Reviews

  • The Legend of Sarila (2013)

    The Legend of Sarila (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014)  Even considered as a movie aimed at kids, The Legend of Sarila has its rough spots: the computer animation is primitive compared to what we’re used to see from bigger studios, the direction is sometimes off, the script is hobbled by obvious dialogue and the story doesn’t have any surprises.  Still, this is one of those films that make even jaded reviewers wary of too much negativity: Taking place in the Canadian North and featuring Inuit characters, The Legend of Sarila has a considerable amount of home-grown charm.  The focus on Inuit culture, mythology and traditional ways of living (even simplified for purposes of a film) is unusual enough; the fact that it was almost entirely put together using Canadian talent is inspiring.  So it is that it’s hard to be overly harsh on The Legend of Sarila: it’s the kind of film that exemplifies why we have cultural financing in this country.  I’m even glad that it was partially financed using public dollars.  Just don’t ask me to pretend that it’s up to par with other computer-animated films that cost ten times as much.

  • Venus & Vegas (2010)

    Venus & Vegas (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014)  The problem with low-budget comedies is that when they’re not particularly well-handled, they can become ridiculous in ways that take away from their intent.  Venus & Vegas is definitely a low-budget film.  Alas, this low-budget translates not in cheap locations (the Vegas footage is actually impressive) as much as in ill-conceived sequences, bad staging, actors mugging for the camera without a strong director to rein them in, and a script that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself.  Donald Faison isn’t too bad as the nominal leader of a trio of small-time robbers dealing with romantic complications, but the rest of the actors are either a bit too enthusiastic or not being told which register they should aim for: As a result, Venus & Vegas often challenges basic suspension of disbelief with over-acting, unconvincing blocking and sitcom-level writing.  It doesn’t help that the female characters are plot devices, that the direction is bland and that the ending is rushed.  Fortunately, it does remain a comedy with a sympathetic atmosphere throughout: it’s hard to be mad at a film so eager to please.  Still, a pleasant moment or two isn’t quite enough to pretend that Venus & Vegas is anything but a low-budget comedy that occasionally hits its mark.

  • Solomon Kane (2009)

    Solomon Kane (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014)  I applaud any attempt to bring pulp heroes back to life through modern movies, but if the result is going to be as limp and by-the-numbers as Solomon Kane… I can wait a while longer.  It’s especially damning given that the first five minutes of the film suggest a far more engaging experience than what we actually get.  Here’s a hint: If you have a swashbuckling hero, it’s a good idea not to restrain him with a pacifist oath for the first half of the film.  While technically well-made and visually convincing, Solomon Kane simply goes nowhere for much of an hour, and the resulting lack of energy almost kills the film.  James Purefoy (looking eerily like Hugh Jackman) isn’t too bad as the hero, and it is kind-of interesting to see veterans like Max von Sydow and Pete Postlethwaite in small roles.  Still, much of the film is overly contemplative when it should be far more action-driven: Promised a pulp hero, we’re stuck with a brooding anti-hero dabbling in nonviolence.  I don’t mind a bit of depth and introspection, but writer/director Michael J. Bassett takes it too far.  By the time the action moves to castle heroics late in the film, it’s too late and too bland to impress –the slight revelations twists are obvious early on, and the film doesn’t take too many chances on its way to a conclusion.  It’s not a bad film for its budget, but it is blander than it should have been –the fact that it was completed in 2009 and made its American cable-TV debut five years later does hint at how unspectacular the result is.

  • Lock-In, John Scalzi

    Lock-In, John Scalzi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2014, 336 pages, $28.99 hc, ISBN 978-0765375865

    I had no intention to read Lock-In so quickly after its publication date.

