Movie Review

  • The Informant! (2009)

    The Informant! (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, September 2009) If the essence of comedy is to do something new and poke fun at sacred cows, then Steven Soderbergh’s irreverent The Informant! is well on its way to hilarity.  Whistleblowers, obviously, are supposed to be tragic and noble figures.  Not, as portrayed by a surprisingly unglamorous Matt Damon, as borderline-moronic eggheads with little sense and vapid inner monologues.  The film’s initial structure is familiar, as a scientist with ethical concerns comes to work for the FBI in exposing a price-fixing conspiracy involving his corporation.  (It’s all based on real events.)  Idiotic protagonist aside, it begins as a reasonably amusing feature that seems to derive most of its comedy from decidedly mundane surroundings: Blatantly taking place in the American Midwest, The Informant! seems mostly concerned with trivia and discomfort.  But that too becomes another deception as the final act of the film gets rolling and it turns out that our protagonist has ethical problems that go far beyond being clueless.  As the snowball of his lies goes downhill, we come to realize the wisdom of the agents obsessed with figuring out his rationale for turning informant.  And, in the process, we end up with a parody of stories in which the whistleblower turns out to be clean as driven snow.  Reality, suggest Soderbergh’s film, is always more complicated.  And frequently more absurd than we can imagine.  While I can’t imagine many people thinking “Yeah, I want to watch this movie again!”, The Informant! a cheeky piece of comic subversion, especially coming from the same director as Erin Brokovich.

  • Whiteout (2009)

    Whiteout (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, September 2009) Thrillers are often as much about setting than about plot, and so the best thing about Whiteout is how it really tries to take advantage of its Antarctic environment.  It’s -50c outside on a white plain of ice, and the film occasionally does its best to give us all the claustrophobic, glacial, howling implications of that fact.  (The rest of the time; not so much, as any Canadian will tell you: no dripping shoes, no chapped lips, no frost-burn on the cheeks)  Unfortunately, there isn’t much more than that in store in this long-delayed B-grade thriller: The murder mystery is a bit of a bust, and the plot holes appear faster than the twists and turns.  Culprits are obvious early on (otherwise, why spend so much time featuring bit players?) and the way to the ending is littered with curious narrative choices: Why drag on the film for another 5-10 minutes after the action climax?  Why rely so heavily on coincidences, egregious oversights, dumb mistakes (such as, oh, not shooting someone coming at you with an axe?) and a generally linear plot?  Everything even remotely interesting is usually told twice (including flashbacks) and the intriguing fog of the first few minutes is so thoroughly dispersed that it has us wishing for more mystery.  (Can you believe four people wrote this?)  Even the execution feels off: it all leads up to a snowy fight in which it’s tough enough to know who’s who –let alone what’s happening.  Pretty Kate Beckinsale may have sold many/most of Whiteout’s tickets, but she’s miscast and overly made-up: an older, more world-weary heroine would have been far more believable. On the other hand, she’s not making any better impression than the film’s other actors.  As for director Dominic Sena, he’s done both better and more ludicrous in his career (Swordfish, anyone?) and either qualities would have been welcome here: he should consider going back to action movies.  As it is, Whiteout is just frozen in place, offering only a few meagre reasons to see it: people used to shoveling snow off their driveways every winter will have more thrills doing so.

  • Batman Forever (1995)

    Batman Forever (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, on DVD, September 2009) In retrospect, the post-1989 Batman movies neatly fall into a trio of pairs, with Batman Forever being the first of the Joel Schumacher duo that would reach such a nadir with Batman & Robin.  While Batman Forever is noticeably worse than Burton’s Batman Returns, it still carries itself with flashy colourful blockbuster grandeur, with ridiculous set-pieces that nonetheless show a certain breadth of conception.  As a result, it hasn’t aged all that badly… but don’t expect much: there are still plenty of ridiculous moments in the mix, and Jim Carrey as the Riddler now feels like Ace Ventura in costume: his tics are so recognizably his that they don’t mesh all that well in the bigger tapestry of the movie.  The rest often feels overlong and underthought, with a campy atmosphere that never completely meshes with the rest of the film.  The special edition DVD is both interesting and disappointing in that it does present a number of interesting deleted scenes that deepen the film (and those themes would later pop up in the Nolan-era Batman movies) but almost never acknowledges its troubled production history.  Even Schumacher’s commentary presents a rosy view of Batman Forever’s production: it’s not an uninteresting commentary, but it seems to skirt around essential material.  The rest of the features aren’t much above promotional fluff.

