Reviews

  • The Magnificent Seven (2016)

    The Magnificent Seven (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2017) If you’ve been longing for more machine guns and explosions in your western classics, then this Magnificent Seven remake is just for you! I kid, but not much: Rather entertainingly updating the 1960 classic for contemporary audiences, this remake crams a lot of gunplay, explosions and heavy gunfire in the result. Under the veteran eye of director Antoine Fuqua, this Magnificent Seven sports lush cinematography, vivid action sequences, a pleasantly diverse cast and a tighter script. To its credit, it doesn’t try to ape the original as much as play around with its basic structure and characters. Our lead character now had a personal connection to the antagonist that works rather well, Denzel Washington makes the role his own rather than try to ape Yul Brynner, and Chris Pratt doesn’t even try to be Steve MacQueen in a similar role. The images are more spectacular, the action is far more intense (at times, bodies drop like flies to a degree that feels excessive) and the script is cleaner. While The Magnificent Seven remake will never become a classic, it’s a decent enough reinterpretation and an entertaining shoot’em-up western in its own right.

  • The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

    The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (TubiTV streaming, June 2017) One of the unexpected pleasures of watching older movies is the occasional ping of recognition as the film matches childhood memories. In the case of Return of the Living Dead, I wouldn’t exactly call it a happy memory: I recall my parents discussing a movie (while we were in the family car, waiting for the ferry to take us to Grandma) in which a cloud fell on a city transforming them all into monsters (!!!). (I wouldn’t call my parents movie buffs, but our family got a VCR early on, and made frequent visits to the video store.) My not-yet-teenage brain couldn’t deal with horror movies back then, and I must have half-slept that night. More than thirty years later, well, I look upon Return of the Living Dead with something of a horror fan’s jaded perspective. I can’t help but know the backstory of the split between Night of the Living Dead’s creators and how Return of the Living Dead compares to Day of the Dead, which was 1985’s other big zombie movie. There are plenty of things to say about both of them—how Return of the Dead is far more light-hearted than Day of the Dead, and yet ends up with a total body count, whereas Romero’s much darker and gorier film allowed three characters to survive. If force to choose, I’ll pick Return of the Living Dead as my favourite of the two despite mildly traumatic childhood memories: In between the metafictional references, the sudden gratuitous nudity, the jokey tone, the compelling soundtrack, it just seems like a far more likable and memorable film. The acting may not be particularly good and the story logic is dubious at best, but the fun is there thanks to writer/director Dan O’Bannon, and it’s not necessarily an obstacle to horror: The basement zombie sequence is as terrifying as any scene in Romero’s movies, and it doesn’t depend on gore effects for impact. As a putatively grown-up adult, I’m also reminded by the movie, more than most others, about how I’ve gone from horror-averse kid to someone who occasionally gets paid to write about horror movies from an analytical perspective. But then again, thirty years is a long time.

  • The Magnificent Seven (1960)

    The Magnificent Seven (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2017) There’s no denying that watching a 1960 western nearly sixty years later is not as immersive an experience as it was back then—our standards for what we consider naturalistic cinema have changed a lot, and the genre conventions of westerns have evolved accordingly. Many of the actors of the time are now dead, and a few live on as legends. This being said, The Magnificent Seven remains an interesting movie today largely because it was a superlative experience back then. The lavish production values still impress today, and the unusual script (avowedly based on Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai) remains intriguing today. But more than that, the movie stars such acting superstars as Yul Brynner (cool and terrific, even with his hat on), Steve MacQueen (playing up his rebellious persona) and assorted notables such as Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn and James Coburn in smaller roles. From a story perspective, the film isn’t particularly complex—there’s a long and relatively enjoyable first half in which the band of seven is gradually assembled, followed by a first and then a second showdown with the gang holding a village hostage. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get to the essence of the tough-guy western that this is meant to be. Brynner is nothing short of spectacular in the lead role, with MacQueen providing a good foil for him. Even today, The Magnificent Seven can be watched with some interest—although there are more than a few lulls here and there.

