Reviews

  • Eagle vs. Shark (2007)

    Eagle vs. Shark (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2019) I’m certainly not the only (North-) American cinephile for whom writer/director Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows was a revelation, and who started looking for his earlier work. While I’m still looking for Boy, I was lucky enough to catch Waititi’s first feature-length film Eagle vs. Shark on TV. The good news is that despite its low budget and limited production means, Eagle vs. Shark manages to be a striking, film-literate take on romantic comedy tropes. There’s quite a bit of kinship between this film and Waititi’s own later Hunt for the Wilderpeople in that it defies expectations, plays with the medium and features strong character work in an atmosphere that’s not afraid to reach for absurdity at times. Eagle vs. Shark may take place in small-town New Zealand, but it’s exceptionally accessible to international audiences. Well, if they can stand it, because the not-so-good news is that cringing and proxy humiliation are the film’s favourite emotions as it goes out of its way to make viewers feel embarrassed for its lead characters. The closest analogue I can find is Napoleon Dynamite, and that’s not necessarily a recommendation. The male lead is screwed up, the female lead is screwed up (albeit not as unpleasantly so), the lead’s entire family is spectacularly screwed-up and this is a film all about them. There’s no way out until the end. Waititi cameos as the film’s lone admirable character—and he’s long dead in the narrative. Jemaine Clement is a comic treasure (his voice alone is worth preserving for future generations), but he seemingly delights in making his character as unpleasant as humanly possible. There are clear limits to how a non-stop cringe fest can be enjoyable, especially when the audience spends most of the film screaming at the heroine to GET OUT OF THERE and forget about the protagonist. That’s not exactly the best set of ingredients for a heartwarming comedy (indeed, by the final reconciliation we’re not left entirely happy), so consider yourself fairly warned about the film’s effectiveness if that’s not your cup of tea. Still, I’m rather glad that I caught Eagle vs. Shark even if I have no intention of seeing it again. I think that Waititi is undeniably brilliant, and having a look at this early effort was worth the trouble … and the second-hand embarrassment.

  • The Rewrite (2014)

    The Rewrite (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2019) I’m an enthusiastic and forgiving audience for stories about writers, so it was natural that I’d eventually gravitate to The Rewrite even years after its release. Focused on a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter who takes a teacher’s job in a northeastern university, The Rewrite is, at its best, an entertaining trifle of a comedy/drama with a few pointed jokes at Hollywood, academia and those who make “being a writer” too big a part of their identity. It’s actually the kind of story that begs to be a novel more than a movie, but I’m not about to complain given that it features the ever-likable Hugh Grant in the main role, and my perennial movie-crush Marisa Tomei. A strong supporting cast (J. K. Simmons! Bella Heathcote in a substantial role! Allison Janney!) helps the film get rolling and remain likable throughout. (Well, likable despite the unlikable character played by likable Hugh Grant. It’s that kind of film.) The plot itself is serviceably in thrall to the usual rom-com tropes, albeit with a bit of a harder edge than usual in terms of character growth. The clash of culture between Hollywood and Academia is amusing in its own right, and it feels as if the lead character does earn his happy ending along the way. The Rewrite is nowhere near an essential movie, but it’s likable enough to be worth a look for anyone interested in its lead actors or subject matter. I had a good-enough time watching it.

  • Love and Basketball (2000)

    Love and Basketball (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2019) We should never underestimate the impact of a great movie poster, because the one for Love and Basketball stuck with me long enough to get me to record and watch the movie nineteen years later. Fortunately, it’s not a movie solely defined by its poster: As the title aptly summarizes, this is a romantic comedy focusing on a basketball-playing couple, each with professional ambitions that run against their obvious attraction to each other. Romantic comedies are often best distinguished by their setting, and the focus on basketball works equally well at creating kinetic excitement as it does as a literalized metaphor. Playing with a four-quarter structure, Love and Basketball follows our protagonists over a seventeen-year period, as they go from backyard hoops to professional play, always threatening to come together until the very end. It’s quite enjoyable purely on its own merits, but as the film ages it also becomes a pretty good time capsule for some great turn-of-the-century actors: After all, where else can you watch Sanaa Lathan, Omar Epps, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Haysbert, Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall and a quick glimpse at Tyra Banks? Love and Basketball is a clever movie from writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood: It’s not meant to be particularly surprising or challenging (it climaxes right where it should—on the basketball court), but it has quite a bit of heart, and an interesting frame over familiar, relatable material.

