Reviews

  • Sing (2016)

    Sing (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, in theatres, December 2016) We’ve all seen Sing before: The animated film featuring a world of anthropomorphized animals. The musical comedy in which misfits gather together to put on a show to save something from destruction and rekindle their self-esteem. The madcap action sequences leading to laughter. Sing is that and not much more, but it does earn points for a breezy execution and an uncanny ability to play a jukebox of pop music to good effect. The French version of the film wisely doesn’t try to translate the songs and while the result may take bilingual fluency to decode (take it from me; bilingual dad got far more from the film than unilingual pre-schooler), it does keep much of the original-language humour intact … and features the original song performers. That’s not inconsequential when talents such as Tori Kelly (easily the best signer, but not the most enjoyable one) or Seth MacFarlane and Scarlett Johansson (not the best singers, but the best characters) are featured in the film. Animated with the big bold colourful style of Illumination Entertainment, Sing doesn’t ask much of its viewers and is built on top of the most basic plot structures available, but it’s friendly, snappy, halfway-clever in the way it moves familiar pieces and a lot of fun for the entire family.

  • Mary and Max (2009)

    Mary and Max (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Google Play Streaming, December 2016) For a movie that deals with crippling depression, loneliness, autism and lives going awry, Mary and Max has a surprising amount of charm and humour. Executed through Claymation by writer/director/genius Adam Elliot, this is a film that boldly runs into absurdity, laughter and tears. Narration by Barry Humphries helps a lot in smoothing the film’s affecting mixture of moods into a unified whole, but it’s Elliot’s script that’s the glue holding everything together. The digressions themselves become fascinating, improbably helping the film’s somewhat simple plot stretch satisfyingly over 90 minutes. It’s a fascinating character study of two lonely people (capably voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Colette) in a tone quite unlike anything else. It’s well worth a look, and that’s why this review is so short—Mary and Max is a film that speaks for itself.

  • Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

    Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, December 2016) I’ve been more upbeat than most Trekkers about the modern Star Trek reboot series, but even I have to admit that Star Trek: Beyond truly feels like the truest follow-up to the classic series so far. Structured as a standalone adventure in deep space, this third outing wisely focuses on smaller stakes, characters as developed in the first two movies, a bit of fan-service and an upbeat attitude that makes for a refreshing evolution from the first two films. In other words, it is pure classic Trek, done with today’s attitudes and special effects technology. The result may feel a bit restrained after the galaxy-spanning intrigue of In Darkness, but it’s also satisfying with fewer afterthoughts than in previous films. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban and Simon Pegg (who also co-wrote the film) continue to be exceptionally good at incarnating the newest versions of their Trek characters, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Motorcycle usage aside, there’s one borderline-excessive “Sabotage” scene that harkens back to the first film, but it actually works well and is decently funny in itself. Still, the best aspect of the film has to be the look inside the Yorktown space station, a vertiginous showcase of SF dreams brought to life, visual effects and variable-gravity scene-blocking. It’s as memorable as anything is the series so far, and exactly the kind of showcase sequence to expect from a big-budget Trek film. I’m certainly ready for a fourth instalment.

  • Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

    Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2016) Big, colourful and bold, Horton Hears a Who! Is nonetheless a wholly average animated film. I don’t mean this as a slam: After all, the bare minimum for a kid’s movie these days is something that won’t make adults run away screaming after the fifth repetition. In this regard, Horton Hears a Who! is decently successful: There’s a lot to look at in terms of animation, and the story is serviceable enough to string along the set pieces. There’s a good moment of needle-in-a-haystack despair late in the move that’s a bit heavier than I expected for a film for young audiences. While I’m told that the film is greatly expanded from the original book, much of Dr. Seuss’s particular whimsy is captured in the film’s aesthetics. (Unfortunately, I happen to dislike the Seuss style…) Voice performances are fine, the animation is decent … but the film as a whole remains just this side of forgettable. At least it’s not actively unpleasant, and that’s already something.

  • Jason Bourne (2016)

