Reviews

  • Problem Child 2 (1991)

    Problem Child 2 (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) The early 1990s were the heyday of the evil-kid comedies (in between the Home Alones, Dennis the Menace and Problem Childs, plus The Good Son) and those haven’t all aged very gracefully. Problem Child 2, in particular, was a quick cash-grab follow-up to a substandard film, executed as fast as possible before the lead star (Michael Oliver) aged out of his screen persona. It didn’t help that the screenwriters consciously set out to make the film as distasteful as possible in teaming up their hellion with another one — there’s even an extended sequence featuring vomit flying off from a carnival ride, causing a chain reaction of spewed bodily fluids. When such a thing becomes one of the showpiece sequences of the film, there isn’t any point in appreciating the more subtle jokes about having Gilbert Gottfried unexplainably reprise his character from the first film in another state and another line of work, nor seeing Amy Yasbeck play another role as the father character’s true new love rather than the shrew of the divorcing wife she played in the first film. There’s some amusing interplay in seeing the problem child of the series meet his distaff match and bonding with someone as devilish as him, but let’s not make this a reason to consider Problem Child 2 as anything but a low-class, low-budget, low-imagination attempt by the studio to go for easy money despite predictably terrible reviews. I’ll acknowledge that the screenwriters had some provocative notions going into the sequel — if you thought the first film was inappropriate for its age bracket, prepare for more of the same in the sequel. But that doesn’t make Problem Child 2 any easier to appreciate as anything but a (disappointing) perversion of a kid’s comedy.

  • After We Collided (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2021) I had two problems with After We Collided, and the fact that I stumbled upon a sequel before seeing the original is, by far, the least important of them. No, the biggest issue would be that I never, ever, even after more than an hour, cared for any of the main characters whose continuing romance this is. I had no reason to care, no reason to feel anything about them pushing or pulling away from each other. I had no stakes in them ever seeing each other again — in fact, I was kind of hoping for a break-up to happen so that the credits could roll. Halfway between teenage and twentysomething romance, After We Collided goes the super-soft-core R-rated route of implying sexual activity without showing anything beyond side or back nudity: a very strange choice that highlights the film’s blend of immaturity—giving the impression of teenagers playing dress-up. Not that I cared all that much — I wanted the film to be done, and any romantic complication had me gritting my teeth in drawing out the end. Bland dialogue, unconvincing acting and some bargain-basement direction from Roger Kumble (who has done so much better in the past) don’t help, but the basics remain the same no matter where you look: if you don’t feel anything about the characters, it’s a waste of time to even try to build a romance around them. Amazingly enough, After We Collided isn’t the end of the road for the series: there’s already a sequel, and up to three more films in the series are planned. Rather than getting annoyed at this, let’s just wish happy returns to the investors. May they never suffer through what they’ve paid for.

  • Denis the Menace (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) If my calculations are correct, I’m not too far from the age midpoint between Dennis the Menace’s cranky old curmudgeon played by Walter Matthau and the titular young pest played by Mason Gamble. Even so, my sympathies are clearly on the elderly character’s side, as the young boy engages in a systematic campaign of harassment, humiliation and endangerment toward the older man. But this is clearly not a film made for elderly or even middle-aged viewers — this is a petulant child’s fantasy about sticking it to the old people and their unfun ways. It is, in other words, utterly dreadful to watch — Child Protective Services should be called at some point in the narrative to protect society against the child and take him far away. Overmedication of hyperactive boys is a terrible thing in real life, but I’m willing to make an exception in this fictional case. There’s little both-sides sympathy here when Matthau is playing a caricature, only outdone by a criminal character that seems custom-made to send every suburban mom in barely repressed panic about the homeless. Dennis the Menace is frankly a chore to sit through the moment you discover girls, caffeine and rock-and-roll — even if I don’t believe in movies being role models, it’s a borderline reprehensible take on childhood that shows its psychopathic side far too often. There was a slate of those in the 1990s (Home Alone and Problem Child also come to mind), but those did have something going for them beyond the hellion angle.