  • Roxanne (1987)

    Roxanne (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2019) As far as Cyrano de Bergerac remakes go, Roxanne is a better than average reimagining of the basic plot in a completely different environment, which is to say a mid-1980s Washington state small town. (Naturally, it’s filmed in British Columbia.) The deliberately idyllic environment features a gifted man with a prominent nose (Steve Martin, ably carrying the panache required for the role of Cyrano), struggling with his romantic intentions toward another resident and dragged into impersonation when a good-looking but dull romantic rival shows up. The plot is classic, but its reinterpretation is very well done: Actors have to play Cyrano with a formidable strength of character, and Martin (who also wrote the script) gets a few fantastic set pieces to himself, whether it’s an opening sword fight (in contemporary America, yes) or a no-holds-barred verbal joust in which he vanquishes his opponent through overwhelming self-deprecation. Martin is clever enough to make the character vulnerable in other ways, and it’s this internal conflict more than the romantic drama that drives the film forward. The film is predictably less interesting in its last half (in which the arcs must be resolved) than the more character-focused opening, but it’s well done enough to be funny, charming and compelling at once. Good actors help support Martin, with Kelly Preston in particular being quite good as the titular Roxanne. The whimsical atmosphere of the film helps a lot in ensuring that Roxanne doesn’t feel particularly dated even today.

  • Congo (1995)

    Congo (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on TV, February 2019) If Congo has any claim to fame, it’s this superb quote from co-star Bruce Campbell: “What if you were offered a chance to appear in a movie based on a Michael Crichton novel? It will be directed by veteran Frank Marshall. Stan Winston will handle the special effects and it will be a big budget Paramount production. Sounds good? Congratulations, you just made Congo.” (There are a few versions of that quote around, but they all end with the same punchline.) The point of the anecdote is to illustrate the vagaries of Hollywood projects between what sounds good on paper and what comes out in the end—and to slam the movie along the way. Of course, your take may not be as harsh: While I found the much-maligned movie quite disappointing indeed, it’s not nearly as bad as some of the critical pile-on would have you believe. I wasn’t a fan of the original novel (which crammed one incident inspired by African clichés per chapter, narrative coherency be damned), but its episodic nature translates quite naturally to the screen, where it becomes one thrill after another until we’ve stopped asking for any kind of believability. The ridiculous pileup of subplots all justifying an expedition in deep Africa makes for an entertaining premise, and that’s well before we end up with a climax in which volcanoes, diamonds, killer apes and laser weapons are all involved. Congo’s bombastic nature ensures that we never take it seriously. The ever-cute Laura Linney stars, along with a few notables such as Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry and the inimitable Bruce Campbell. As long as you keep your expectations in check, this is an old-fashioned adventure film that should satisfy roughly 51% of your cravings, even if there’s quite a lot missing to ensure that the film is fun, that it flows well and that it makes the most out of its elements. As it is, Congo does remain a disappointment: It’s inert more often than it should, can’t quite capitalize on everything at its disposal and none of the cast or crew can’t quite save it. But that’s the risk that you take on every Hollywood movie … no matter how good their pedigree.

  • Hatari! (1962)

    Hatari! (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2019) There are a number of very entertaining stories about the making of Hatari! and the most believable of them is that the script was practically written during shooting, given that so much of the movie depended on the unpredictable actions of wild animals. It certainly shows in the herky-jerky nature of the film, in which wild animal catchers in deep Africa alternate game-hunting sessions with quieter drama back at the camp. In a way, the haphazard plot doesn’t really matter: we’re left in an unusual environment, with a director focused on entertainment and big-name stars seemingly having fun. Considering that Hatari! is directed by then-veteran Howard Hawks and stars none other than John Wayne, it’s no surprise if it harkens to the 1940s with its square-jawed male roles and subservient female roles. Making heroes out of big-game catchers working to supply zoos with wild animals ensures that both their methods and goals are reprehensible by modern standards. Then there’s John Wayne in his usual borderline-repellent persona—it’s astonishing to see the movie present him as a romantic lead to an actress nearly thirty years his junior. As a result, I can’t say that I like Hatari! as much as most of the other movies in Hawks’ filmography—but even I have to admit that the hunting footage is nothing short of spectacular, and that the film does an intriguing job in creating a plot to go around the actions of the animals. Elsa Martinelli is captivating in the lead female role, but the best reason to watch the film is to see a well-oiled Hollywood production run against the vagaries (and dangers) of filming alongside wild animals and then figure out how to deal with that captured footage. Amusingly enough, this is the movie for which Henry Mancini’s famous “Baby Elephant Walk” was written.