    Jason Bourne (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, December 2016) This was a nearly useless movie in more than one way. After running the shakycam trilogy to its natural conclusion, The Bourne Legacy came and went without making much of an impact, its frantic chase sequences unable to paper over a lack of ideas. Much of the same will also be said about Jason Bourne and Matt Damon’s return to the franchise. Despite intriguing concepts reflecting the modern world in a thriller (in which riots in Greece, drone surveillance and cell phone hacking are considered to be normal), the film doesn’t do much but repeat ideas previously explored in earlier entries, and does so with the nigh-unbearable quick-cutting spastic camera style that is Paul Greengrass’ biggest problem. (There was, a few weeks before the film’s release, a making-of clip showing a camera and stunt cars smoothly weaving through traffic on the Las Vegas Strip. Cruelly, this sequence has been chopped to mush in the finished film.) For a movie as smart as it thinks it is, Jason Bourne can occasionally be tone-deaf: There’s a sequence early in the film where a businessman gets a round of applause from journalists for stating “our products will never spy on you”, whereas in the real world the reaction would be raised eyebrows followed by frantic attempts to disprove him. I’m also nonplussed by the dumb decision to kill off a long-running supporting character for what is apparently no good reason. And so it is with Jason Bourne: things happen for no good reason, except printing money from a series that most people remember. At this time, it looks as if the film was a modest financial success, virtually ensuring that we’ll get another equally useless new instalment in two or three years.

  • National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

    National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, Fourth or fifth viewing, December 2016) Surprisingly enough, I can’t find a review of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in my files even though I must have watched it a handful of times before. Heck, the film has even become a Christmas tradition in my household. What’s not to love about it? It’s an itemized look at the excesses of Christmas for the middle-class, deftly zigzagging between cynical laughs and exasperated sentiment. It’s a collection of memorable sequences, each of them madcap and taken to the limits. (My hands-down favourite: the “Squirrel!” sequence) It’s a showcase for Chevy Chase, who reprises his role as the Griswold patriarch, but gives him added depth by staying home. For men, it’s an excuse to look at the combined charms of Nicolette Sheridan, Beverly D’Angelo’s green outfit and eighties-chic Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It remains very funny even today, and I suspect that its timeless charm only makes it feel even more relevant nowadays. Worth seeing again; worth seeing every year.

  • Braveheart (1995)

    Braveheart (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, December 2016) It’s been a bit more than thirty years since I’ve seen Braveheart (I distinctly recall using the Internet in summer 1996 to look up historical facts about the film) but those thirty years apparently haven’t been kind to my appreciation of the film. Watching it today, I’m not sure what annoys me most: the bombastic and tiresome “THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FREEEEDOM!” message; the fact that the hero fails miserably at what he tries to do; the unnecessary deviations from the facts; or the excessive length of the result. Probably all four. I’m mellowing in my increasingly older age, and while I won’t yet pretend to maturity, I’m also getting tired of films with a 13-year-old’s understanding of ideology as being impervious to common sense. I’m also tired of movies making up lies (i.e.; jus primae noctis) to push their own dramatic agendas. I’m also tired of movies stretching out over nearly forever. No matter the reason, I’m not quite as enthusiastic about Braveheart as I was before. I’ll gladly concede that actor/director Mel Gibson knows how to make a movie: this is a slick production, well worth whatever Academy Awards it got. But I’m going to stop short from professing any overwhelming personal enthusiasm for it.

  • Big Game (2014)

    Big Game (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2016) Now here is a pleasant surprise: an honest big-budget slam-bang action thriller featuring iconic images about the American Presidency, coming from… Finland. What? Well, yes. Thanks to the magic of special effects, global financing, location shooting and well-paid actors, even Finland is able to put together the kind of movie that Hollywood wishes it could make. Big Game’s premise is absurdly simple (Air Force One is sabotaged and brought down deep in Finland’s forests—only a boy can help the President escape his pursuers) but it works, largely because writer/director Jalmari Helander is willing to go big and bold on his images and action sequences. It does help that the film can rely on Samuel L. Jackson as a curiously cowardly president, and Jim Broadbent as an oracle of truth with a hidden agenda (his last scene is fantastic). But when the film shows Air Force One crashing into a lake, or being ripped apart by its auto-destruction mechanism, or the President running in the woods like hunted prey, or a heliborne freezer slamming through a forest, this is the kind of action movie iconography that Hollywood has unexplainably abandoned lately. No wonder if Big Game works so splendidly well once it firmly engages into its first act: It plays the action movie Hollywood game better than Hollywood itself, and keeps piling up the cool stuff. It’s unabashedly a thriller and it doesn’t try to be anything else. As such, it’s a success … and it’s too bad that a lot of American filmgoers won’t even hear of it.