  • The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

    The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, December 2021) Is it really a surprise if a Wachowski film ends up being a mixed bag of highs and lows? After all, that’s been the norm for them even since The Matrix — they never quite managed to recapture the blend of elements that made that film such a success, and it’s not The Matrix Resurrections that will break the streak. Let me be clear: The first Matrix film is (now) a classic, and (still) one of my favourites: As such, I could help but be attracted to and apprehensive about the idea of a belated sequel. To its credit, this fourth instalment does grapple with that apprehension: it features a lot of meta-referential material, especially in a first act that seems delighted in rerunning through the first film’s key scenes while joking about how it refers to it. Alas, it doesn’t start the film on the right foot: that first act can be tedious at times, as the references pile up and so many clips from the first films are shown that it creates the impression that this newest take lacks confidence in itself: “See how cool those first movies were? Yeah, we’re in that tradition!”  Except that it is not, at least crucially in the execution. While many will appreciate how Lana Wachowski, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are back, the absence of Bill Pope (cinematography), John Gaeta (Special Effects), Don Davis (score) and Zack Staenberg (editing) is far more noteworthy: The atmosphere of The Matrix series is absent, and what replaces it seems perfunctory most of the time. The action sequences are underwhelming (although they get better toward the end) and there’s nowhere near the degree of visual innovation in the Wachowskis’ previous work. As for the story, things improve after a fan-fiction-worthy first act: That’s when The Matrix Resurrections finally finds its own plot, makes intriguing additions to the canon (well, not all of them — I’m still wondering why Lambert Wilson showed up if it was to be a green-screen special) and engages in a surprisingly romantic arc. It’s the Matrix, but doesn’t much feel like it: in-between the humdrum directing and a script that features very little memorable material, it feels like a disappointment. Of course, the question can be: what was I expecting? One can’t step in the same river twice and all that, but even then, the result seems both ambitious and timid at once. I expect that it will take a while for people to decide whether this is a good film (let alone a fitting follow-up)… and I’ll probably have another look real soon to take it all in again.

    (Second Viewing, YouTube Streaming, December 2021) Whew—I hadn’t revisited a film critically at less than a week’s notice since, well, the last Matrix movie. But a second look at The Matrix Resurrections doesn’t really change my mind — There are some really interesting things in the concepts featured in here that are ill-served by their execution. A fair amount of meta-commentary on the nature of a next-generation sequel is amusing, but there’s a point when the self-reference becomes a dismissive poke at the fans who are the reason why the film was produced. (Similarly, self-awareness can be catnip for detached critics and a really great excuse for anyone arguing in bad faith to say, “If you don’t like it, you’re not smart enough.”)  Similarly, I liked the bold flashforward sixty years after the previous instalments and how some things have evolved, while others have not panned out to the previous generation’s hopes. But that aspect is shoehorned and relegated to supporting material, as the film is first consumed by its self-referentiality and then by a far less cerebral love story that feels stretched to twice the length it really needed. The idea of undermining the idea that Neo is the One to make him part of a pair is intriguing, but it’s completely botched in the execution, with a point made about him being supported by a flying Trinity… only to cut to a scene where the flying thing is a done deal. I certainly haven’t changed my mind about the lacklustre and plodding action sequences that are pale shadows of even the worst moments of the original trilogy. I thought that a lower budget may have been a factor, but then I learned that the film still costs a generous $160M to produce — clearly cost was not the limiting factor here, especially with cheaper CGI now available. Even after a second go-around, I’m still thoroughly mixed on the result, probably tipping toward “disappointed” — The Matrix Resurrections is not terrible, but it certainly causes irritation in many of the unforced choices it makes. Was that the result worth waiting twenty years for? Expectations do count for much.

  • Kol [The Call] (2020)

    Kol [The Call] (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2021) There’s a very amusing misdirection in the opening moments of Kol, right after it establishes its premise of two young girls communicating across twenty years through a magical phone. One is in 1999; the other in 2019 — So the one in 2019 knows things but the one in 1999 can do things. For half an hour, save for the menace of a wicked stepmother, we think it’s going to be a kind of heartwarming drama à la Frequency, with the two girls taking care of each other’s problems. But then, well, Kol takes a sudden jump into the horror genre, cutting short its main dramatic thread and going into surprising territory. It plays hard on the horror, and even the beginning of the end credits is not a respite. As mean and nasty as South Korean cinema can be (which is a lot), this thriller from writer-director Chung-Hyun Lee is not always smooth on characterization but it certainly makes good use of its premise (despite scientific plausibility being, at best, an afterthought) and carries viewers screaming all the way to its terrifying climax. A modest but effective surprise, Kol is good enough to make me curious about The Caller, the 2011 Puerto Rican film on which it’s based.