  • Stegman is Dead aka The Hitman Never Dies (2017)

    Stegman is Dead aka The Hitman Never Dies (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) Following the success of Pulp Fiction in 1994, the late 1990s and early 2000s saw a glut of Tarantino imitators that eventually led to a critical backlash. Despite the major talents that emerged through these dark criminal comedies (Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects, Doug Liman’s Go, and Paul Anderson’s Hard Eight had enough similarities to Pulp Fiction that they made it easier to put those filmmakers on the map), there were far many more filmmakers looking for projects and taking the Tarantino route for easier financial backing. It’s now been more than twenty years since Pulp Fiction, but filmmakers are still working in the same sandbox—as Stegman is Dead/The Hitman Never Dies clearly shows. With a script that seems assembled in a blender from extremely familiar subgenre elements (pornographic film producer, Asian girl, one neurotic hitman, a second competitive hitman, a precocious kid, convoluted plotting), the film becomes a muddled example of what happens when someone goes Tarantino crazy without quite understanding the level of craft that goes into making the entire thing work. As a mixture of the genre’s best hits, Stegman is Dead never manages to become anything other than a familiar rework of overdone elements. The black criminal comedy is not good for earnestness when it’s handled so carelessly: Nothing is to be taken seriously when everyone’s got a gun in their purse and when child endangerment is treated so casually. There are attempts here at big strong character, but they don’t really work and the plot is so convoluted that only makes sense in its own logical frame of reference. Oh, I could watch Berenice Liu all day, but that’s not the point—the point is that even despite my best intentions in liking a crime comedy shot in Manitoba, I’m still left disappointed at the final result. Stegman is Dead is not that bad (I did watch it to the end, which is more than I can say about some other Canadian movies), but it’s underwhelming partly because I can see far more potential in here left unrealized.

  • La sacrée [The sacred] (2011)

    La sacrée [The sacred] (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2019) There’s something not quite right in my claiming Montréal-shot movies as “practically local”—after all, my “local” is Ottawa (ish): Specifically, I grew up in a francophone town forty kilometres east of Ottawa. So I started watching La sacrée as a bit of a novelty—it is, after all, the first Franco-Ontarian comedy, shot entirely in Eastern Ontario, using government grants to cover a meagre $1.2M budget. Its dialogues are entirely in colloquial French-Canadian with an Ontarian blend of French peppered with English (played for laughs in one character’s quasi-bilingual speech patterns and then again in a training montage). I was ready to fast-forward through the film just to catch glimpses of familiar sights and homegrown details. To my surprise, I actually started enjoying the film early on—never mind seeing a downtown Ottawa street doubling for Montréal, the initial hook of the film is director Dominic Desjardins’s ease behind the camera. La sacrée looks significantly more expensive than it cost, and the slick mainstream-comedy direction of the film helps get past the initially repellent protagonist. Our so-called hero is nothing more than a professional con artist, projecting airs and seducing a rich heiress while subsisting on nothing more than a ratty apartment and flashy suits. Things start to change once he’s called back from Montréal to his native Ontarian village, where he’s seen as the rich ingrate who refused to help his now-dead parents a few years before. There are complications, and before long he’s using his flimflamming talents to try to revive his hometown through the establishment of a microbrewery in the local church. There’s clearly a familiar city-slicker-learns-better aspect to La sacrée that’s in line with other French-Canadian comedies à La grande séduction, but it works more often than not. The film is a great deal easier to watch than some far bigger-budget films, and considerably funnier as well. La sacrée is not always equally enjoyable, but it’s more than occasionally witty (such as cutting from a love scene to church bells toiling in error) and even the rote romance works well enough. The protagonist predictably sort of redeems himself by the end of the film. It doesn’t aim higher than a mainstream small-town comedy, but it succeeds quite well at that. La sacrée is, in other words, a perfectly charming homegrown production that actually acts as a representative example of a familiar kind of Franco-Ontarian existence: the small town, the church, the childhood friends… I liked it quite enough even with my built-in biases … although I really wonder what non-French-Canadians would make of the very specific patois used in the film!

