Reviews

  • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1996 reprint of 1968 original, mmpb, ISBN 042503013X

    So here it is; the fourth entry in my Heinlein Re-Read Project, in which I re-read his four Hugo-winning novels, roughly twenty years after first doing so.

    I was really looking forward to revisiting 1966’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, largely because I remembered it so fondly.  One of SF’s classic novels, it’s a tale of lunar revolution against an oppressive Earth, augmented by then-top-notch ideas about space warfare, artificial intelligences, unusual social constructs and libertarian ideals.  It was so influential on me when I read it in the mid-nineties that I still have, somewhere in my files, an unpublished novel that takes heavy inspiration from it (along with a generous dose of Babylon 5).  As recently as a few years ago, I reiterated (in my Alternate Hugos list) that it was the best SF novel of 1966, describing it as “One of the great kick-ass hard-SF novels of all time, augmented by the usual playful Heinlein prose.”

    Twenty years later… well, I have to own up to the fact that I once wrote those words.

    The big difference between now and then, as far as I’m concerned as a reader, is that I have had nearly all libertarian sympathies evacuated out of me by the real-world demonstration that libertarianism is an idiotic ideology, fit for fiction and the daydreams of those deluded that they (of course) would be the masters of a purely libertarian society.  (Meanwhile, in the real world, citizens of libertarian societies such as Somalia don’t read much SF.)  I’m also far more inclined to question the assumptions behind didactic fiction, and not quite so impressed by a mass of plausible-sounding exposition thinly disguised as lecturing narration.

    So, knowing all of this, how does The Moon is a Harsh Mistress measure up for the contemporary reader?

    Not as well as it once did.

    Oh, I’m willing to concede that it’s still a historically important novel, one that deserved the amount of attention that it got at the time.  Published in 1966, three years before Americans even landed on the Moon, it makes not-entirely-dumb extrapolations about the colonization of the Moon, the development of artificial intelligences, possible warfare scenarios between the Moon and Earth and the development of matriarchal polygamous “line marriages” in a place where men outnumber women 2 to 1.  It’s told vividly thanks to Heinlein’s renowned knack for readable prose (even though he handicaps himself by removing articles from the narration, giving it an interesting Russian-accented flavor) and his unequalled ability to make straight-up exposition and lecturing somehow enjoyable.  Much of the first third of the novel feels like a revolution procedural, complete with ideas on how to organize effectively.

    Unfortunately, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress may be a bit too smart for its own good, especially when seen from a modern perspective.  For once thing, procedurals are only as effective as our belief in their accuracy.  By now, it’s obvious how much of Heinlein’s fiction was informed by his own dogmatic beliefs; we can see him palming the cards, stacking the deck and shutting down objections by claims of authority.  It’s also unfortunate that the novel was so influential in that reacting to it now also includes reacting to its imitators: there have been countless attempts to re-tell lunar revolutions since then, making the novel a major libertarian classic –it’s a bit too easy to (unfairly) argue against libertarianism by arguing against the novel.

    Nonetheless, let’s take a look at the deck-stacking.  Heinlein takes great care to portray his protagonists as unfairly oppressed by an evil colonialist Earth government.  Hearkening back to Australian history, he posits a Moon mostly colonized by prisoners, forced to cultivate grain as a main export.  Neither of those assumptions seem like a viable economic model, especially the idea of having grain (cheap to produce, more useful in bulk) as a main export rather than more profitable products best manufactured in vacuum microgravity –try selling that business plan to would-be moon colonisers and you’ll be laughed out of the room these days.  The Terran influence on the three million lunar colonists (after more than seventy-five years of colonization!) is a curious blend of uninterested custodianship, with no self-government, an implausible lack of communications between Earth and the Moon, and an exploitative economic model that makes practically no sense.  Heinlein somehow portrays this as the vicious impact of government over a libertarian society… which then revolts to become even more libertarian, although not in a social sense but only in an economic sense… wait, what, does this novel even make sense anymore?  At times, I could swear that Heinlein was using TANSTAAFL as a libertarian argument about as effectively as some teenagers shout YOLO.