    I knew that I would read it eventually, of course.  In barely more than ten years, John Scalzi has become a best-selling SF author on the strength of a series of novels executing classic concepts with clear prose and smart-ass dialogue.  His fiction usually feature an easy-to-read mixture of light-hearted action that have made him difficult to avoid in any serious discussion of the current state-of-the-genre. (His strong Internet presence doesn’t hurt either.) His novels sell widely, earn decent reviews and regularly show up on the Hugo ballot.  I have a foot-long shelf full of hardcover Scalzi novels dating back to his debut Old Man’s War, and I knew that I would eventually get around to Lock-In.  Just not so soon, given my lack of time, overflowing to-read stacks and busy life in general.  Also: Lock In deals with locked-in syndrome, the kind of nightmare fuel that seems so far away from the lighthearted entertainment I’ve come to expect from Scalzi.

    Then I woke up one morning with the worst acute torticollis of my life.  Reduced to lying down on the couch, any movement causing severe neck pain feeding back on itself in a spiral of spasms… my life quickly dwindled down to me, the couch and whatever portable device I was able to lift in front of my eyes.

    Suddenly, Lock-In became far more relevant.  Thanks to the modern wonders of Wi-Fi and eBooks, I didn’t even have to get up to purchase it.  And so, for a while, I could forget the pain by reading about disabled people using remote bodies to live their life.

    Lock In begins two decades after an epidemic (“Hayden’s syndrome”) that leaves millions of people “locked in” their own bodies, fully conscious but unable to move.  This having led to a massive research and development program, the future of Lock In features auxiliary bodies (“threeps”) in which locked-in victims are able to work and play.  Society is still adapting to this systematic separation of body and self, with further adjustments anticipated when the US government passes a bill ending the major financial incentives and government-sponsored programs that have led to such a technological revolution.

    Against this larger backdrop, our protagonist Chris is a newly-minted police agent who quickly gets to experience a major case.  Except that Chris is a mini-celebrity by virtue of having been a visible early victim of Hayden’s syndrome and having a famous father.

    When clues pile up that a simple murder case has wider and wider ramification, Lock In becomes an exemplary procedural SF thriller in which we get to explore a new future through the lens of a criminal case.  There are plenty of precedents to this kind of SF novel, from Asimov’s Caves of Steel to Kevin J. Anderson’ Hopscotch to Sean Williams’ The Resurected Man to (more relevantly) the comic book series The Surrogates –SF, identity issues and criminal cases have long enjoyed a beneficial relationship.  Not that this an easy kind of SF to write: Novels of this type have a tendency to mine the possibilities of a change until everything has been exposed by the end of the novel, leaving the impression of a very small universe.  Or they depend on implausible technological innovation and economic models, leaving the impression of a half-baked imaginary setting.

    Fortunately, Lock In does it better than most: The rapid change in technology in barely two decades is explained away by Manhattan-Project-scale investments by the American government, the free-market forces shown at work in the novel are clearly patterned from the real world, and there’s a good degree of granularity and texture to the end-state, quite unlike some naive SF futures.  I still have a number of vexing questions about the adoption, or mandated lack thereof, of threeps for non-Hayden victims (including their use by military forces), but those tend to be second-order questions that aren’t immediately obvious from the story that Scalzi is telling.  Better yet is the feeling that not all of this future’s secrets have been revealed by the end of the book, keeping it credible at best, and at worst open to a lengthy series of sequels.

    As for my early hesitations about the doom and gloom of reading about locked-in characters, I shouldn’t have worried: Scalzi is just as entertaining here, as the story picks up years after the mass trauma of the Hayden’s syndrome epidemic, and at a point when victims are no so locked-in.  This is an upbeat novel, often truly funny and at other times enlivened with spectacular action.  It’s a fast and easy read, and while I’m not overly happy about the linear way the story ends (or the way some early info-dumps are handled by dialogue rather than narration), it’s a book with good set-pieces and vigorous extrapolation throughout.

