Movie Review

  • Wild Target (2010)

    Wild Target (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) I could go on and on about this being the epitome of the quirky/funny low-budget British crime comedy if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s a remake of French film Cible Émouvante.  Still, Wild Target is short, dark, witty, quite funny and British to the core.  Bill Nighy is up to his usual charming standards as a dapper, uptight hit-man contemplating getting away from it all, and he finds a great foil in the beautiful Emily Blunt as a flighty con artist needing protection who comes to change his regimented life.  For a film that got nearly no press in North America, this is a very enjoyable surprise: the script is smarter than average, the actors look as if they’re having fun and the film perfectly doses a small amount of violence in this dark but not overly downbeat comedy. The dry humor doesn’t pander too much, and the film manages to remain interesting even when it abandons London (after a hilariously clever “car chase” through the City) for a small country estate.  Wild Target‘s production qualities are fine for its low budget, Jonathan Lynn’s direction is generally unobtrusive and the result is worth a look.  This is the kind of film that plays a lot better on the small screen as an “eh, might as well watch this one” choice than a big-screen event. 

  • The Blind Side (2009)

    The Blind Side (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2012) Some movies just rub me the wrong way, not matter how skillfully they’re made and how upbeat they can be.  Seen from far away on paper, The Blind Side is pure movie-of-the-week stuff: A desperately poor and lonely teenager is rescued by the unbelievable kindness of strangers and goes on to earn some success in sports.  But then you pile up the extras, increasingly the misery of the protagonist, making sure the rescuing strangers are kinder than virtue itself, ensuring that the sport is all-American football and topping it off with “this is based on a true story”.  The film itself is well-made: Sandra Bullock plays her age well as a charming southern belle who decides to rescue the disadvantaged teenager; dialogues are occasionally very funny; technical credentials are just fine and the film ends on a note of unabashed optimism.  The Blind Side earned accolades all the way up to an Oscar nomination, made tons of money and it’s almost disgusting to criticize a real-life true story like this one.  And yet… it’s not that difficult to be troubled by the portrait of a rich white family rescuing a traumatized black child.  There’s an element of unctuous Caucasian paternalism there that overshadows the rest of the film’s virtues, and being the whitest guy I know doesn’t change the cringe-inducing way the film portrays the issue. (Compare and contrast with Precious.) I’m just as uneasy about the way The Blind Side seems to be courting mainstream audience approval with its repeated devotion to religion, football, family and other traditional values.  It certainly doesn’t help that the film seems adapted from a very small portion of Michael Lewis’ far more cerebral eponymous book, and that its structure seem built on a series of short dramatic loops, suddenly introduced and quickly resolved.  Every character seems nice, every passing difference can be overcome after a conversation or two and the film seems unwilling to tackle any serious issue along the way.  It works, but it seems so deliberately paternalistic that I can’t buy into it.

  • Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010)

    Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, March 2012) I’m not particularly receptive to the “but it’s for kids!” argument as to why we should be more lenient regarding bad films for children.  Great movies are great movies, and there are plenty of kids’ movies that are just as satisfying to adults.  Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore certainly isn’t one of them.  Built around the “Awww” reflex that humans have for pets, it’s an assortment of numerous special effects and awful jokes strung on a generic James Bond plot template.  It’s cute and the CGI look as if many people worked a long time to perfect them, but it’s also terrible and dull to watch.  There’s an occasional smirk or two in the numerous winks at the whole spy-movie genre, but otherwise it’s a film that quickly becomes background noise as watchers are compelled to make better use of their time.  I suppose that parents with young kids may find some use out of it at a diversion.  Otherwise, it’s useless to tell anyone to avoid Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore: they’ll come to that conclusion fast enough if they try to watch the film.