  • Gamer (2009)

    Gamer (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, September 2009) It goes without saying that I’m about twice the age of Gamer’s intended audience of XBox-addicted teens who would think that a real-life FPS with remote-controlled convicts is a cool idea.  Nonetheless, even the most enthusiastic gamers will have no trouble recognizing a lousy film when they see one.  Light on SF ideas and just as disappointing in strict action-movie terms, Gamer pushes the lightning-quick editing craze as far as it goes until it shreds to tatters.  The irony, of course, is that gaming usually takes place within a long continuous shot that allows players to build a strong mental landscape of their surroundings: Chopping up an action scene in a flurry of split-second shots is the exact opposite of that kind of aesthetics.  But this is starting to sound like old-guy complaining, so let’s focus on Gamer’s more substantial failings: the cookie-cutter plot that feels like a re-thread of so many other “real game” movies (I don’t usually bring up Death Race in conversation, but there’s an exception to everything), the wasted thematic foundations of a film using gaming as a metaphor about control, the sheer weirdness of -say- a dance number confrontation between hero and villain… Gamer is a bit of a mess, really, but it doesn’t even have what it takes to become an enjoyable mess.  Aside from Gerard Butler’s credible presence as an action hero and the pedigree of writer/directors Neveldine/Taylor, there’s little, in fact, to distinguish Gamer from so many dull straight-to-video SF thrillers.  Why don’t you fire up the console instead?

  • The Final Destination [Final Destination 4] (2009)

    The Final Destination [Final Destination 4] (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2009) By the fourth entry in this horror franchise, we already know what we’re going to get: a nihilistic string of Rube-Golbergian mechanisms of death, with a side order of dark humour.  The Final Destination may struggle to present anything distinctive, but it certainly delivers the bare minimum of what the audience is expecting.  As a piece of carnography, it’s assembled with skill and a willingness to keep things moving at a fast clip –within the confines of slick B-grade teenage horror, that’s already not too bad.  Of course, it never comes close to escaping the confines of its own expectations: The plot is the same as the first three instalments (albeit with even less justification), the nihilism is even stronger, the gore just as excessive and even when the film seems to display an attempt at wit, it never bothers going the extra step forward.  The filmmakers will want you to believe that the 3D conception of The Final Destination somehow put it apart, but aside from the requisite impalements and things-through-your-eye (non-horror 3D movies love to throw things at your face; horror 3D movies love to throw things through your face) the film is going to be just as bland on 2D-DVD.  Film geeks will spot a number of references to the other entries in the franchise (including a 3D CGI gallery of the previous three film’s “best-of” deaths, along with a nasty little coda in the same style), but little approaching real effort: even the meta-finale, taking place in a movie theatre where they’re showing a 3D movie, seldom bothers to go beyond the superficial.  The characters are bland, some deaths feel perfunctory (readers of Chuck Palahniuk’s “Guts” will chuckle at one) and the lack of evolution in the series’ mythology reinforces the creative cash-in nature of this sequel.  But don’t worry: The Final Destination may be pretentiously titled, but there will be another one in a year or two… and chances are that you can already figure how it’s going to go and how it’s going to end.

  • Inglourious Basterds (2009)

    Inglourious Basterds (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 2009) Quentin Tarantino is, if nothing else, a film-lover, and that’s why his movies are always worth seeing by those who feel let down by the rest of American cinema: There’s always something interesting in what he does.  This doesn’t mean that his material is always successful… but that too is part of the fun.  Few would expect Inglourious Basterds to be such a surprising film, for instance: The film promised by the premise and the trailer (American Jewish soldiers go killing Nazis in occupied France) is replaced by a talky drama that manages to make World War Two hinge on a movie showing.  Characters die when one doesn’t expect them to, and even the fabric of history isn’t immune to the twists.  One can quibble with the film’s casual regard for historical fact, but on the other hand it’s hard to dismiss a film that dares push a revenge fantasy to its logical extreme.  It’s easy to say that Inglourious Basterds is too long at two hours and a half, but at the same time the dialogue seems so tight that it’s difficult to say exactly where snippets should be cut: the deliberate atmosphere of the film is such that when character engage in a round of game-playing, we can rest assured that we’re going to see the entire thing play out.  Oh well; fans of Tarantino’s usual violence will be reassured that the bloody incidents are few, but explicit in all of their head-scalping, skull-batting, forehead-slicing gore.  The result is both satisfying and unfulfilling: While the film we have seen is a good chunk of cinematic goodness (and the performance of Christoph Waltz as the Nazi antagonist is simply magnificent), it wouldn’t have hurt to actually see the film promised by Brad Pitt’s superb southern cadences.  But, hey, my feeling is that Inglourious Basterds is going to be even better once the fully-loaded DVD edition comes out.  Which, considering Tarantino’s glacial pacing when it comes to special-edition DVD, may not be anytime soon.