    There’s also a bit of depth here that may not be obvious as readers race through the novel.  I was impressed, for instance, to see that Lock In does manage to address a number of issues relevant to disabled people (including the very notion that a disability is a disability), a group that is rarely represented in mainstream SF.  Other questions of identity abound, including something that I completely missed during my read-through: the gender identity of the narrator is never revealed, and in fact seems a bit irrelevant.  (Being named Chris and knowing that Scalzi is male, I naturally defaulted to “male” in identifying the narrator, a viewpoint that seemed bolstered by a few later anecdotes that code themselves as male to me.  But there is no textual evidence in the text to indicate for sure that Chris is male.)  Why I’m not usually interested by such games of narrative identity (see, for instance, my non-impressed reaction to Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice), the beauty of Lock In is that you can, like me, read through the book and never even notice that it’s there.  Well done.

    My torticollis ultimately lasted a bit longer than my experience with Lock-In (sleep carefully, readers!), but during that time it was hard to avoid noticing the novel making an appearance on the New York Times best-seller list.  I’m sure that a Hugo nomination will follow: Scalzi is one of the top SF writers of the moment and books such as Lock In, more ambitious than many of his previous novels, will keep him actively engaged in the discussion that is genre fiction.  If my neck was in any shape to do so, I’d nod appreciatively.

  • Escape Plan (2013)

    Escape Plan (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014)  Once upon a time, in the early nineties, a film featuring both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone would have been An Event fit to explode all box-office records, fannish expectations and critical snark.  Now, more than twenty years later, Escape Plan is… just another action B-movie, anchored by familiar faces but not nearly as earth-shattering as it could have been.  It probably doesn’t help that the film revolves around Stallone (rarely a good actor, now increasingly ridiculous in his mumbling old age) and a rather hum-drum plot the likes of which we’ve seen a few times already.  The action sequences are limp (although two of the fight scenes offer the expected pleasure of seeing Stallone and Schwarzenegger trade a few body-blows), the villains are bland and the film doesn’t build up to much more than the obvious conclusion.  Sure, there’s a few twists and turns and flashy “here’s how I did it” explanations… but the film simply has the feel of a low-budget action movie that just happens to feature two of the biggest box-office stars of two decades ago.  Escape Plan has the merit of not being actively bad or unpleasant, just not as distinctive as it should have been considering the past caliber of its stars.

  • The Divide (2011)

    The Divide (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014) Every so often, the jaded reviewer that I am is pushed out of his complacency by an extraordinarily dislikable film.  Lately, I’ve been feeling increasingly irritated by nihilistic horror films: I can’t see their reason to exist, and having to go through 90 minutes of bleakness to be told another variation on “they all died” at the end is infuriating when even freeing up half an hour of my time to watch movies is a challenge.  This, obviously, brings us to The Divide, a pointless post-apocalyptic horror film in which unpleasant characters do terrible things to one another until only one is left.  To be fair, the opening sequence is pretty good (as residents of a Brooklyn apartment building see nuclear destruction rain down and force their way to a basement bunker) and the first half-hour suggested a much bigger film opening up.  But as The Divide turns inward after an unexplainably early jaunt outside the bunker, things get less and less interesting as torture, rape and murder come to dominate the proceedings.  Our heroine is one by default, being the only one not actively trying to inflict harm on others.  Not that there are any credible alternatives, given the way nearly everyone turns cartoonish psychotic.  Successive deaths come as a relief to the viewer as they hint at a film that will end out of lack of characters.  While Xavier Gens doesn’t do all badly as the director, there are some very dumb decisions baked into the script, from a first-act escapade outside the bunker that is then ignored for the rest of the film, unanswered questions, limp characters and an ending that doesn’t resolve anything as much as it stops out of bodies to ruin.  Intense? Perhaps –although my attention wandered during the increasingly bleak second half.  (How bleak? Well –and there’s no nice way to put this– a character is raped to death.) I’d rather call it meditative, although not in the sense that the filmmakers intended: As the onscreen ugliness intensified, my attention wandered to all that is good and beautiful about our world.  Life’s too short and beautiful to suffer through nihilistic trash like this.  I’ll take any meaningless romantic comedy over a second viewing of The Divide.

