it, while still using its techniques to examine his own artistic preoccupations.

  • Kaena: La prophétie [Kaena: The Prophecy] (2003)

    Kaena: La prophétie [Kaena: The Prophecy] (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2010) It’s amazing to see which films go past unnoticed, ready to be discovered by curious cinephiles years later.  So it is that even hard-core SF fans may have never seen this lush computer-animated fantasy/SF feature film.  Don’t raise your expectations prematurely: Kaena remains B-grade CGI movie-making, with sometimes-unconvincing animation, confusing visual compositions, a muddled plot and plenty of other annoyances.  But the result remains so visually intriguing that it’s hard to dislike.  The back-story involves a gigantic tree between two planets, a superstitious human colony, remnants of an alien ship and liquid antagonists, but the plot comes from the good-old SF template of a curious young female teenager going off on a quest to discover the true nature of her world.  It works even when it’s too confused to make us care: The plot gives up and falls into the tired “incomprehensible light-show contest between gods” cliché by the end, but there are better moments along the way.  The visuals are particularly intriguing, although many will raise their eyebrows at the body-revealing outfits of the surprisingly curvy teen heroine.  (French standards being what they are, we even get a surreal nude scene at the climax)  For a film often marketed at kids and young adults, Kaena features a surprising amount of visual poetry, exposed thighs and anti-religious content.  While the final result may not escape that of a curiosity, at least it’s a refreshing kind of oddball film.  The R1-Quebec DVD contains an interesting making-of featurette that explains how the film was put together using consumer-grade technology, and an entertaining “virtual interview” with the heroine that even pokes fun at the sexiness of her outfits.