  • Shorts (2009)

    Shorts (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, August 2009) Robert Rodriguez’s own brand of low-budget high-creativity filmmaking is always fun, even when it’s aimed squarely at kids: His movies move fast, take chances, show new faces and aren’t afraid to let things slide almost to the brink of anarchy before bringing them back in.  So it is that Shorts may be a middle-of-the-pack effort when it comes to his films-for-kids (above Shark Boy and Lava Girl, below the first two Spy Kids, roughly equal to Spy Kids 3D) and yet it warrant quite a bit of interest –especially once it will be available in a DVD edition with filmmaker’s commentary.  But in theatres, it still plays pretty well, with a fragmented storyline in five sections that are presented discontinuously: some running gags and set-ups are understood only in retrospect, and the shuffled presentation adds to the wild energy of the story.  The story is generally about a wishing rock that delivers on its promises, but it’s really an excuse for Rodriguez to riff on a few concepts (wishes going wrong, giant robots running amuck, small aliens helping out too much), create a bunch of pretty good kid characters and goof off for a while.  The manic energy of the film makes it hard to lose interest, and the kids are surprisingly non-annoying.  What Shorts lacks is higher artistic ambition and an overall lack of polish, but that’s not much of a problem considering what it does well.  But then again, it’s not as if I need to be convinced of Rodriguez’s brilliance.

  • Post Grad (2009)

    Post Grad (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, August 2009): How appropriate that a film about a confused young woman should be so conflicted about its own intentions.  A limp mix of drama, comedy and romance, Post Grad struggles with an unremarkable protagonist, an episodic structure, dull scenes and intermittent comic wit.  Alexis Bledel never engages as an apparently-perfect protagonist who still can’t get a job: her lacks of distinctive skills make for a bland lead that never earns any sympathy.  (It gets worse once we realize that this supposedly-smart woman with editorial ambitions never once considers moving to where the action is –New York- even when Columbia beckons another character.)  The script isn’t much better, mind you: Oscillating between wild comedy and family drama, Post Grad never seems to know what to do next: the dramatic threads are all underdeveloped, events happen without character intervention, and the whole thing soon feels like a slog.  The highlights are few and minor: Michael Keaton is a refreshing presence as a doofus dad, and the film makes a surprising amount of comic mileage out of a flattened cat.  One can only imagine the screenwriting process that led to such a scattered result: Was it a wild comedy toned down to a more general tone, or a hum-drum drama punched up with a few zanier moments?  We may never know, especially since it’s hard to imagine someone re-watching Post Grad to hear a director’s commentary.

  • A Perfect Getaway (2009)

    A Perfect Getaway (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, August 2009): The good news about this latest film from writer/director David Twohy is that it’s a pure genre thriller working solidly within the conventions of the genre.  Unfortunately, this also means that it’s a thriller working against its own audience, lying to them in order to set up a surprise third act.  That shouldn’t be a surprise given the script’s meta-humour about “red snappers” and second-act twists, but it’s not so impressive when one consider the contortions the script has to inflict on itself in order to put the audience where it needs them to be.  There’s a technical term for those tricks, and it’s “cheating”.  This being put aside, the film in itself isn’t a bad piece of suspense cinema: Characters and handled well, the cinematography takes full advantage of its Hawaii location and Twohy understands a few things about directing action sequences.  As a piece of genre cinema, A Perfect Getaway is more engrossing than most, and the cheating required in order to deliver the twist may not bother some audiences.  In fact, it may be better to know in advance that there’s a twist: If you feel, watching the film, that it’s focusing on the wrong characters, well… hold on to that idea and don’t let the film trick you out of it.