  • After the Dark aka The Philosophers (2013)

    After the Dark aka The Philosophers (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014) Now here’s something unusual: A framing story set in a philosophy class being used as pretext to present three different scenarios of post-apocalyptic survival.  As the seemingly logic-driven teacher plays head games with his students, interactions between the scenarios and the framing story become more obvious, logic is challenged by passion and we get a hefty dose of ethics and morality along the way.  Not bad, even though much of the interplay between the classroom and the scenarios could have been strengthened, even though the setup of logic as the enemy to be defeated is tiresome, even though some characters are given severe short thrift, and even though the ending becomes increasingly atonal as comedy and melancholy each compete for attention.  Still, After the Dark has a pretty good sense of humor, indulges into elaborate games of philosophy, upends tedious lifeboat ethics lessons and becomes, reassuringly enough, a rare example of humanist post-apocalyptic fiction.  Writer/director John Huddles should be proud of the result. The appealingly multiracial cast is used effectively, with Sophie Lowe acting a luminous beacon of empathy against the logical mind-games of James D’Arcy’s teacher character and Daryl Sabara getting the film’s biggest laugh near the end.  It’s an unconventional film in many ways, but it does linger on questions rarely addressed in any other ways, and gets honorable Science-Fiction credentials for its willingness to play with big ideas on a restrained scale.

  • Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

    Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014) I disliked several aspects of the original Kick-Ass, so in saying that this sequel isn’t as bad merely means that I’m not as repulsed by the results.  Not that it’s all that better: the same hypocrisy that permeated the original is on full display here, as an attempt to somehow satirize superheroes conventions ends up doing exactly the same thing, except with extra puerile arrogance.  Kick-Ass 2 seems inordinately pleased with its ability to swear as much at it likes, or to indulge is as much pointless violence.  The film isn’t merely hobbled by its male gaze –it’s made actively unpleasant by its teenaged male gaze: When more mature viewers are already convinced that taking up a superhero identity is for idiots, the film’s inevitable attempt to show normalcy turning on the characters is far more annoying than satisfying.  There are a few good things to say about the film’s younger actors (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Chloë Grace Moretz have all grown up a bit since the previous film, and it generally suits them) but Jeff Wadlow’s direction is far more ordinary than Matthew Vaughn’s work in the first film, and whatever shocking qualities the original had are here dispersed into a multiplicity of calculated subplots shot indifferently.  So: not as unpleasant, but still not good.  Hopefully there will never be a third film.

  • American Grindhouse (2010)

    American Grindhouse (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2014) Given the renewed interest in self-aware exploitation filmmaking lately (largely thanks to the Tarantino/Rodriguez 2007 film Grindhouse), American Grindhouse offers a quick and entertaining primer on the history of seedy disreputable filmmaking.  A talking-head documentary with a copious amount of footage, the film reaches back to the beginning of cinema and makes its way to the present in describing the evolution of less-respectable cinema, ending with the somewhat surprising conclusion that exploitation cinema merged with the mainstream sometime during the seventies as blockbusters such as Jaws took on the lessons of grindhouse cinema.  (I’m not so sure –there is alternative cinema everywhere still, although I’ll agree that it’s harder to define as a single coherent entity against a non-existent mainstream)  The footage shown and movies discussed are enough to provide anyone with a list of must-see titles, while the various people interviewed collectively reinforce the film’s various theses and explain various topics.  (The best interviewee has to be director John Landis, as profane and entertaining as he is knowledgeable.)  Writer/Director Elijah Drenner has done a pretty good job of condensing decades of social changes in a mere 80 minutes, illuminating a number of sub-genres along the way.  Everyone will be reassured to learn that a film describing lurid movies features equally-lurid footage.  American Grindhouse is definitely worth a look, especially if you’re already sympathetic to the subject.