  • The Last Exorcism (2010)

    The Last Exorcism (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) I wasn’t expecting much from this low-budget found-footage horror film: I’m getting allergic to the found-footage shtick (which always ends up the same way), my responses to Christian mythology are muted, and for some reason I had the film tagged as “not well-reviewed” in my mental database.  Much to my surprise, though, the film actually works well until its last two or three minutes.  The documentary-style setup is more effective than most other horror films in setting up its “what if this could be true?” premise, and Patrick Fabian is almost immediately compelling as the conflicted lead protagonist, an exorcist who has come to doubt even the basis of his faith.  Naturally, he’s in for some trying events as he heads over to Louisiana to show a documentary crew the flim-flam behind exorcisms.  To its credit, The Last Exorcism ratchets its thrills gradually, and keeps a certain ambiguity as to its fantastic nature.  It effectively constrains its characters into fairly outlandish motivations, locking them into a situation where most of us would run and not look back.  Ashley Bell is also remarkably creepy as a possessed (?) 16-year-old girl. The film doesn’t do anything startlingly new with the found-footage format, although there’s one grisly cat sequence that’s relatively clever.  Where the film falls apart, however, is in the last two minutes, as it seems to shift in an entirely different gear and settle on a very disappointing conclusion that doesn’t feel very satisfying.  In a less-favorable state of mind, I may have been tempted to dismiss the film based on its lousy ending.  As it is, though, I’m still surprised enough by the rest of the film that I’m tempted to be lenient, and forgive two bad minutes out of 87.

  • Faces in the Crowd (2011)

    Faces in the Crowd (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) There’s nothing wrong with a high concept if it’s well-used, and at time Faces in the Crowd makes the most of its central gimmick: A woman who, after a brutal attack, can’t identify her attacker because of brain lesions causing prosopagnosia or, in layman’s term, an inability to recognize faces.  Writer/director Julien Magnat has a few good ideas on how to exploit the situation, and the film occasionally turns trippy as various actors are used to play the same characters in an effort to depict the protagonist’s state of mind.  The first hour of the film is particularly effective as it describes an unusual condition and the chills that can come from it.  Milla Jovovich also turns in an interesting performance in the lead role, as a vulnerable woman far from her usual butt-stomping heroines.  Unfortunately, Faces in the Crowd eventually runs out of steam –as much as it exploits its concept effectively, it also can’t avoid some obvious plot developments, and by the time it turns into another heroine-against-serial-killer showdown, some of the energy has run out of the film.  The ending can’t resist a few clichés along the way, including the one where the serial killer turns out to be one of the film’s existing characters.  Still, most of the movie isn’t too bad, there’s even some thematic depth to it, and anyone who has been to Winnipeg will have fun spotting some of the landmark used during the film’s production in an attempt to present itself as New York, most notably the Esplanade Riel bridge used during two crucial sequences.   Faces in the Crowd is considerably better than a lot of direct-to-video thrillers –at the very least, it’s interesting and has one or two new tricks down its sleeves.

  • Iron Invader aka Metal Shifters (2011)

    Iron Invader aka Metal Shifters (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, March 2012) I have watched too many cheap made-for-TV Science Fiction movies in the past few weeks, because I can’t even muster the faintest flicker of enthusiasm, affection, admiration or even sympathy for this film.  Faithfully following the ur-plot of the latest crop of cheap made-for-TV SF movies (ie; rising menace from a monster/disaster, mounting deaths, characters fighting off the monster), Iron Invader not only does not attempt to rise above mediocrity, but has trouble reaching that level.  A low budget can only excuse so much when the script is so poor.  It wouldn’t have cost anything extra to include compelling characters or interesting dialogue, but the film is stuck with cookie-cutter elements and brain-dead plot points (Alcohol being effective as an antiseptic?  Of course… except that it takes characters forever to realize it.  More effective than bleach?  That’s nonsense.)  Unfortunately, nothing in Iron Invader is interesting.  The alien menace is dull, the direction is pedestrian, the characters are forgettable and once it’s obvious that the film has neither a spark of interest nor any dose of self-awareness, it’s really hard to care.  I can usually find something nice to say about even the most wretched movies, but this one defeats me.

  • Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011)

    Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2012)  The original Hoodwinked! was charming in part because its B-grade low-budget computer animation reveled in its lack of over-production.  The sequel is very similar: The computer animation is a perceptible notch or two underneath the Pixar/Dreamworks standard –but that may better show how visually sophisticated Pixar/Dreamworks movies actually are.  Still, it looks fine, and the creature design isn’t too bad.  As for the story itself, well, what can I say –humor is subjective, which serves to explain why I chuckled myself silly over the pop-culture references, dumb puns, lame gags and overdone comic mugging.  I thought the original film was a lot of fun as well, so take this with a grain of salt: Hoodwinked Too! was savaged by critics, and while I can’t disagree with the substance of some of the harsher reviews (it’s truly not as charming as Hoodwinked!), I had a reasonable amount of fun watching the film given how it meets its own comedy goals.  Still, given its terrible box-office results, I don’t think we’ll ever see a third entry in the series… and that’s almost too bad.  There are many worse satires, worse comedies, worse films out there than this one.  How is it possible to hate something that makes you smile?  Oh, right… if it doesn’t.

  • The Resident (2011)

    The Resident (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2012) Straightforward genre exercise The Resident doesn’t have a lot of meat on its narrative bones (nor much credibility in its lead crazy-man antagonist), but it has the notable merit of being fairly well-executed, and featuring a few good actors in crucial roles.  Hilary Swank stars as a medical resident dealing with an obsessed suitor/landlord, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan almost looks like he’s having fun as the improbably psychotic villain. (Meanwhile, though, Christopher Lee is a bit wasted in a very small role.) Once the story is set up (rather effectively through a rewind-flashback) as another one of those acquaintances-from-hell psychological thriller, it practically writes itself all the way to the overlong extended-fight conclusion.  What saves The Resident from unqualified mediocrity, however, is the rather stylish direction and cinematography.  It’s not great art, but it’s quite a bit better than many examples of the low-budget sub-genre, and it brings at least one layer of interest to the film.  As for the rest, well, it’s the kind of exploitative women-in-danger film that’s been made and seen countless times.  It’ll do as a way to waste time and it may even feel a bit better than most through sheer visual polish… but there just isn’t much to it.

  • Behemoth (2011)

    Behemoth (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On cable TV, March 2012) A steady diet of made-for-TV Science-Fiction films rots the brain, so it’s best to watch them with distraction (say; while doing housework).  It’s not, frankly, as if they’re worth constant attention: The way they usually go, and Behemoth is a case in point, is formulaic to the point of redundancy if you’re seen two or three of them: Built around the classic disaster-movie plot template, it starts with mysterious and deadly events, progresses with the accumulation of clues, reaches a third-act plot twist when stuff actually starts going badly, and resolves whenever the threat is eliminated.  Dialogues, characters, acting and direction are strictly utilitarian, reinforcing the impression of a mass-produced feature.  The only saving grace are to be found in the occasional bit of nice cinematography or special effects: Here, we get some nice footage of mountain forests, and a really awesome shot of a creature coming out of a mountain that makes up for dozens of bad CGI shots.  There’s even a nicely-conceptualized scene in the “eye looking out of the mountain” one.  Still, such rewards are few and slight compared to the prospect of sitting through 90 uninterrupted minutes of such by-the-numbers cheap filmmaking.  Fewer disaster movies and more dirt-cheap high-concept experiments, please!  Cube and Primer were awesome SF movies on ultra-low budgets –why not invest in a few such experiments rather than the same old disaster-movie endlessly repeated?

  • Fatherland (1994)