    So, from a modern perspective, the very foundations of the novel have credibility issues, and that’s not even beginning to climb up the ladder to the novel’s other particularities.  In one of the great plot cheats even attempted, Heinlein tries to make us believe that revolution is going to be a risky thing for the colonists… excepts that he gives them the full powers of an Artificial Intelligence that is in charge of just about anything worth anything on the moon, from shipments to communications to personnel databases.  When much of the plotting for the revolution seems to come up on a whim in-between three people and their all-powerful pet AI, we’re somehow expected to doubt that the revolution’s going to fail once they control the information network.

    So: As much as I’d like to remember The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as “one of the great kick-ass hard-SF novels of all time”, a re-read with a few more years’ hindsight reveals a far more flawed novel than I remembered.  The exposition is more blustering than sensible, the final act a bit more sadistic than warranted, the events obviously manipulated according to the author’s intention to re-create a valorous American Revolution in Spaaace!  The absence of anything looking like an Internet (or, heck, anything like a free press and basic communications between the Moon and the Earth) makes the novel an irremediable historical curiosity, as the past fifty years have taken us in directions far stranger than anything Heinlein set down in his novel. To a contemporary reader, the details of the AI running things are about as quaintly charming as a description of the Arpanet’s early days – punch-cards almost included.

    Still, I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t compare it to the novel of its time.  Heinlein’s “strong female characters” are more informed by his lechery than actual belief in equality of agency (I’m skipping over a number of somewhat icky passages regarding the age and consent of some of the characters…), his portrayal of information technology is a creature of the mainframe world, his willful ignorance of communication networks is required for the novel to work as such, and his didactic tendencies are only a few novel away from spilling out in full cranky solipsism, but The Moon is a Harsh Mistress still holds up better than its contemporaries by a significant margin.  It has scope, daring self-imposed handicaps, an accumulation of technical details and a perspective that at least tries to acknowledge an entire world. This does not ensure that it’s a novel fit to hand to any circa-2014 readers, but it does means that it will remain a historically important SF landmark.

    Still, I emerge from this re-read considerably less enthusiastic about this novel than I did beforehand.  Some of the ideas still hold their own, but most of the others have become historical curios.  The political intent of the novel is intrusive enough to alter the plot in ways that just seem dumb to anyone who doesn’t agree.  And for a novel that left such a good impression years later, I was a bit surprised to find out that it leaves much to be desired as sheer story: Much of the first two-third is exposition upon exposition about an internal revolt whose outcome is practically assured by the aces in the rebels’ pockets, while the rest is told in a surprisingly unengaged fashion.  That few imitators have managed to be as good as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is no assurance that a sufficiently-talented author could improve upon it.  But, please, let’s leave the libertarianism out of it, or at least explore it in a way that doesn’t make any politically-savvy reader want to bang their heads against the nearest wall.

    * * *

    This may as well be the best place to draw a few hasty conclusions about my four-book twentieth-reading-anniversary tour of Heinlein’s Hugo-Winning novels.

    I started out with the best of intentions.  Mocking Heinlein has become a bit of an easy target in today’s online fandom, as older readers tssk-tssk younger ones for not knowing Heinlein, and younger ones aw-c’mon their elders by demonstrating that RAH doesn’t hold up as well as memories suggest.  My self-taught SF education was directly inspired by the old-school, and I have read enough disingenuous cheap-shot condemnations of classic SF novels to last me for a while.  I started the re-read project after making my way through a Heinlein biography, and was partially motivated to do so out of yearning for the same flash of excitement that accompanied most of my early Heinlein experiences.

    Alas, one never steps into the same river twice, and so my reading today is equally informed by the criticism that have been aimed at Heinlein than by the books themselves.  Even being sympathetic to the idea of Heinlein’s novel as historically-important references, inside and outside the SF genre, wasn’t enough to make me ignore the growing issues in considering those books today.  Yes, Heinlein wrote better female characters than most other SF writers of the time.  Today, that’s nowhere near an excuse for how they read on the page.  Sure, Heinlein’s grasp of politics resulted in unusually complex ideas on the nature of self-determination and power.  But today’s models are a bit more complex, and the current perception of Heinlein has to belabour against the imitators and fans that have dumbed down many of his more nuanced ideas.  (Not that Heinlein, at times, was immune to the exasperating tendency of claiming that there were simple solutions to every complex problems –as long as they were his!)  No one is going to take away Heinlein’s importance in the development of the genre’s history, but it’s probably time to acknowledge (putting it bluntly) that he is dead, that his influence is waning and that soon enough, he will be read for historical purposes far more than straight-up entertainment.  (As it happens to nearly all authors.  That we’re still talking about Heinlein 25+ years after his death is a pretty good achievement in itself.)