  • The Nut Job (2014)

    The Nut Job (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2014) The good news are that the universe of computer-generated movies is expanding, allowing newer players to compete against the Pixar/Dreamworks powerhouses of the field.  Of course, this is an unfair comparison for most of the new players out there: it takes time, money and expertise to develop animation studios and the best one can hope from new payers is a decent showing.  Which is why even if Toonbox/Redrover’s Canadian/South Korean collaboration The Nut Job may not amount to much more than a semi-successful attempt to deliver an animated animal adventure for kids, it’s perhaps more interesting for what it promises next than for what it delivers now.  There’s certainly a number of dumb decisions built into the script itself: While the need for a protagonist that emotionally evolves along the course of a story is understandable, there’s no reason to make this protagonist as purely unpleasant as he is.  The script has occasional moments of brilliance (interweaving scenes, cleverly exploiting the elements initially set up), but it doesn’t quite have the flow and sustained build-up of better animated films.  The Nut Job opens itself up to all sorts of second-guessing from an audience wondering why the characters don’t use other means to get to achieve their goals, and the roughness of its edges doesn’t gain it any sympathy points.  By the time the credits roll, we’re more confounded by the instantly-dated decision to include a computer-animated Psy dancing to “Gangnam Style” alongside the film’s animal characters than anything else.  As an avowed fan of squirrels, I’m all for movies featuring one of them as a main character –but it would be even better if I could cheer for him throughout rather than wait for the last-act redemption.  Still, let’s see what’s next from Toonbox/Redrover.

  • Nested Scrolls: The Autobiography of Rudolf Von Bitter Rucker, Rudy Rucker

    Nested Scrolls: The Autobiography of Rudolf Von Bitter Rucker, Rudy Rucker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2011, 336 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 0-765-32752-X

    Despite having head more than half a dozen of Rudy Rucker’s books, I can’t say that I’m much of a fan of him as an author: While I have enjoyed the first half of many of his novels, Rucker writes weird and there’s usually a point somewhere in the narrative where my suspension of disbelief smashes against his surrealism and breaks, after which I can’t (or won’t) make sense of the rest.  I’ve seen the pattern repeat all the way from Master of Space and Time to Hylozoic, and even within his best-known Ware tetralogy.  I suspect that I’m far too square to be the ideal audience for his novels, and I’m fine with that.

    Still, it’s hard to come away from a Rucker novel and not feel that the author himself is a character sorely in need to be the hero of his own book, and that’s exactly what we get with his autobiography.  Motivated by a cardiovascular near-death experience in early 2008, Nested Scrolls is Rucker’s attempt to make sense of his experiences so far, a warm and wonderful trip through a rich life.

    Going into the autobiography, I didn’t know much about Rucker beyond his back-cover blurbs and that’s for the best as it allows for surprises, fortuitous discoveries and the basic suspense of wondering what would transform Rucker from an underperforming student to an elder SF-writing Computer Sciences professor.

    It starts out leisurely enough, with a lengthy section detailing Rucker’s childhood and adolescence –a section that many biographies usually skip out of irrelevance.  But Rucker’s memories of growing up in a small Midwestern city hold some nostalgic value, and the deceptively simple prose (“It was great.”) sets the tone for the rest of the book.

    Things do get more interesting as Rucker enters university and gradually develops an ambition to become a beatnick SF writer, more interested in SF because of its innate potential for surrealism than anything else.  The first few years of Rucker’s post-graduate career take us to a few places within the US and Germany before he comes to settle down in Silicon Valley just in time for the nineties high-tech boom.  Along the way he becomes a punk rocker, a professor, a popular science writer, a computer programmer, a father of three children and (oh yes) the beatnick SF writer he wanted to become.

    I was most interested by those chapters set in the early nineties where he becomes involved with the geek culture of the time.  Rucker, as it turned out, was involved in many of the things that fascinated me back then, from cellular automata, fractals, virtual reality and cyberpunk. (He even edited the Mondo 2000 book that I so distinctly remember reading back in 1993!)  That, plus the chapters in which he discusses his perennial outsider status within the SF genre community, were the sections of the book that spoke the most directly to me.