  • The Rescuers (1977)

    The Rescuers (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2017) In the pantheon of Disney animated features, The Rescuers stands somewhere below the average—not terrible, but not a classic. It comes from the middle of the Disney Dark Ages, and shares with its contemporaries a number of not-so-encouraging issues: The animation is rougher (with plenty of in-between marks, and cheats such as a still-picture credit sequence in order to minimize nonessential animation) and the story is significantly darker than most other Disney movies. It’s dark enough, in fact, to be bothersome, what with an abandoned, perhaps abused kid in need of being rescued by our titular mice. There’s also a badly sexualized antagonist, and too many cute animal sidekicks in a story build around animal characters. Fortunately, there’s enough here and there to carry the movie: Despite some overlong self-indulgent moments, the lead characters of Bernard and Bianca are quite good, and the idea of an international rescue operation run by mice is cute enough to be cool. If you let go of the darkness and tension (perhaps by watching it a second time), some of the set-pieces work well enough, with enough danger and adventure to distinguish themselves. In the grand scheme of Disney movies, The Rescuers takes from The Aristocats’ style and gives to The Princess and the Frog’s bayou setting. It’s a bit less than solidly average, but it’s not bad … although it may be best for older kids.

  • A Walk in the Woods (2015)

    A Walk in the Woods (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2017) Adapting a novel to the big screen is tough enough, but adapting a non-fiction book as a movie seems even tougher—it’s about jettisoning the informative material and building up the story, even if it means adding more to it. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Wood (which I read between seeing the movie and writing this capsule review) is a compulsively readable account of a forty-something man’s attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail, occasionally alongside an old friend who’s even less in shape than he is. In doing so, Bryson gets to talk about the state of American natural preserves, the environmental collapse of some tree species, the nature of the Appalachian trail, what kind of person voluntarily hikes 3000 miles in a few months, and assorted topics that come to mind while walking a few miles every day for weeks on end. The film elides the details, although a surprising amount of top-level information still finds its way in the dramatization. As a movie, A Walk in the Woods wisely focuses on the difficult relationship between the two hikers, and the various incidents that can take place along the trail. Much of the film’s first half sticks impressively close to the book—but both diverge later on as the book itself becomes less storyable and the film feels the need to build everything to a dramatic conclusion. Robert Redford is very likable as Bryson, given his weathered features and sympathetic persona. Playing opposite him, Jeff Bridges makes for a capable foil as “Stephen Katz”, an out-of-shape screw-up who tags along for the hike. A few name actors pop up in amusing small roles (Emma Thompson as an understanding wife, Kirsten Shaal as an intolerable hiker, Nick Offerman as a hiking gear salesman) but the focus here is on Redford, Bridges and the trail itself. The dramatic climax doesn’t quite work (it feels shot in a studio, far too engineered to feel natural, and on-the-nose as to what the characters learn from it) but the rest of the film has a warm feel to it—kind of an extraordinary adventure achievable by ordinary people. Some of the scenery is spectacular enough to kindle a diffuse desire to walk the trail, but in this case please do read the book—better than vicarious adventure, it’s detailed enough to make anyone reconsider ever walking the Appalachian Trail.

  • The Blue Lagoon (1980)

    The Blue Lagoon (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, June 2017) I’ve been revisiting many movies from my childhood lately, and I’m often amazed at how I misremembered some of them. The Blue Lagoon is in a category of its own, because for years, I had taken bits and pieces of the movie and reconstructed it in my mind as something of a horror film. From “two kids shipwrecked on an island; having a baby; baby having trouble feeding; skeleton on the beach”, I had confabulated memories of a stomach-churning drama in which a brother and a sister end up shipwrecked, and grow up to have a baby that then dies of malnutrition. You can imagine my horrified expression when I heard about the film as “the most innocent movie ever!” Checking it out again, I realized my confabulation … but also how, in being so innocent, the film can feel transgressive as well. So, the basics of The Blue Lagoon are, indeed, “two kids shipwrecked”, except that they’re cousins, and a crusty old sailor lives with them for a few years before dying of a drunken mishap (hence the skeleton on the beach later on). They do grow up and have a baby in the middle of a tropical paradise, except that they do figure out how to feed it and escape from the Island more or less accidentally. The finale is halfway ambiguous … unless, apparently, if you see the cruel first few minutes of the sequel. Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins supposedly star, but their acting is terrible and they’re constantly upstaged by the footage of the island and the tropical creatures. Seriously: The Blue Lagoon is far more palatable as nature footage loosely surrounded by a plot than anything else. The curious tone of the film is indeed one of innocence, to the point that it becomes uncomfortable to modern audiences—I suspect that any reaction to The Blue Lagoon is strongly dependent on the social context of the time. Circa-2017 North America isn’t built for innocent earnestness, a sexualized teenager (Shields was, famously, 14 years old when shooting the film), cousins having kids or the kind of Victorian melodrama that this film adaptation of a 1908 novel encapsulates. It’s so innocent that it feels perverse, in a way. And while the movie isn’t the horror-show that I remembered, I’m arguably more off-put by the film as an adult than as a kid.