    As for the four novels themselves, I note that my initial ranking of them would have been something along the lines of Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Double Star and (significantly lower) Stranger in a Strange Land.  (If you want to rank these novels by cultural influence, absent any personal preference, then the order still remains Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and (significantly lower) Double Star.)  After a re-read, the only change in my order of preference would probably to put Double Star first (surprisingly enough), with the other three novels in the same order.  Double Star has aged pretty well, largely because it’s an interesting story well-told (the other books aren’t as strong in terms of story, and suffer from a lot of excess lecturing) and its universe is now so far away from accepted reality that it’s now charmingly quaint and reflective of the SF of the time.  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is probably the book that has suffered the most from a re-read: Like Starship Troopers, I find it more fun to argue against, but while Starship Troopers still had some wit and plausible deniability about its most outlandish statements of opinion-as-fact, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress seems crankier, embittered and easier to dismiss.

    It would be dishonest for me not to acknowledge, despite my misgivings about Heinlein’s novel as read today, that I do admire this quartet of novel, as much for their influence than for their willingness to stake out ideological positions that initially seem so starkly at odd with each other.  That the same man would be able to write novels that would be so respected by groups so different (hippies, soldiers, libertarians, with a side-order of parliamentary monarchy for Double Star) is nothing short of awe-inspiring.  Nothing like it will ever be achieved again.

    I may, for fun, try re-reading those four novels again in twenty years.  Perhaps I’ll arrive at a more nuanced opinion then, perhaps I’ll be even more dismissive of their failings than I was in 2014.  Perhaps social conventions will evolve closer or farther away from those novels.  I don’t know. That’s what makes the prospect of re-visiting them again so exciting.

  • WolfCop (2014)

    WolfCop (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2014)  Experience has taught me to expect the worst from Canadian horror movies, but I keep coming back because of films like WolfCop.  Put together on a shoestring million-dollar budget in slushy Saskatchewan, WolfCop has one undeniable advantage: it’s fully aware of what it’s trying to do, and it’s refreshingly old-school in the techniques it uses to get there.  Seemingly escaped from the era of VHS tapes à la Hobo with a Shotgun, (it even has a self-titled song during the end credit) WolfCop is never embarrassed about its policeman-turned-werewolf premise and ladles on the consequent puns.  (A lot of low-budget films try to indulge in their own insanity, but only WolfCop dares include a Red Riding Hood sex scene.)  The script offers a bit of substance and wit –I particularly liked the stipulation that “the victim” ought to be the village idiot.  There is perhaps too much gratuitous gore, just enough female nudity, definitely too much gratuitous male nudity (including graphic parts of a werewolf transformation that no one should ever see) and an overall feeling of unassuming fun from it all.  Leo Fafard is pretty good as the titular WolfCop named “Lou Garou” (bilingual bonus!)  The script could have shortened the setup in favour of more fun-and-games starring the WolfCop, but writer/director Lowell Dean definitely knows what he’s trying to do here.  While the result isn’t worth shouting about as a modern classic, WolfCop is the kind of film worth watching with a group of B-movie fans, and one that gives a better reputation to Canadian low-budget horror filmmaking.  A sequel is reportedly in the works, and I’m looking forward to it.

  • Maleficent (2014)