    But there are other, more heartfelt passages that I also found compelling.  Rucker mentions the issues that he had with mind-altering substances (mostly alcohol, but also soft drugs) before deciding to give them up when they proved more troublesome than they were worth.  Most positively, his descriptions of family life are heart-warming, especially in describing his early days with three children, and the way they transformed into fully-independent adults with lives of their own –one of the most affecting passages late in the book describes their rare get-togethers now that they span three generations, and how Rucker himself can draw upon his memories to see across five generations, the same people occupying different roles.  By the end of the book, Rucker is retired, a grandfather many times over, happy with what he has achieved and curious to see what’s next.

    SF readers familiar with his body of work will enjoy the descriptions of the creative process that led to his novels, and especially how his “transrealism” approach involves writing autobiographical passages that are transformed by the inclusion of frankly science-fictional elements.  I can testify first-hand about readers recoiling in confusion while reading his books, but Nested Scrolls goes a long way toward explaining why Rucker writes such surreal science-fiction, and why this very surrealism is at the core of the Rucker literary experience.  In many ways, Nested Scrolls exactly fulfills the ambition of all biographies: tell their lives and explain their subject, making us more sympathetic to them.  I have never met Rucker (although we’ve been to the same SF convention at least once) but if I ever do, it’s this autobiography more than his novels that would make me shake his hand and say “well-done.”

  • Homefront (2013)

    Homefront (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2014) Another six months, another Jason Statham movie.  Here he is again in the utterly-generically-named Homefront, playing a cop with rough methods, this time with the slight twist that he’s supposed to be retired and living easy somewhere in the Louisiana countryside.  It doesn’t work out that way, of course: a bullying incident involving his daughter escalates and brings him to the attention of the local meth lord, who in turn goes and involves an even bigger mob boss with scores to settles.  It leads predictably into the kind of mayhem we expect from Statham movies.  So what is different from this one?  Not much, but Homefront has qualities to appreciate:  The Louisiana scenery is nice.  Rachelle Lefevre gets another small but likable role as a sympathetic schoolteacher.  Statham is up to his usual standards as a dad trying to protect his daughter from harm.  But it’s James Franco who gets the most distinctive role, bringing his usual lack of intensity to a reluctant meth kingpin antagonist.  Winona Rider also gets a small role as a waitress with ambitions.  Still, this is another one of Statham’s archetypical roles, and this continuation of his usual screen persona is successful in that it neither challenges nor undermines his position as an action star.  The workmanlike direction is good enough without being in any way impressive, which is roughly what’s to expect from Statham vehicles.  Homefront doesn’t amount to much of a film, but it’s entertaining enough in its own generic way.  Of course, it’s going to be hard to remember it in a few days, let alone after it blurs into a string of so many similar Statham films.

  • Rush (2013)

    Rush (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2014)  Given the speed and excitement of Formula 1 racing, it’s a wonder that there aren’t more movies about the sport.  Considering Rush, though, the wait has been worth it: Easily eclipsing 2001’s Driven, this historical bio-drama has everything we’d wish for in a racing film, and strong historical accuracy as a bonus.  Centered around the 1976 Formula 1 season in which British racer Daniel Hunt competed against Austrian legend Nikki Lauda, Rush is an actor’s showcase, a convincing period recreation, a virtuoso blend of special effects and crackling good drama.  Expertly directed by Ron Howard, it’s gripping from the very first moments, pitting a charismatic playboy and a valorous technician against each other.  Howard’s direction doesn’t stay still for long, and does a fine job at summarizing an eventful season’s worth of incidents into a striking whole.  The atmosphere of the high-flying 1970s Formula 1 circuit is impressively conveyed, including impressive race sequences with period cars. (Was is done with CGI or practical?  It doesn’t matter when the film is that good.)  Much of Rush‘s effectiveness boils down to its two lead actors: Chris Hemsworth makes full use of his charisma as the seductive Hunt, his brashness clashing against the methodical Lauda very well-played by Daniel Bruhl.  The two make for compelling rivals, and Rush makes maximum use of their conflict in allowing us a peek into the mind of top-notch race drivers.  As exciting for its dialogue scenes than for its racing action, Rush may not look like much on paper, but becomes steadily engrossing without any effort from the viewer. 