  • Kagemusha (1980)

    Kagemusha (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2017) I tried. I really tried. I’m not a Cahiers du Cinema subscriber, but that doesn’t mean I’m unwilling to take a look at classics and see what they’re about. But Kagemusha has defeated me. It shouldn’t be a struggle to watch the film: it’s got intrigue, historical detail, colourful costumes and the legendary director Akira Kurosawa at the helm. And yet, despite everything, I was bored stiff by the movie, and it happened from the very first moments, which features a five-minute static shot of three characters speaking. My interest in the movie kept wandering despite my best attempts at staying focused. No success: I bounced hard off the historical context, found the direction uninspiring compared to what it tries to portray, and the pacing to be worse than glacial. I know I dozed off at some point, but I can’t say for how long. It may have been forever, because the rest of the film certainly felt like forever. Ending on a downer note doesn’t really help either. It’s a good thing I’m not a member of any serious movie critic’s organization, because I’m pretty such I’d have to resign if ever it became known that I couldn’t stay interested in a Kurosawa film.

  • Stripes (1981)

    Stripes (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2017) I don’t yet have enough points of reference to make a definitive statement, but in-between movies such as Caddyshack, Meatballs, Police Academy, many others and now Stripes, there’s a very specific strain of early-eighties underdog comedy in which the institutions of American life (golf, summer camp, police, the military) are brought down to size by unrepentant slackers. Bill Murray leads Stripes with his early brand of nonchalant anarchism, taking a stand against the madness by defeating it with a complete lack of care. Stripes’ curiously ambiguous attitude toward military training is interesting: While its most ridiculous aspects are lampooned, it is a film made with the co-operation of the Army, and it does suggest that the end result can be incredibly rewarding for the right people. By the end, the slackers are defeating the Reds and rescuing their own. In-between, we do have a remarkable rah-rah-RAH sequence in which audiences are reminded that they are American and thus exceptional, and a weird-yet-expected shift from aimless sketch training comedy to more focused last-act suspense. The DNA match with Caddyshack is obvious with Murray and Harold Ramis sharing top billing, and Ivan Reitman handling directing duties. Stripes is messy by modern standards, but it’s not without its own charm.

  • The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

    The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu-ray, June 2017) In the Hollywood game of commercially viable mad-libs, combining Lego with Batman gets a primal squeal from everyone’s inner eight-year-old boy. I’m no exception. The LEGO Movie having become an unexpected modern classic, it’s no surprise if the follow-up LEGO Batman Movie ends up being a bit more ordinary … but still far more entertaining than most other movies of the year. Best described as a Batman movie made with Lego bricks, this comic take on an archetypical character finds insightful things to say. The emerging “Lego house style” of storytelling is heavy on humour and knowing references to its own nature, and The LEGO Batman Movie certainly follows in that vein, all the way to daring to deliver a heartwarming family-oriented comedy featuring one of the darkest superheroes out there. It does work, although it should be noted that the high-energy comedy of the first few minutes does give way to a more measured pace for most of the film. Batman fans should prepare themselves for a tornado of references to past films and comic book series, from obscure characters to quick-cut homages to previous movies, alongside other pop-culture references. The jokes are certainly rapid-fire: at times, like its predecessor, this is a film that calls for the freeze-frame button and repeat viewings in order to appreciate the complexity of the backdrop, the layered jokes, the mind-boggling animation and the overall sweep of the cinematography. Far more visually ambitious than its predecessor, The LEGO Batman Movie uses a bold colour palette, numerous atmospheric effects and a far more permissive animation style (including bending mini-figures to impossible poses) to give a pleasant blockbuster-movie sheen to the results. The voice talent is up to the film’s humour: Will Arnett’s voice is perfect as Batman, while notables such as Michael Cera, Zach Galifianakis, Rosario Dawson and Ralph Fiennes also contribute their distinctive tones to the results. Overall, it’s a successful film, and one that is, court-jester-like, far more revealing in moving past Batman’s arrested development than in other more serious takes on the character. Those wondering if the Blu-ray is worth purchasing should be reassured: Not only is the film worth watching in freeze-frame high resolution, it comes with a small but entertaining basket of special features, including the unexpectedly hilarious “Dark Hoser” paean to Batman’s Canadian roots.