  • Aleksandr Nevskiy (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2021) There are films that are more interesting for their context than their story, and Sergei Eisenstein’s Aleksandr Nevskiy often feels like one of them. A proudly propagandistic film from the pre-WW2 Soviet Union, it’s really not subtle at all about taking aim at the clergy and the Germans as enemies of the Soviet people, and making its protagonist (the titular prince Nevskiy) a paragon of virtue. The first scene has characters blandly stating that the Mongols are not the problem — the Germans are. Later sequences have members of the Teutonic Order clergy sporting a modified swastika on their hats. Much of the film leads (with the era’s limited means) toward the famous Battle on the Ice, in which enemy combatants fall through the frozen crust over Lake Peipus, handing the victory over to the land’s natural owners. (As usual, be wary of learning history from movies — there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the falling-though-the-ice thing was a pure invention from Eisenstein, since then enshrined in legend.)  Technically rough and thoroughly aimed at Soviet audiences, Aleksandr Nevskiy can be a chore to power through — at least until the climactic clash between armies. But the film’s Wikipedia page makes for fascinating reading, as it ties the film over to the changing whims of the Soviet leadership (which briefly established an alliance with Nazi Germany after the film’s release, resulting in a period where the film was pulled from circulation.), details the ways it influenced later depictions of large-scale battles, and ends up being Eisenstein’s best-known film of the sound era. Aleksandr Nevskiy may not always be a lot of fun, but it’s certainly a part of movie history.

  • All the Bright Places (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2021) As far as teen romances go, All the Bright Places is lighter on comedy and heavier on tragedy. Going for the star-crossed lovers angle in Midwestern small town, it quickly introduces a moody high-schooler still mourning the death of her sister, but also a strangely ebullient young man who deliberately sets out to befriend her. Neither of them are quite normal, and that’s what makes their relationship work—at least for a chunk of the film. Among other strange sights offered director Brett Haley, we’re treated to a visit to the highest point in Indiana, an incredibly ordinary spot in a forest that is actually the real (charmingly underwhelming) deal. That, and a quaintly micro-sized rollercoaster, are probably the high notes of a film that otherwise plays to the “tragic doomed teenage love” tropes. How you react to the film will depend on how strongly to react to that formula — it’s a fair and not unkind bet that the closer you are to these characters, the better you will react to the result. Elle Fanning is not bad in the female lead role, but it’s Justice Smith who’s got a flashier and more interesting character — a bright young man with glib charm but deep dark depths. He not only takes her out of her funk, but makes the film far more interesting for viewers as well. Otherwise, All the Bright Places feels like another unit on the YA tragic romance assembly line — a chance for young actors to show their stuff, a chance for today’s teenagers to form a canon of formative movies, but not particularly interesting to anyone else.

  • The Kissing Booth 2 (2020)

    The Kissing Booth 2 (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2021) It’s bad form to structure a review as a multipoint comparison with another better film, but The Kissing Booth 2 certainly courts it. After all, it is a teen romantic comedy sequel original to Netflix (second in a trilogy), specific characteristics also shared by To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. I approached both films warily — romantic comedies should not have sequels, because follow-ups usually end up undermining the point of the previous films. If filmed romances have an advantage over real ones, it’s that they can choose to stop on a high point. But whereas To all the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You managed to gradually convince me of its reason for existing, The Kissing Booth 2 never made its case. It’s true that the first films of both series were also very different: The Kissing Booth (the first) left a bad taste in many ways, and I wasn’t exactly asking for more about those dull, frequently unlikable characters. Things are really no better this time around, as our lead couple separates for a bicoastal relationship and our heroine finds herself tempted by an alluring new student. Hypocritically enough, she then proceeds to have fits of jealousy when her boyfriend’s new best friend ends up being a girl. But wait, there’s more! Like her smothering her best friend’s new romance by not leaving him alone for an instant. Or figuring out to which school she should apply to. Or winning a videogame dance contest with that alluring new guy. It’s all schematic, and the formula-based approach is not helped in the slightest by not caring about the characters at all. The lead protagonist is annoying, barely conscious of the issues she causes through her own behaviour, and the film pulls no punches by casting her romantic rival as someone significantly more attractive. The Kissing Booth 2 does try to fix some of the first film’s issues (notably, in not being quite so heteronormative) but even those attempts don’t improve much when the foundation is so bland. By the time every single relationship in the film explodes at Thanksgiving dinner, we’re left shrugging and singularly uninvolved in the protagonist’s messes. The film ends, as is de rigueur, with two quick set-ups for a third volume that I don’t really want to see, but probably will out of completion’s sake.