  • They Found Hell (2015)

    They Found Hell (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2019) With a title like They Found Hell, you would be forgiven to think that it would be a metaphor for the horrors of war or genocide or something along those lines. But as a look at the film’s TV-Guide description shows, They Found Hell actually means what it says in its title. It’s about a few students who actually literally open a portal to hell, step in and have to find their way back. Of course, there’s a catch: This is low-budget SyFy filmmaking at its most prototypical, meaning that we’re going to spend a lot of time watching characters run through disaffected Bulgarian factories at night, being chased by a burly costumed six-foot-something guy. On the menu for our characters: Going to hell, spooky pursuits and predictable deaths. As a made-for-TV film, They Found Hell does what it can with its budget and very obvious commercial break fadeouts: Its vision of hell has to do with backlit forests, a colour filter, random fires, some CGI and a few hanging bodies for ambience. The structure of the film isn’t sophisticated: Once our so-called-brilliant students are in Hell, they quickly split up and are killed one after another. It does get really boring really quickly as we look, usually in vain, for anything that would rise up to the level of the film’s gonzo title and premise. Eventually, there’s a mad-scientist riff because, at that point, why not? The individual levels/sequences of the film usually bring to mind the much better movies that They Found Hell rips off incompetently. The ending seems cheap even in a cheap movie during which we’ve hungered for anything more interesting than obviousness. Still, despite the easy potshots that one can take at anything coming from SyFy (have they ever produced a good film?) and the obvious limitations of They Found Hell, I actually found myself watching the thing until the end, which is more than I can say about other efforts. It’s certainly not good, but it’s not that terrible either.

  • A Passage to India (1984)

    A Passage to India (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) I’m on a quest to see all the movies nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and unfortunately this means that I have to make my way through movies such as A Passage to India. Considering that’s it’s a long movie (2h44m!) that feels even longer due to its slow narrative pacing, you may want to book a holiday before you embark on seeing the movie. It’s long. It’s so unbelievably long. It’s David Lean-class long, which makes sense considering that he wrote, produced and directed it. The production design is sumptuous, evoking the atmosphere of 1920 India … but it’s long. If you do manage to dig into the material (or if this is your kind of thing), there’s a lot to like in the film’s depiction of British Raj India, racism and class distinction against a visually refined backdrop. But the marathon-like pacing of a rather simple story makes it a sometimes-punishing viewing. Lean’s approach here is interesting in that he draws back from the wide-scale vistas of his previous epic films to deliver a well-visualized smaller story … but he could have gone further in being more efficient, bringing the length of the film to one more appropriate for the story being told. This being said, A Passage to India is the kind of atmospheric film where I suspect that many factors (including mood and personal preference) will influence an overall assessment.

  • Ferdinand (2017)

    Ferdinand (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) Considering that I’m usually game to watch any kind of animated movie, I took a surprisingly long time to make my way to Ferdinand, a talking-animal comedy about a bull destined to a matador bout. That’s not exactly the most heartwarming premise for a film, but it does work. The key is in making the title character as nonviolent a protagonist as possible, and surrounding him with oddball characters. By the time we have a car chase throughout Spanish highways and city streets, we’re in very familiar, very funny territory. The film may be by-the-numbers in overall plot terms, but what makes it shine are the comic details and supporting players. Who cares if the formula is followed as long as we get plenty of chuckles along the way? (I’m still giggling over the arrogant horses calling Ferdinand a “silly moo-moo”.) John Cena is featured as the title bull, but Kate McKinnon predictably steals the show through her hilarious goat character. It may not be a great, classic or groundbreaking movie, but Ferdinand is up to what we’ve come to expect from contemporary animated movies.

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) I’m done apologizing for the way I can’t process Shakespearian dialogue. Fortunately, there’s enough in the 1930s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to get us into a surprisingly detailed early example of a fantasy film. As my attention wandered from the dialogue and plot, I was left to admire nearly everything else: The great sets and costumes, as well as the vivid imagination on display. Remove Shakespeare’s name from the credits, and there’s still enough here to make this a modest masterpiece of early fantasy filmmaking. Clearly, the filmmakers saw in Shakespeare the license to go wild (comparatively speaking) in terms of fantastic creatures, wondrous realism and other tropes of the genre what would be developed decades later. If tracing the evolution of fantasy moviemaking isn’t your thing, then maybe you’d be interested in a very early role for Mickey Rooney, or seeing Olivia de Havilland and James Cagney once more. Still, I’m more appreciative of the fantasy filmmaking aspect: there weren’t that many big-budget fantasy movies at that time, and this one fills an early slot in the development of the subgenre.