  • Gake no ue no Ponyo [Ponyo] (2008)

    Gake no ue no Ponyo [Ponyo] (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, August 2009): I may watch fantasy films, but they seldom resonate with me… and neither do kids’ films for that matter.  Both of those character flaws may explain why I’m impressed but not overly fond of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo.  It’s skilful fantasy moviemaking that presents an original vision and yet… I’m less than thrilled about the entire thing.  It advances in fits and starts for those who aren’t completely absorbed in its visual panache, and the story itself is paper-thin with little suspense along the way; at most we get a few mysteries, but no serious drama: the final choice made by the protagonist is never in doubt, lending an air on inconsequentiality to the entire film.  Which may not be an inappropriate choice given the dream-like quality of the fable: Ponyo is definitely a kid’s film, after all, and the way it manages to impress Western audiences despite being firmly set in a Japanese rural area is still impressive.  If it doesn’t come close to Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke… then again what does?

  • The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

    The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, August 2009): As someone who really enjoyed Audrey Niffenegger’s original novel, I watched The Time Traveler’s Wife more interested in the mechanics of its adaptation than in the romantic aspect of the story itself.  It starts off well, with an opening sequence that efficiently explains what’s going on while remaining faithful to the premise of the story.  It’s no surprise, though, to find out that the most interesting elements of the novel, those that sent readers in unpleasant or horrific territory, have either been softened or removed entirely.  The emphasis of the film is strictly on the romantic aspect, and everything becomes subservient to it.  This being said, it’s amazing to see how little actually changes even when character back-stories are removed (poor Gomez, so useless in the film) and when tense sequences simplified to a shadow of their written selves –such as the wedding sequence.  A few more obviously cinematic sequences, such as the daughter-growing-up montage, don’t really compensate for the loos of the book’s depth.  As straight-up science-fiction, The Time Traveler’s Wife is unconvincing: The time-traveling conceit makes absolutely no sense, and the travels themselves are even more blatantly at the mercy of the demands of the plot than in the book.  It works a bit better as a romance, although many of the less pleasant implications of that aspect are left unexplored.  Still, both Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams are fine in the lead role, and romances don’t ask for much more than that.  The result, all things fairly considered, isn’t a failure:  There’s been a surprising number of romantic fantasies using soft SF premises lately (Kate and Leopold, The Lake House, etc.) and this is a fair addition to the corpus.

  • District 9 (2009)

    District 9 (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, August 2009): There are a lot of things that annoy me about District 9: Elements of the premise makes little sense except in a satiric fashion (which the film eventually softens); the “magic mutation” shtick smacks of lazy screenwriting; the film’s eventual slide into action at the expense of ideas is well-done but a bit empty after the concept-rich first hour.  Nonetheless, I still want to defend this film against all naysayers for what it does well.  Starting in Johannesburg away from the western world is a first good step, but picking a nebbish, vaguely fascist bureaucrat as an unlikely protagonist really cements District 9’s intention to do things differently.  The aliens don’t escape this treatment either: few of them are portrayed in any positive light, making easy empathy with them even less obvious.  The pseudo-documentary nature of the film’s opening gradually cedes ground to more naturalistic hand-held direction, but it’s really the unusual nature of the film’s setting that captivates.  When the ideas recede to give way to the gunfights, at least they’re replaced by robust action.  After a summer of feature-length Transformers and Terminators, it’s a bit of a surprise to find out that a scrappy medium-budget film manages to outsmart its competition by featuring a restrained and gripping robotic exoskeleton sequence.  Taken together with a decent script and some clever direction, District 9’s risk-taking and uneasy adhesion to genre conventions makes it a superior B-grade science-fiction film, the likes of which we don’t see enough… but may soon do, thanks to the film’s remarkable budget-to-box-office success.  After an impressive apprenticeship in short films, director Neill Blomkamp suddenly finds a place as an accomplished genre auteur: District 9 may not be perfect, but watch what he’s going to do next.