  • A Christmas Story (1983)

    A Christmas Story (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2016) I’m pretty sure I saw this film at some point as a kid, but since seeing the film was like rediscovering when a bunch of clichés came from, I’ll pretend that this is a first viewing. It’s certainly ad odd piece of Americana, more darkly skewed than I’d been led to believe or remember. There’s an odd affection and cynicism blend in the way the film is narrated and shot: part of it seems timeless or, at the very least, far more contemporary than the 1940s in which the film is supposedly set. The unreliable narration is a big part of the film—much of what seems overwrought or frankly bizarre (such as the lamp, such as the improbably gigantic Santa Mall mountain) can be explained as the feverish recollections of events experienced as a kid. The number of clichés and stock situations first seen here is astonishing—I knew on some level that A Christmas Story is considered a classic Christmas movie, but I’d lost track of the number of sequences (“you’ll shoot an eye out”, tongue stuck to a pole, etc.) that are featured in the film. It also keeps its best laugh for the end, making for a nice finish. Writer/director Bob Clark managed to keep much of Jean Shepherd’s original voice in making the film, literally and appropriately choosing him as the narrator of the film. While a bit too fashioned to count as a classic for me, it’s a decently measured look at the madness of Christmas, finding a way to deliver a heartfelt and fuzzy message while acknowledging the more cynical aspect of the period. I’ll watch it again in the next few years.

  • To Rome with Love (2012)

    To Rome with Love (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2016) As I’m exploring Woody Allen’s filmography, there’s a certain pleasure in seeing him back on-screen after a lengthy pause. To Rome with Love is an interwoven anthology film of four different stories playing against its roman backdrop, from Alec Baldwin’s recollections of a love triangle made alive to Roberto Benigni’s strange brush with fame to Allen discovering an unlikely signing talent to a couple of visiting newlyweds experiencing life in the capital. Like most ensemble stories, its interest rises and falls unpredictably, but the overall effect is strong, with enough romance, humour and weirdness to keep things interesting. Of the stories, I was most struck by Alec Baldwin’s resigned-but-wise reactions to the developing love triangle in-between Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page—it’s funny and a bit wistful at once, with plot and commentary joyously crashing in one another. The newlywed’s adventures are also funny, although occasionally too close to humiliation comedy for my taste. Allen’s segment is enhanced by a typical Allen performance as a nattering shmuck—the outlandish situation he creates is just the icing on the cake. Finally, there’s the unexplainable weirdness of an ordinary man (Benigni) brought to sudden fame and dropped just as rapidly—a metaphor for our social media age, perhaps, but still worthwhile on its own. To Rome with Love probably won’t endure as one of Allen’s classics—it’s too scatter-shot, too willing to make audiences laugh without deeper themes—but it’s a relatively good time at the hands of a comedy veteran, and perhaps his funniest film in a while. As an entry in his “European capitals” phase, it’s slight but decent.

  • Before Midnight (2013)

    Before Midnight (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2016) I am, once amazed, at writer/director Richard Linklater and what he has managed to do with Before Midnight. I shouldn’t like that film. It’s the third in a trilogy whose first film I haven’t yet seen (although I was quite taken by the second one), it’s a chatty domestic drama and its dramatic centrepiece is a terrible argument between husband and wife. It’s really not my cup of tea, but much like I was halfway smitten by Before Sunset, I’m similarly charmed by Before Midnight. It’s a dialogue-heavy film, but what dialogue! The interplay between Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke is fantastic even (especially) in the midst of their argument, and there’s a lot of wit in the way the conversations develop. The dialogue can be quotable at time (There’s a “bimbo” scene that’s an instant classic as far as I’m concerned) yet heartfelt soon afterwards. The development of the couple’s relationship over time and three films (yet in short, almost real-time bursts every time) is remarkable: in-between this trilogy and Boyhood, Linklater is carving a unique niche for himself as a filmmaker experimenting with time in ways others won’t even consider. The Greek Mediterranean scenery adds much to the film without undue effort, but the real heart of the film is in the script and the way the lead actors develop it. I’ve been taken by surprise twice by this trilogy, and I have to get my hands on Before Sunrise before long now that I think that I know what to expect.

  • Hook (1991)

    Hook (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, December 2016) I remember two or three jokes from my first viewing of Hook more than twenty years ago, but not a whole lot more. I have noted a certain polarization of opinion about the film—a lot of regular people like it, while critics don’t. I watched the film in regular-person mode, and wasn’t displeased from the experience: Despite claims of this being a sequel to the original Pan, Hook is very much a retelling … so closely so that it gives rise to some vexing issues (as in: “why bother?”) There is a very late-eighties quality to the way the action is staged in Neverland, prisoner of limited soundstage sets and the special effects technology of the time. As a take on the Peter Pan mythos, it’s decent without being exceptional or revolutionary—it’s still miles better than the 2016 Pan, although not quite as successful as 2003’s Peter Pan. Julia Roberts isn’t bad as Tinkerbell, although her unrequited romance is good for a few raised eyebrows. Robin Williams is OK as Peter, but it’s hard to avoid thinking that another actor may have been better-suited for the role. Meanwhile, Dustin Hoffman seems as if he’s having a lot of fun in the titular role. While Steven Spielberg directs, there is little here to reflect his legendary touch. It does strike me that Hook fits almost perfectly with the latest Disney craze of remaking its classic animated movies as live action. Perhaps contemporary opinion about the film will be more forgiving than the critical roasting it got at the time. Until that reconsecration, the result is perfectly watchable and squarely in the middle of the various takes on Peter Pan.