    Maleficent (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, November 2014) There have been many, many film transforming classical fairy tales into fully-fledged fantasy epics lately, and it’s in that context that Maleficent scores higher-than-average satisfaction as a modern retelling of Disney’s animated “Sleeping Beauty” through the antagonist’s eyes.  Of course, this is a rehabilitation rather than a subversion: This Maleficent is traumatized by past wrongs, outclassed by a greater evil and proves herself worthy of admiration through a lengthy rehabilitation period during which she does much good.  So it goes, with added feminist parables to make it even more interesting to today’s audiences.  Not much of the story is a surprise once the rehabilitation aspect becomes clear, but it’s executed competently, and Angelina Jolie gets a terrific role befitting her A-list celebrity as the titular character.  What’s more interesting is how pretty Maleficent is: papered almost wall-to-wall with computer-assisted imagery, this is an often-gorgeous fantasy film in which we get more than the ugly monsters and clashing armies so often seen from other fantasy epics.  (We do get the clashing-armies shot, but at the beginning of the film, and so liberated move on to something else.)  While the film is often by-the-numbers, it does have a bit of charm and interest.  Still, be warned: With the body violation subtext running so deeply into the villain-turned heroine’s motivation, this really isn’t a movie for little girls.  For adults, though, Maleficent is something more unusual, and far more interesting than another of those “fairy-tale turned into fantasy epic” movies we’ve seen so often lately.

  • Knights of Badassdom (2013)

    Knights of Badassdom (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2014) The good thing about low-budget filmmaking is the freedom it offers to explore oddball niche topics.  So it is that Knights of Badassdom is all about a sub-segment of geekdom so geeky that even other geeks often dismiss it – Live-Action Role Playing, or LARPing for short.  This film is about such an event, where people dress up as fantasy characters and go hiking around the woods for a few days in an attempt to recreate the spirit of their favorite fantasy games/books/movies.  Here, of course, things are complicated when a spell goes wrong and brings back a succubus into the real world.  As bodies pile up, our heroes have to figure out how to vanquish their foe, and how to do so when surrounded by people convinced that it’s just another wrinkle in the game.  Seemingly designed for the Comic-con crowd, Knights of Badassdom takes a few TV fan favorites (Peter Dinklage, Summer Glau, Ryan Kwanten, etc) and thrown them in the middle of a script sweetened with geeky inside jokes.  To the film’s credit, much of it actually works: While the film is hampered by a small budget, it does actually understand what it’s trying to do, and delivers a few chuckles along the way.  It’s too bad that the film suffers a bit from procedural blandness: in trying to combined comedy with horror, Knights of Badassdom often ends up with a compromise that won’t truly please anyone.  Still, it’s a bit of a wonder to see such a niche film makes its way to cable TV, and remains accessible to people without much of an interest in the subject matter (the sequence where fight scoring is explained, with some visual aid to highlight the hits, is a good example of making the material more accessible.)  It may not be much of a film, but it’s true to its goals and remains reasonably entertaining throughout. 

  • Pompeii (2014)

    Pompeii (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2014) A quick look though this site will show that I have nothing against Paul W.S. Anderson’s blend of action theatrics and simplistic screenplays.  It doesn’t always work (Soldier, ugh), but then again it sometimes does in carefully controlled doses (Event Horizon, the Resident Evil series).  So it is that his Pompeii puts fancy CGI makeup on the familiar body of a catastrophe film and produces something far blander than we’d hoped for.  It’s clear that, for all of the usual hollywoodization of the true story of Pompeii’s volcanic destruction, a lot of work has been spent making the film historically credible.  The re-creation of a roman city is impressive, and publicity surrounding the film assures us that the city’s geography is as historically faithful as modern research allows.  Still, that level of attention to detail doesn’t amount to much when the film’s broad dramatic plot seems lifted from so many familiar sources.  Here’s the brave low-class hero; here’s the forbidden love interest; here’s the despicable villain.  (Kit Harington is just boring as the hero, while Emily Browning goes through the motion as the de-rigueur heroine.  It’s Keifer Sutherland who gets the best performance as a delightfully villainous senator.)  Much of the first hour is interminable as the plot pieces (as thin as they may be) are brought on the table and placed to dramatic effect once the volcano starts erupting.  Things do predictably pick up once the catastrophe starts, and there’s some undeniable visual interest in seeing a city being destroyed with fiery rocks once Vesuvius shows what it’s capable of doing.  The action sequences are staged with skill, making Pompeii fitfully entertaining.  There’s a bit of unusual audacity in the ending, but it doesn’t come with the emotional punch that the filmmakers were hoping for –I’m not sure you can combine camp and pathos in the same vehicle.  Pompeii may come complete with a 3D version, but it’s a surprisingly old-fashion sword-and-sandal catastrophe film, built from familiar plot templates and boring until the destruction starts.  There’s worse out there, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find better.