  • Uncle Buck (1989)

    Uncle Buck (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2017) Wikipedia tells me that Uncle Buck has, in the years since its release, become something of a cult movie. As usual, this kind of statement either resonates or is met by a blank face. In my case, imagine the blank face: While it’s not a bad movie, Uncle Buck doesn’t always know what it wants to be. The title character is alternately goofy, dangerous, serious and incompetent in short succession. The film has a solid arc, but the sketches that fill out the progression of this arc are inconsistent and seem to vary according to the whims of writer/director John Hughes more than any organic progression. To be fair, Uncle Buck does coasts a long time on the charm of John Candy and many of Hughes’s leitmotifs, starting with the sullen teenager in need of guidance (here Jean Louisa Kelly). It’s also easy to see how Home Alone sprang from Uncle Buck with the “mail slot” scene featuring Mackauley Caulkin. Some of the set-pieces are, indeed, quite good (such as the noir-spoof visit to the school director) … but it’s their disconnectedness that stops the film from feeling more satisfying. In the meantime, what we have is another piece in Hughes’s solid filmography, uneven but still entertaining on its own.

  • Absolutely Anything (2015)

    Absolutely Anything (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2017) You’d think that a comedy movie bringing together the members of Monty Python, Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale (still an assured sex symbol at a respectable age) and a high-concept comic premise would lead to a minimal amount of laughter. But if you think that, then you haven’t yet seen Absolutely Anything, which is recognizably trying to be funny without actually being funny. The big premise has aliens assigning omnipotence to a human and seeing what choices he makes with it, with the fate of the human race in the balance. As an idea, it’s limitless … which explains the disappointment. It takes a while for the film to come up with things to do within that premise, and whatever throwaway gags are put on the screen seem almost too restrained compared to the possibilities. (The film also cheats by presenting a “start over again!” mechanism and using it at least three times) Simon Pegg does what he can with a classic underachiever character, but there is a limit to what he can do given the relentless mediocrity of the script. Good performances by supporting actors can’t help, and some of the alien material featuring the voices of Monty Python members often feel like undercooked inside jokes. Absolutely Anything makes the fatal mistake of feeling dull, which is just about the one unforgivable thing that a comedy in which anything is possible can make.

  • Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

    Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, June 2017) I remembered very little of Superman IV (basically: Luthor getting ahold of Superman’s hair, and him throwing nuclear weapons in the sun, both of whom happen early in the film), and so spent much of the first half-hour wondering why the film had such a bad reputation. Sure, it wasn’t up to the standards of the first film, and yes the credit sequence was obviously done on the cheap … but getting back to the Superman universe (even if perceptibly updated to the late eighties) isn’t bad, the “day in the life” Superman episodes are enjoyable, Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane and Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor are back, Christophe Reeves is still a capable Clark Kent/Superman and the whole “getting rid of nuclear weapons” subplot feels far less egregious now than during the cold war. Then the atrocities began. If the first half-hour of Superman IV is tolerable, the film very quickly sinks to newer and newer lows as it tilts in its second half. Despite some good images here and there (most notably in the street-level fight that begins near the Daily Planet offices), the film devolves in a series of increasingly ridiculous set-pieces. The chase sequence over Manhattan with Lady Liberty is just … wow. The lunar fistfight is also … wow. Superman going full-shmuck and using Lois Lane for his own gratification before wiping her memory (as he probably did many times before) … yuck. The rest is either dull or ridiculous, and that’s not even getting into the limits of the film’s budget. I’ve used the analogy before with the Jaws series, but the same also goes for the Superman quartet: The first one is at the upper half of good movies; the second one at the lower end of good movies, the third one at the upper end of bad movies and the fourth one at the lower end of bad movies. Thankfully, they stopped right there.

  • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016)

    Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2017) Much of the online chatter about Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk had to do with its 3D 120 fps 4K UHD presentation in a handful of high-end theatres, but that’s completely irrelevant to the experience of seeing it on regular HD cable TV. Stripped from its technological innovations, the film becomes something far more ordinary: Yet another drama about veterans coming back home and having trouble coping with the nature of American society. It’s not a bad subject, but it has been overplayed lately, and Ang Lee’s latest film doesn’t do much to bring something narratively new to the table. Oh, it’s skillfully made: Setting much of the story at a Dallas football game, arguably the purest essence of basic Americana, is good for a few uncomfortable parallels with what soldiers are being asked to do abroad. Weaving in motifs of Hollywood dramatization, religion-obsessed cheerleaders, excessive eating and overblown fireworks all serve to heighten the unreality of “coming back home”. Still, there aren’t that many surprises in store. It’s nearly a given that whatever heroic sacrifice performed by the soldiers will prove to be far more gruesome in the flashbacks. There’s a blip of interest at the very end, when a decision made by the lead character is portrayed as continuing the horror rather than further serving the country. But otherwise, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is thin gruel. Well-made gruel, though: Ang Lee remains a veteran director, and perhaps the most interesting thing about the result is how he’s able to coax good performances out of Kristen Stewart (in her best damaged-by-life mode), Steve Martin (as a loathsome millionaire) and Chris Tucker (looking much older now). Still, the lack of impact of the movie as shown at home is enough to make anyone ponder the worth of technological innovations if they can’t be as effective under all viewing conditions.

  • Nanny McPhee (2005)

    Nanny McPhee (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2017) Often, the most difficult movies to review are the average ones. Nanny McPhee is, in many ways, a thoroughly average children’s film: It features a strong titular character, a group of kids in need of some guidance, gross-out gags, a food fight, an intensely schematic structure, plot developments seen well in advance, and a colourful imagination on display. But what makes Nanny McPhee good for kids are also what makes it dull for adult audiences: besides some performances (including Emma Thompson as the writer/star of the movie, and the ever-dependable Colin Firth as an overwhelmed dad) and production design, there really isn’t much here to grab interest. At least it works well enough for its intended audience. Otherwise, is there anything more to say?

  • Escape from L.A. (1996)

    Escape from L.A. (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2017) I’m normally a forgiving viewer when it comes to over-the-top comic action movies like Escape from L.A. Throw in an enjoyable action set-piece and I will normally forgive most of the nonsense required to get there. For the first half-hour of the movie, I was certainly willing to play along: It was almost a relief to see Kurt Russell back in character as Snake Plissken, all attitude and tough-guy moves. Even the dodgy CGI work required to do justice to the script on a relatively modest budget didn’t bother me too much. But even as the good cameos unfolded (Bruce Campbell as a plasticized surgeon, Pam Grier as a transsexual, Peter Fonda as a surfer!), the film lost its flavour and became bitter. At some point, the adolescent thrills of relentless post-apocalyptic nihilism became tiresome. Plissken’s posturing became hollow, and a reminder that there’s only so far to go when fuelled by cynicism and anti-heroic amorality. When the anarchic ending came, I was more annoyed at the wanton destruction than overjoyed at seeing authoritarianism being kicked over along with much of civilization. I guess I’m not a brooding sixteen-year-old anymore. While writer/director John Carpenter clearly had fun poking at Los Angeles’s pretensions with Escape from L.A., the result is curiously dark and meaningless … and I’m the one not having fun with the result.