  • Closed Circuit (2013)

    Closed Circuit (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2014)  It may or may not be a trend, but I’ve now seen three post-9/11 British thrillers about terrorism in the past 18 months (Dirty War, Cleanskin and now Closed Circuit), and they all eventually end up concluding that their secret services are to be feared just as much as the terrorists.  The setup, in Closed Circuit‘s case, promises a bit less than full-blown paranoia: As the case against a terrorist heats up, two lawyers are asked to take the suspects’ defense, one operating publically while the other one defends the client in secret court.  The suicide of a previous lawyer assigned to the case weighs heavily in the picture.  When both lawyers (previously romantically involved, in a twist that initially promises much) discover increasingly troubling details about their client, they too become the target.  The first half of Closed Circuit has a good escalation of thrills as our lawyer protagonists discover far more than expected about their client and his connections to the British Secret Services.  But it all tips over to a fairly standard conspiracy/chase thriller that, in the end, doesn’t do much than shrug and deliver a weakly comforting epilogue.  It’s all well and good to point at the British establishment and argue that they are all-powerful, but that’s not much of a conclusion –I expected a bit more.  Still, Closed Circuit does have a few assets.  Eric Bana makes for a fine protagonist, while Rebecca Hall once again plays brainy heroines like no others.  Jim Broadbent is unexpectedly menacing as a political force warning our heroes against overstepping unspoken boundaries, while Ciaran Hinds once again ends up as a powerful character who can’t be trusted.  (Julia Stiles is also in the film, but almost as a cameo.  Anne-Marie Duff is far more memorable with even fewer appearances.)  The direction is competent (with an expected visual motif of surveillance cameras), the focus on legal proceedings is fascinating in its own way and the first two-third of the script are built solidly.  It’s a shame that after such a promising and unusual beginning, the conclusion disintegrates to so much generic pap that we’ve seen countless times before.  At least the British pessimism is enough to keep it distinct from what a typical American thriller would have gone for.

  • Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

    Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2014) My current life circumstances mean that I usually see movies 6-9 months after their theatrical release.  In order to “stay current” and understand much of the ongoing conversation regarding movies, I often spoil myself silly on movies I haven’t seen but eventually will.  This usually works pretty well and doesn’t ruin movies as much as you’d think.  But there are exceptions and Inside Llewyn Davis shows the limits of the spoil-yourself-rotten approach in tackling plot-light interpretation-heavy movies.  Having read many descriptions of what made Inside Llewyn Davis so interesting a while ago, I now find that most of the theories about the film are more substantial than the film itself.  A ramble through 1961 Greenwich Village before the folk-music explosion, Inside Llewyn Davis is about a talented but prickly musician who may be at the end of his moribund career.  The film follows him during an eventful week, but don’t expect much in terms of plotting or conclusion: As with many of their previous movies, the Coen Brothers don’t settle for neat dramatic arcs, fully-tied subplots or self-contained screen characters: they hint, leave plenty to the imagination, play with chronology and cut to the credits five minutes before other directors would.  It’s maddening and yet in my encroaching old age, I don’t find it as frustrating as I would have years ago.  (But then again, if you follow the Coen Brothers you’ve already seen No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man)  The music is great if you like folk (I don’t, but the artistry is remarkable and then there’s “Please Please Mr. Kennedy” to amuse us uncouth barbarians.), and as a look at a specific time and place, it’s fascinating in its own right.  The cinematography is remarkable, as this is a cold winter movie and there’s no visual comfort for anyone here.  Oscar Isaac is fascinating as the titular protagonist while Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan have short but striking roles.  While I like individual elements, themes and sequences of Inside Llewyn Davis, I’m not sure I like it as much as the idealized version I had made up in my head while reading the chatter surrounding the film.  You can probably figure out that this is a problem with me rather than the film itself.