  • The Spectacular Now (2013)

    The Spectacular Now (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2016) What? Miles Teller playing a cad who learns better?!? Well, yes: for an actor as young as he is, Teller has already developed a strong screen persona that’s part arrogance and part cynicism. Time will tell if he can sustain it (especially given his similarities with a younger John Cusack) but, in the meantime, he’s effective and even entertaining in those roles. In The Spectacular Now, Teller plays a high-school version of a character we usually see in older stages of life: the underachieving boozer/womanizer, getting by on minimal effort and apparently willing to dismiss everything and everyone but secretly harbouring some long-lasting emotional scars. Focusing on a girl as kind of a rebound Pygmalion project seems like a passing fancy at first, but we know it’s not going to be as simple as making his ex-girlfriend jealous so that he can get back with her. Not too far from the recent John Greenish mode of teenage moviemaking, The Spectacular Now does have the grace to play between drama and comedy, with flawed characters, difficult situations, uncomfortable choices and characters growing up. Shailene Woodley is fine as the romantic heroine and Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes a remarkable appearance as an older sister, but it’s Teller’s film. The film is remarkable by what it doesn’t do—namely, fall into the traps of the usual teenage dramedies … although I’m a bit worried that, along with The Way Way Back and other John Green-adapted films, it’s forging a set of new clichés for that subgenre. Time will tell, as time will tell whether this will remain a definitive performance for Teller’s early career.

  • Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)

    Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2016) As far as I’m concerned, there is just one thing worth mentioning about Paul Blart: Mall Cop: It was shot in the only American shopping mall that I know well — The Burlington, Massachusetts Shopping Mall that’s not too far away from the hotel of the Readercon SF convention that I attended from 2005 to 2011. I didn’t even realize it during the film: I watched it and was amazed at how similar it was to the mall I knew, down to the exact same restaurants. Yet I shrugged off the similarities, thinking—eh, what would be the odds? But it was, and you can imagine my amazement. But there’s a film attached to the mall footage, and that’s when I run out of things to say. Paul Blart: Mall Cop is a product of the Happy Madison lowbrow comedy factory, which is to say that it features an underachieving protagonist forced by circumstances to grow up, impress the girl and save the day. The straightforward plot can be summarized on a napkin, and the various pratfalls only need a portly guy willing to fall down. Kevin James (who also writes and produces) is not unsympathetic as the hero, but he works with and against bad material. Meanwhile, Jayma Mays’ eyes specifically steal whatever scenes they’re in. Otherwise, there’s not much to say—this is as basic a comedy as you can get, and its chief asset is that it can be played in just about any setting without upsetting too many people. On the other hand; I have great memories of Burlington Mall at that time (At some point, I’ll tell you the tale of the Lego store), and it’s kind of cool that there’s a Hollywood production that will immortalize the place forever.

  • The Love Guru (2008)

    The Love Guru (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2016) Some film pundits often refer to The Love Guru as the film that killed Mike Myers’ film career and while that’s a harsh assessment (I suspect that Myers’ own oft-reported personal issues largely played a role in his disappearance from the big screen—studio executives are more forgiving of box-office failure if they happen to people they like) it does acknowledge the fact that it’s simply not a good film. This being said, there are bits and pieces that sound great on paper: A movie largely revolving around the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team? Faux-Indian rendition of songs such as The Joker and 9 to 5? Featured roles for Jessica Alba, with appearances by John Oliver and Stephen Colbert? Justin Timberlake as a secondary character gleefully perpetuating the stereotype of French-Canadians with legendary intimate attributes? How can I not get on-board with that? Alas, it takes a remarkably short time for the wheels to fall off The Love Guru. The stereotypical humour begins from the first shot of the film, while various comic bits feel old barely two minutes after being introduced and repeated. It gets progressively worse, as the film’s self-satisfied comic arrogance mugs for laughs that don’t exist, introduces pauses for laughter that never comes and revels in gross-out humour ten years after everyone else … all the way to a strikingly inappropriate animal sex sequence played on ice. (There’s a joke about Mariska Hargitay that’s as dumb as anything else ever dreamed up—the kind of stuff that should never survive a first draft.) Given Mike Myer’s roles as producer writer and star, as well as the example set by his previous feature films, it’s not hard to find someone to blame for The Love Guru’s unfunny pileup. In any other film, the portrayal of Hindi culture would have been offensive—here’s it’s just stuck in a much bigger mess. Despite my best intentions, the film simply doesn’t work.