    Fatherland (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) Trying to deliver alternate history on a TV-movie budget is a tough assignment, so it’s best to remain indulgent while tackling HBO’s adaptation of Robert Harris’ celebrated thriller.  A murder mystery set in an alternate 1964 in which the Nazis reign triumphant over Europe, Fatherland focuses on the investigation of an honest SS officer trying to figure out the common link between a number of murders.  The visual look of the film is intentionally dated, as if it was a sixties film rather than a mid-nineties TV production.  Given the budget, the viewer shouldn’t expect much in terms of alternate-universe eye-candy: many swastikas, two or three alt-Berlin matte paintings and a curiously disturbing scene in which Nazis have punch-card computers at their disposal.  Fatherland shares a number of problems with Harris’ novel: The entire story is built upon a revelation that the viewer already knows –a mark of some naiveté in the alternate-universe genre.   The construction of the story is also fairly standard, leaving to a number of imposed scenes in which the expected occurs in pretty much the accepted fashion.  But the film introduces a number of extra problems that make it worse and worse the closer it gets to a conclusion.  Not only does it dispense with the elegiac ending of the novel, but it tries to tries up all loose ends nicely with a fantastically improbable appeal to authority, and then with a twenty-years-later voiceover.  (It also features a divorced father trying to kidnap his kid away from his mother –but hey, that’s the moral leniency we’re supposed to give to protagonists.)  It amounts to a bit of a curiosity; a bog-standard thriller set in an unusual alternate-history framework, with some intriguing images along the way to a disappointing conclusion.  Rutger Hauer is fine as the lead detective, while Miranda Richardson is unexplainably annoying as the American journalist running around and getting in trouble by not showing a shred of cleverness.  But then again, that’s how the script goes: All ham-fisted exposition and transparent character emotions.  Fatherland is worth a look for the curiosity value, but it’s not exactly a good movie.

  • My Week with Marilyn (2011)

    My Week with Marilyn (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) There’s a place for everything in the universe of movie-making, including a movie-about-a-movie featuring a thespian, a star and a young man who learns better.  Based on the true story of a young British man who once became Marilyn Monroe’s assistant during the shooting of a movie, My Week with Marilyn is a look at a flawed icon, a comedy about 1960s British film-making and a coming-of-age drama in which people get their heart broken “a little”.  While much of the film’s noteworthiness is based on Michelle Williams’ convincing portrayal of Marilyn Monroe at the height of her stardom, the film is just as interesting as it presents the adventures of an aspiring filmmaker hired as a production assistant.  Movie-making isn’t necessarily romantic, and My Week with Marilyn is perhaps at its funniest when it shows figures such as Laurence Olivier dealing with the stresses of directing a fluffy comedy production.  The second half of the film evolves into a quasi-romance between Monroe and our boy protagonist, showing Monroe’s flaws and not neglecting the inexperience of the viewpoint character.  The film doesn’t have to fight hard to keep viewers’ attention, and the period detail is convincing even though it’s Monroe’s personality that brings the entire story together.  Not particularly deep, but intriguing enough: It’s easy to see why My Week with Marilyn earned some critical attention, and that it did so without sacrificing any of its ability to please audiences.

  • A Serious Man (2009)

    A Serious Man (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2012) I must be mellowing in my old age, because I can imagine a younger version me wanting to burn stuff after the whopper of a non-conclusion at the end of the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man.  It’s a necessary spoiler to state that, after an entire film showing a man’s life getting worse and worse, the film shies away from a third act and snaps to a black screen at the moment where the crises are at their worst.  While the Coens have a certain track record of doing this (and being rewarded by Oscar for the trick), careful watchers will note that the move isn’t entirely gratuitous: It’s a wrath-of-God reaction to the protagonist’s final C-grade moral decision, and the film does announce, earlier, the notion of a story without a satisfying conclusion.  Still, it’s a maddening move after a generally successful black comedy in which a multitude of sharply-drawn characters are introduced and sent careening off each other.  You would think that there would be a bigger payoff… but just accept that it isn’t so.  As for the rest, there’s a lot to like in the film’s not-missing part, from the atmosphere of a 1967 Minnesota Jewish suburbia, to many lesser-known actors doing good work to a certain cruel sense of humor in which everything steadily gets worse and worse… even in the protagonist’s dreams.  This certainly isn’t a major entry in the Coens filmography, but it does carry their usual brand of expectation-defiance and unconventional artistry.

  • The Tree of Life (2011)