  • G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

    G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, August 2009): Nobody expected much from a summer action movie adapted from toys and directed by Stephen Sommers.  Still, is it too precious to ask for an entertaining experience from start to finish?  G.I.Joe is occasionally fun and amusing: Elements of the first act dare to include over-the-top outrageousness (including a mysterious force relying on government-grade high technology) while the middle-act Paris sequence is an extended rollercoaster of an action sequence.  For guys, it’s hard to be left indifferent by a bespectacled Sienna Miller as sexy-evil Baroness, or (to a lesser extent) Rachel Nichols as Scarlett.  Meanwhile, Dennis Quaid is obviously having fun chomping on General Hawk’s cigars, and there’s at least one crazy/cool shot of an elevator ride through the G.I.Joes’ HQ.  But even those simple pleasures fade fast when the film seems obsessed to sabotage its own assets: The action highlight of the film takes place in Paris, but even that sequence fails to fully engage with the audience when it runs at a continuous high speed with concordant CGI overload.  The entire third act, despite enough CGI to cost twice the price-tag of two District 9 put together, is dull enough to put anyone to sleep, with only its own dumbness (“They’ve blown up the iceberg!  It will sink to the bottom of the ocean!”) to provide comic relief.  Worse; the Baroness character loses a lot of interest when she’s revealed to be brainwashed and, as such, really a good girl.  Boring.  The movie as a whole is classic Sommers, but the latter-day incoherent Sommers from Van Helsing rather than the genre-savvy Sommers from The Mummy.  Enjoy the ride, but don’t be surprised if you end up asking when it will finally end.

  • Moon (2009)

    Moon (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, August 2009): Let me count the reasons why I wanted to love this film: It’s a pure science-fiction piece whose visual aesthetics clearly owe something to great SF films of the seventies.  It’s a quiet piece of psychological drama, limited to a few sets and a handful of characters (including a strong performance by Sam Rockwell.  It’s relatively smart, doesn’t depend on action or humour, and was produced on such a small budget that, if it’s successful, it may lead to other SF films of the same ilk.  Furthermore, Moon has been acclaimed by critics throughout its limited-release run, which is another rarity for films that wear the “Science Fiction” label with pride.  This being said, Moon may be a bit too successfully SF for its own good in that it wants to be compared to top-level genre stories… to its detriment.  No one will question the scientific accuracy of Star Wars, but the realism of Moon’s setting and machinery create expectations that can’t be met by the rest of the film.  As a nitpicky nerd, I was bothered out of my suspension of disbelief by such scientific errors as the Earth-normal gravity, the communications without light-speed delays or (ack!) the use of Helium-3 as an energy source.  Other signs suggest that the seventies aesthetics also betray the last time the screenwriter seriously read top-level SF: Question the assumptions of the plot (that a vital money stream depends on a single human point of failure; that the base’s Artificial Intelligence is incarnated in a single machine rather than distributed throughout the entire complex; that one would jam signals through blunt interference rather than by selectively manipulating the data stream) and everything feels dated and simplistic.  Throw in more explosions, gunfights and bouncy wenches and no-one would question Moon seriously.  As it is now, though, it looks close enough to hard-SF to be considered by hard-SF’s own standards and suffer from the comparison.  It’s still a really interesting film, of course, but it’s hard to recommend as a success when it fails to withstand the scrutiny it invites.

  • Graveyard Alive (2003)

    Graveyard Alive (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2009) It takes a special kind of viewer to appreciate low-budget horror comedies, and those who feel up to the task may want to have a look at Graveyard Alive, perhaps the finest zombie nurse low-budget comedy ever made.  Deliberately made to ape a number of black-and-white cheap horror films of the 1950s, Graveyard Alive’s budget is almost visible on screen, and so are its intentions to embrace camp: There’s as little dialogue as possible (what remains is badly dubbed; apparently the film was first intended to be silent), constrained locations, a handful of hammy actors and staging meant to simplify the number of camera setups.  But once you learn the grammar of the film, it’s not entirely unenjoyable: Anne Day-Jones makes a strong impression as a frumpy nurse who, thanks to being turned into a zombie and (then) devouring acquaintances, discovers her inner sex goddess.  The film turns more conventional once the narrative shifts and nurse “Goodie Tueschuze” (yes, it’s that kind of script) discovers that she’s the last edible human in the hospital.  There are a few laughs along the way –including the visual aftermath of a spectacularly thorough zombie meal.  Graveyard Alive is not a classic by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s the kind of film that sympathetic horror fans will like to recommend to each other: “So, hey, have you seen the zombie nurse movie?”