  • 3 Days to Kill (2014)

    3 Days to Kill (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2014) By now, anything with Luc Besson as a screenwriter should come with its own warning: “Stupid stuff within.”  The problem isn’t that Besson’s name is usually associated with dumb scripts: it’s that the same issues keep coming back: dumb anti-establishment rants, moronic plotting, blatant misogyny and a striking lack of tonal unity that has the films jumping all over the place.  With 3 Days to Kill, writers Besson and Adi Hasak end up reprising the worst aspects of From Paris with Love: no skill in blending comedy with violence, dim-witted characters and plot-lines that would have been laughable thirty years ago.  Here, a CIA agent suffering from a fatal disease is manipulated in executing “one last job” while caring for his estranged daughter.  What follows is an unlikable blend of torture played for laughs, uncomfortable comedy, fish-out-of-water parenting and a portrayal of espionage that makes James Bond movie feel sophisticated.  The film hits its worst moments when it asks us to believe that a character would forget about violent torture in order to help his torturer bond with his daughter… moments after being electrocuted.  Such uneasy blend of jokes in-between deathly serious violence show the tone-deaf sensibilities of either the screenwriters, or fallen-from-grace director McG, whose Charlie’s Angels heydays are nowhere reflected in his recent work –it’s not this or stuff like This Means War that make him look better.  While 3 Days to Kill does briefly come alive during its action sequences (in particular, a chase sequence besides La Seine), much of the film is just inert, flopping aimlessly and failing to get its audience’s sympathy.  Surprisingly enough, Kevin Costner doesn’t emerge too badly from the ongoing train wreck –he’s able to display a certain weary stoicism through it all.  Once really can’t say the same about Amber Heard, playing dress-up as a would-be femme fatale when she’s got the gravitas of half a beach bunny.  (Her character may be badly written, but the way she plays it make it seem even worse.)  It’s refreshing to see Connie Nielsen in a motherly role, but Hailee Steinfeld may want to re-think playing such unlikable brats flouncing without reason.  3 Days to Kill redefines “scattershot” in the way its scenes don’t seem to flow along in the same film, and how it usually privileges the dumb answer to just about any plot question.  The predictable plot twists, stomach-churning “comic” violence really don’t help… but what else have we come to expect from Luc Besson?

  • I, Frankenstein (2014)

    I, Frankenstein (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2014) An intense impression of familiarity is what first emerges from expensive-but-generic action fantasy film I, Frankenstein.  Seemingly built using the same pieces as the Underworld series, Van Helsing and so many other attempts at shoe-horning familiar characters into a generic template, this film has the generic east-European blandness of so many other forgettable urban-fantasy films.  The Manichean mythology is dull, the poor lonely hero is dull, the visuals are dull and there are few surprises along the way to the Big Fight at The End.  Still, I, Frankenstein isn’t a complete dud for a few reasons: The first is Aaron Eckhart, using his square jaw to good effect as the stoic patchwork hero.  The second is writer/director Stuart Beattie, quite a bit better as a director of action sequences than as the screenwriter: While the script is bland, some of the fight sequences are handled with a decent amount of fluidity and lengthy takes.  Bill Nighy does a little bit of scenery-nibbling as the villain, but not enough to become a memorable antagonist.  While the film has thematic ambitions, most of those lose themselves in meaningless nonsense, especially whenever the film tries to claim that its hero is soulless. (What does that even mean?)  The humorlessness of I, Frankenstein doesn’t contribute to any enjoyable campiness, leaving very little as a feature when the film can’t emerge from its downbeat muck.  Too bad for Eckhart (who hasn’t really broken through as a big star despite a few great performances), but too bad for viewers as well, served reheated fantasy leftovers as if they were somehow important.

  • Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)

    Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2014) My motives were a bit superficial in wanting to watch Better Luck Tomorrow: writer/director Justin Lin went on to direct several installments in the Fast & Furious series, which featured a charismatic character named Han as played by Sung Kang.  I’d heard that Lin’s first film featured the same actor playing a similar (perhaps identical) character and wanted from where both the director and the character came from.  But Better Luck Tomorrow ends up being a somewhat likable high-school crime drama, featuring well-off Asian-American teenagers turning to criminal activities in order to spice up their overachieving lifestyle.  It’s funny and sympathetic up to the point where things turn dark and ugly, but this depiction of characters often glimpsed as stereotypes in other teenager movies feels fresh and interesting.  There are a few laughs, a few cringes and a few moments of condemnation for the characters turning bad.  The slide into serious crime is as shocking as the characters are engaging when they’re merely being bad boys.  Lin’s direction is stylish and engaging (especially considering the limited budget of the film) and the young actors all do good work.  Sung Kang does play a younger “Han” with understated cool, while Parry Shen anchors the film as the protagonist and Karin Anna Cheung plays a love interest with quite a bit more depth than you’d expect.  All in all, Better Luck Tomorrow ends up being a much better experience than simply answering a trivia question about Justin Lin and Sung Kang

  • 12 Years a Slave (2013)

    12 Years a Slave (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2014) My life circumstances at the moment mean that I rarely get to watch a film from beginning to end, uninterrupted: I often have to watch films in 30-minutes intervals and while that usually annoys me, it proved to be a relief in taking in 12 Years a Slave, as unflinching and dismaying a depiction of slavery in the antebellum American south as anything we’ve seen on-screen –at least since the deliberately more exploitative Django Unchained.  The true story of a black free man kidnapped and pressed into service for more than a decade away from his family, 12 Years a Slave is designed to be infuriating and depressing at once.  Once stuck in the slavery system, our protagonist gets no say over his well-being; in fact, the first thing he understands is that the truth will not set him free, and may serve to kill him.  The second thing we viewers learn is that a system of slavery means that everyone is prisoner of that system; even kind and god-fearing people are beholden to its requirements, making any escape seem remote.  Director Steve McQueen never shies away from the shocking moments, and sometimes even designs his films to confront viewers with the horrors of the situation: witness the agonizing minutes-long hanging shot, or the uninterrupted whipping sequence.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is excellent in the lead role, but the film benefits from strong supporting performances by the likes of Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano and Brad Pitt, who serves as the audience’s conscience by playing a Canadian.  I tend to expect the worst from movies that play up their social-conscience themes, but 12 Years a Slave shows self-confident filmmaking savvy, and stands out as a fantastic piece of work even with the harsh subject matter.  Don’t miss it, even if you have to take a break from the horror once in a while.

  • Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

    Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2014) The horror genre has a long history of great films leading to so-so sequels, and Insidious 2 is now part of that tradition.  Insidious made a mark partly by being one of the first good American horror movie in a while that wasn’t trying to rely on found-footage tropes, and it heralded a number of similar or better movies in its wake, from Sinister to The Conjuring.  Still, it wasn’t without its flaws, and this sequel seems to dwell at length on those less successful aspects while throwing in a number of old clichés.  Oh, so a cross-dressing serial killer is the big bad guy of the series?  Let me get my fainting salts.  In overall impact, Insidious 2 cranks down the dial from Good to Average with far more conventional thrills and a familiar formula.  (Keep in mind, though, that the titular “Chapter 2” is there for a reason: this is absolutely not a stand-alone sequel, and it is best seen immediately after the first film.)  There are still plenty of things to like –including going back in time to explain goose-bumps from the first film, acknowledging its own absurdity with a well-placed “So that’s what it was all about”, an effective jump-shot explaining what the phantom piano-playing meant, and finding a more-than-adequate younger counterpart for Lin Shaye in Lindsay Seim.  Shaye once again steals the spotlight during her short appearance, while Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne do what is expected of them (though Wilson has a harder dual role to manage).  Meanwhile, director James Wan continues to perfect his technique: this follow-up is a bit less blunt in its scares than its predecessor.  By the time the shock-ending title card rolls around, we’ve seen enough to be entertained, but not quite enough to be impressed: Insidious 2 gets credits for being an acceptable follow-up, but it’s far more ordinary that it should have been.