    The Tree of Life (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, March 2012) I’m not a good audience for non-narrative films that boldly seek art-house cinema credentials, but even I have nice things to say about The Tree of Life.  Non-linear, certainly non-conventional, arguably nonsensical, it wraps up a chronicle of life in 1950s Texas in broader questions about our place in the universe.  It may challenge viewers who prefer every narrative arc nearly wrapped up in a bow, but it certainly rewards those who are willing to let the film wash over them without grasping at explanations.  (Just accept that this is a 1950s nostalgia film with modern skyscrapers, dinosaurs, a meteor impact, a depiction of Tipler’s Omega Point, and children running into a DDT spray.)  Brad Pitt portrays an unusual role as an overbearing father of three boys, holding up the “ways of nature” over his wife’s “ways of grace”, but the real star here is writer/director Terrence Malick’s elliptical film-making and the astonishing quality of the footage he’s been able to include in the film.  The mind may rebel at trying to piece together every shot of the film, but there’s something beautiful to see every five minutes, and the atmosphere created by the minutiae of life as experienced by the characters is all-encompassing.  It’s hard not to be moved by certain moments, or let the film’s hints at meaning lead us to flights of fancy.  This, in other words, is a film to savor for mood and meditation far more than narration and entertainment –you’ve been warned.

  • Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

    Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2012) Luc Besson’s return to large-scale live-action fantasy after more than a decade’s absence promises more than it delivers.  Oh, let’s be fair: The first fifteen minutes of Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec are completely enjoyable: The omniscient narration sets up a charming historical adventure with wit and humor, the fast-paced editing promises a zippy film and the heroine that is Adèle Blanc-Sec seems like a 1910s Lara Croft prototype, albeit funnier and more credible because of her occasional vulnerability.  After that, alas, the film gets wildly uneven: Despite the big budget, the historical recreation, the sympathetic protagonist and the odd elements of fantasy thrown in pictures downtown Paris, Adèle Blanc-Sec is constantly undermined by its own script.  The subplots don’t merge graciously (an artifact, I gather, of trying to adapt several of Blanc-Sec’s original comic books in one movie), the conclusion gets sillier and sillier, Besson can’t resist his politicians-and-policemen-are-idiots shtick, and every so often, it seems as if the colossal energy invested in the film is at the service of sub-par farce.  The film has serious tone problems that make it hard to take seriously as an adventure.  Some of the jokes work (I’m fond of the end Louvre/Pyramid gag), but more of them don’t.  Too bad, especially given Louise Bourgoin’s charming performance in the complex lead role: Blanc-Sec has to kick ass, tell jokes, makes mistakes, wear disguises, suffer indignation and have some compassion for a paralyzed sister, and Bourgoin seems quite a bit better in doing those things than she script she serves.  While the film still has enough of a visual and creative kick to earn a recommendation (especially for Besson fans), it doesn’t quite manage to be as good as it could have been.  Besson has announced his wish to make sequels… we’ll see if the market demands it.

  • Game Change (2012)

    Game Change (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2012) Political junkies will get their fix of gossipy fantasy in this made-for-HBO docu-fictive account of Sarah Palin’s role in the 2008 American Presidential race as seen from her Republican entourage.  Fans of the original Halperin/ Heilemann book will be surprised to find out that this adaptation barely mentions the Obama/Clinton contest and focuses solely on Palin’s selection and the backroom dealings of the Republican strategists trying to do what they can with an unsuitable candidate.  At its best, Game Change is a fascinating look behind the scenes of a major political campaign as a team of self-aware political professionals has to deal with a wholly unsuitable candidate.  It plays like a mainstream Hollywood comedy in which a half-wit is thrust in a position of importance… except that it really happened, and it happened recently in an American presidential election.  True enough, Palin occasionally comes across in the film as more admirable than her public personae would suggest: a dedicated mom, perhaps a figure to be pitied for having been asked to do more than she ever could.  Still, she really doesn’t come across well here: out of her depth, overwhelmed, petty and of limited capabilities.   The casting is exceptional: Julianne Moore excels in a nearly-perfect take on Palin, whereas Ed Harris has no problem establishing himself as a sympathetic McCain.  Meanwhile, Woody Harrelson turns in a clever performance as strategist Steve Schmidt, the nominal protagonist of the film.  The film is generally well-directed by comedy director Jay Roach and scripted competently, but it does have to work within the constraints of real-world events: The dramatic arc here is slight (especially compared to Obama’s journey) and even understanding that this is a heavily dramatized version of events as they occurred isn’t much of a comfort.  Game Change will appeal to those who remember the 2008 election well, but may not be all that compelling for others.  Which is fine, really: Even political buffs deserve their slick Hollywood entertainment.