  • Upgrade (2018)

    Upgrade (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) Now here’s a movie that pleasantly surprised me. A lean, efficient mis-mash of conventional SF devices used remarkably well, Upgrade showcases the go-for-broke aesthetics of writer/director Leigh Whannell, playing in a futuristic sandbox without letting go of his usual horror instincts. Here, a man paralyzed by a crime that also left his girlfriend dead ends up the recipient of an experimental treatment: a computer chip that allows him to take control of his limbs … until it decides what to do. Part revenge thriller, part cyberpunk nightmare, part belated entry in the “Artificial Intelligence” wave of SF movies that peaked around 2015, Upgrade is also a blend of science fiction, action and horror with a strong dash of dark humour. It’s needlessly ultra-violent, yet exhilarating in the unusual technique in which its action and fights are captured. The commentary on technology feels familiar yet on-point, and the film is wrapped in an eerie overall atmosphere of off-kilter choices—such as the audio introductory credit sequence. Despite the use of familiar devices, it meets contemporary audiences at their level and proves hugely enjoyable along the way. Giving a substantial role to Betty Gabriel certainly helps. Even at 100 minutes, Upgrade feels like a breeze: I was actually disappointed when it ended, because I wanted a bit more of that good stuff.

  • The Prince of Tides (1991)

    The Prince of Tides (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) There are plenty of reasons why I shouldn’t like Barbra Streisand—her diva behaviour is legendary, leading to enough tabloid stories to make her legendary in her lifetime and cemented for the younger generation with “The Streisand Effect”. Even from a strict filmgoer’s perspective, she’s often the strangest part of any movie in which she’s the uncontested star—far too young in Hello, Dolly!, unconvincingly male in Yentl, showboating in The Way We Were, self-indulgent in A Star is Born, etc. But even knowing all of this, there is a magnetic star quality to her screen presence that compensates for a lot. Call it sex appeal, or sheer talent or most probably a mixture of both. In The Prince of Tides, she stars and directs and, perhaps miraculously, keeps her most outlandish tendencies to herself. She looks amazing in glasses and white nylons, directs with a nice narrative flow and lets Nick Nolte take the spotlight that his character deserves. Nolte is terrific as a damaged man with deep-seated trauma, far too quick to parry probing questions with jokes but intensely damaged nonetheless. Streisand has a comparatively easier role as his therapist. In the grand tradition of romantic drama, a major professional breach of ethics soon follows. The character-based drama is handled effectively, although the film is too long at nearly two hours and a quarter—and by “helping” the characters get over their trauma, it sands off nearly everything that was interesting about them out of the story. By the end of the film, Nolte’s character is psychologically healthier but also completely uninteresting. Still, The Prince of Tides did exceed my expectations: It’s quick to create narrative interest, and even a weaker third act can’t quite erase the goodwill created by the early scenes in which patient and psychiatrist are engaged in a ferocious game of wits. I liked it well enough, and have another movie to use as an example when asked about my uncharacteristic liking of Streisand.

  • All This, and Heaven Too (1940)

    All This, and Heaven Too (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) There is, in many ways, something comforting in the kind of domestic costume melodrama that is All This, and Heaven Too: As the story of a French governess who ends up being at the centre of a rollicking story of lust and murder, it’s clearly meant to thrill audiences. It would have been significantly better if it had been shorter—there isn’t that much plot here, and the film clocks in at a punishing 141 minutes with plenty of repetition along the way. I’m also not entirely convinced about Bette Davis as a young innocent romantic heroine—she’s a terrific actress, but her uncanny ability to play evil characters is wasted here in a role meant to be almost angelic. The framing device isn’t too bad in allowing a Paris-based story to be literally told to an American audience, although it does add even more length to a film already overstuffed with tangents. (Including a gothic Halloween interlude that’s actually not too bad.) Even today, the expensive nature of All This, and Heaven Too’s production is obvious: the lavish sets, costumes and re-creation of late-Nineteenth century Paris is quite successful. Modern viewers will still have something to watch in between the increasingly lurid story, and Bette Davis in a strong (even if miscast) performance.