  • The Monuments Men (2014)

    The Monuments Men (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2014) As much as I like the topic of The Monuments Men, as much as I find its actors likable, as much as I appreciate the attempt to deliver an old-school WW2 drama that eschews action theatrics in favor of more subtle motivations (all the way to “does saving art justify personal sacrifice?”), I don’t think that this film is as good as it could have been.  It’s hard, of course, to condense a real-world story as big as the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program into a short entertaining piece of Hollywood cinema, but The Monuments Men often takes shortcuts that ring false, and remains sedate when it should be a bit more energetic.  This is writer/director/star George Clooney’s movie, and so a bit of the blame should go to him: his genial, middle-of-the-road approach to the material ends up feeling unfocused and dull.  The script has no choice than to go to episodic scenes, but many of them simply lead nowhere and don’t build upon each other.  The comedy clashes against the drama rather than support it, and it’s hard to say whether this should have been better as a snappy 90-minutes thriller or as a longer TV miniseries.  The Monuments Men does build some narrative tension late in the proceedings, but much of its first half is one-thing-after-another episodes with stock characters and familiar situations.  But while the film may not best attain its own noble ambitions, there’s something quaintly charming, even comforting about the way it is put together: Big-name movie stars, classical direction, clean cinematography and straightforward plotting.  The film wears its idealistic convictions right where everyone can see them, and makes little attempt to humanize its enemies.  (The best scene even climaxes with a sarcastic “Heil Hitler!”)  And then there are the actors, from Clooney indulging into his familiar old-school movie star charisma, to Matt Damon once again being a good sport (trust me: his French in the film truly is atrocious, but not in ways that can be blamed on Montréal), Bill Murray warping time and space through sheer coolness, and a lengthy list of known names all playing along.  The Monuments Men ends up in that vexing netherworld where it can be both disappointing yet entertaining at the same time, a comfort film that feels a bit too long and disjointed for its own sake.

  • Insidious (2010)

    Insidious (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2014) Having missed Insidious in theaters, then on DVD, then on Cable TV even as its reputation grew as a good example of recent American horror, I found myself playing catch-up late at night, finally finding out for myself was the fuss was about.  As it turns out, Insidious isn’t too bad, but director James Wan’s follow-up The Conjuring is a bit better and thus retroactively colors Insidious‘ impact.  Both movies have similar starting points, with families in new houses being imperilled by demonic forces and semi-professional helpers coming to help them.  But it’s the execution that counts, and while The Conjuring did well with a soft-spoken acceleration of horrors, Insidious is quite a bit blunter in how it marks scares with big musical stings.  Much of the first hour feels conventional, as innocent people (and audiences) are progressively spooked by strange happenings.  But there are hints that something weirder is at play, and by the time the last half-hour moves from haunted house to possessed bodies to astral travel, Insidious becomes interesting in ways that most horror movies third acts usually don’t.  Still, that final half-hour is also in many ways the silliest, as the film’s ambitions run against its budget, and the literalization of some metaphors (coupled with a more frenetic rhythm) doesn’t quite work as intended.  Once the monster is to be shown, part of the mystique disappears.  Still, it’s quite a bit better than your average horror movie, and it benefits from a couple of good performances: Patrick Wilson is fine as the everyday-man protagonist with a secret, while Rose Byrne delivers exactly the expected as the suffering wife, but it’s really Lin Shaye who steals the spotlight as a paranormal expert who knows far too much.  Effective scares and jumps and creepy hints all cleverly pepper the film, and the result is enjoyable.  Still, in retrospect Insidious may be most noteworthy as a bridge to other better films, from Sinister to The Conjuring.

  • 47 Ronin (2013)

    47 Ronin (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2014) It’s not that 47 Ronin is an entirely bad movie.  Its visuals are spectacular, its intentions are laudable and its actors do well.  But despite the vast budget and the strong technical credentials, the film feels almost unbelievably… dull.  Part of the issue seems to be meddling with the original story of the forty-seven Ronin: despite the addition of a half-Japanese protagonist and supernatural elements, nothing seems to raise the pulse of the film beyond the bare minimum of what an adventure is supposed to deliver to viewers.  In keeping with the original, the conclusion is a downer, which does seem curious after a story that has been re-thought to include standard Hollywood tropes.  At least one can revel in the visuals: the costumes are colorful, the CGI-enhanced camera swoops across the landscape, and some (only some) of the special effects are well-used.  Rinko Kikuchi is the film’s standout performer as a villainous witch: it’s a bit of a shame that the rest of the film doesn’t measure up to her crazy energy.  Otherwise, 47 Ronin is a fairly boring affair, neither historically accurate to be respectable, nor energetic enough to be enjoyable as a purely entertaining pop-corn romp.  Carl Rinsch’s direction becomes incoherent the moment things start moving too quickly, and while the images are pretty, they’re not backed by flowing continuity: The story clunks without grace and the script doesn’t deliver much in terms of payoffs.  There’s an odd feeling of mismatched sensibilities about Hollywood taking on the Forty-seven Ronin legend: I would have much rather seen a made-in-Japan film about the subject that a Westernized version with Keanu Reeves (far too old for the role, and playing it with his usual lack of affect) forced into it.  If someone ever wonders how some film simply “don’t click”, 47 Ronin is as good an example as any.

  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

    Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2013) Marvel Studios sure has been on a roll lately; exception made of the dull Thor movies, their last few films haven’t merely played the superhero-blockbuster movie theme as well as it could, but they’ve started playing around with the formula in ways that could be considered risky.  So it is that Captain America 2 goes well beyond its predecessor, taking on the style of a contemporary techno-thriller, destroying some of the foundations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far and piling up revelations about the entire Marvel series.  It’s standard superhero stuff, but it’s so exceptionally well-made, and takes such unnecessary chances that a less confident studio would have avoided, that it can’t help but earn a lot of sympathy.  Making fullest use of Chris Evans’ enduring charm, Captain America 2 also gives bigger roles to Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanov and Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury: both prove equal to the greater scrutiny.  (And that’s without mentioning the plum role given to Robert Redford, in a nod to his place in 1970s political thrillers, or Anthony Mackie once again making full use of his limited time in a supporting role.)  (Oh, and George St-Pierre bring a welcome –if incongruous- French-Canadian accent to the film.) The title character adapts well to the current era, but the dilemmas of the contemporary surveillance/intelligence state aren’t a good match for someone forged in 1940s idealism, and it’s those themes, even cursorily tackled, that give interesting depths to Captain America 2 as more than just an action film.  Still, even on a moment-to-moment basis, directors Anthony and Joe Russo show a really good eye for what makes great action sequences: fluid camera work, movement with weight, solid sound design and clever moments all contribute to making Captain America 2 one of the best-directed action movie in recent memory: the extended car chase is particularly good, as is the elevator fight sequence. (In-between the other Phase 2 films, let’s give credit to Marvel Studio for its choices as it picks lesser-known directors for major movies.) Other fascinating bits and pieces pepper the film, from a deliciously mainframe-punk Artificial Intelligence reprising a character from the first film, to the big and small details tying this film to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe.  It’s an impressive piece of work, whether it’s considered on a moment-by-moment basis or as part of a series that now sports seven other entries.  At a time where DC can’t manage to complete even one fully satisfying superhero movie, it’s a bit amazing to see Marvel so successfully achieve the insanely ambitious plan they forged years ago, at a time when even planning a trilogy was a bit crazy.

  • Antisocial (2013)

    Antisocial (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) “Yet another zombie movie” would normally have me roll my eyes as, well, yet another zombie movie at a time where we’ve gone well beyond saturation point on those, but Antisocial has a few things going for it.  The first being an attempt at melding horror with social criticism of (as it were) social networks.  In this case, a New Year’s Eve celebration turns horrific as the world is ravaged by an epidemic whose source turns out to be internet-driven.  While not staggeringly new (hello, The Signal, Pulse, Cell), that’s a high concept in itself (as the apocalypse plays out as status updates and videos from beyond the closed quarters of the setting), but writer/director Cody Calahan has an eye for horror at a basic level, and so Antisocial manages a few effective sequences along the way, whether we’re talking about Christmas-light flickering death or rusty basement self-lobotomy.  There’s a bit of self-aware humor among the low-budget limitations of the film, and while the acting isn’t particularly noteworthy, lead Michelle Mylett doesn’t do too badly and develops her screen presence as the film goes on.  The rest of the film could have been better (as in; more interesting characters, tighter pacing, more artful exposition), but Antisocial gets a few credits as a cheap and effective horror film with a few bigger-than-average ideas.  The sequel is reportedly in production, which may help in developing said bigger-than-average ideas into something more substantial.