  • Needle in a Timestack (2021)

    Needle in a Timestack (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) As far as low-budget SF films go, there’s a lot of intriguing material in Needle in a Timestack. Taking place in a future where time travel is expensive but commonplace, the film explores the consequences of an existence where the present may be altered abruptly, leaving characters wondering if things have always been that way. For instance, our protagonist’s happy marriage is complicated by the idea that the ex-husband of his wife is rich enough and jealous enough to go back in time to try to get her back. In the film’s rather romantic outlook, characters can sense when things are wrong (such as having a cat rather than a dog) and find themselves longing to fix things. There’s a lot of cold melancholy in writer-director John Ridley’s film (as adapted from SF legend Robert Silverberg’s short story of the same name), and an effective use of SF devices rather than special effects in creating its world. I wasn’t completely convinced by the film’s logic, but so it goes for films more driven by dramatic logic than science fact. (Furthermore, logic and time travel don’t go well together when causality itself is a suggestion.)  The cast can be surprising at times, with Leslie Odom Jr. in the lead role, Orlando Bloom as the antagonist and Freida Pinto as one of the two women in their lives. The low budget is used as well as it could, I suppose, although the film could have used a slightly wider scope in order to create its worldbuilding. Still, Needle in a Timestack finds its place among other recent low-budget SF films executed tastefully, with some intriguing dramatic situations made possible by extraordinary devices.

  • Cluny Brown (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) The obvious reason to see Cluny Brown is that it’s master director Ernst Lubitsch’s last film before his untimely death — the last go-around for “The Lubitsch Touch,” this time taking aim at British social conventions. But the unexpected delight of the film is Jennifer Jones’ performance as the titular Cluny — a bright, scattered young woman who clearly has no intention of learning her place, let alone keeping it. Compared to other Lubitsch pictures, it’s true that Cluny Brown feels like a second-tier result — not bad, still amusing, but clearly not in the same category as his better-known films. Still, it amuses: its look at stuffy British class conventions is clearly meant to upset upper-class British viewers by showing them as so out of touch on vital issues. (British reviewers reportedly weren’t kind to the film.)  The romantic shenanigans between Cluny and a foreign intellectual (revered by the British characters, but seen as a mere man by the protagonist) end up making up most of what passes for plot here, although —typically—much of the fun of the picture is in the small details, exchanges and observations rather than the overarching plot. Lubitsch was gone far too soon, but at least we got Cluny Brown before he went.

  • The Truffle Hunters (2020)

    The Truffle Hunters (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) I’m sure there’s a fascinating documentary to be made about the ancient art of truffle hunting. But The Truffle Hunters isn’t it — or rather, the style in which writers-directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw go about it seems custom-made to annoy viewers expecting a traditional pace. Taking cues from their elderly subjects (men in their seventies and eighties, truffle hunters for decades), the film is a deliberately interminable slog — call it “slow cinema” if you must, but there’s no mistaking the lengthy shots, long periods of silence, endless nature cinematography and unhurried pacing of a film whose content does not justify its 84-minute running time. I’m sure that a negative review focused on the slowness of the film would please the filmmakers — the point here is the unhurriedness of the old men (and their dogs), as they seem to exist out of time in the Italian countryside. The Truffle Hunters is not uninteresting, but it takes so much time to make its point that by the time it’s made, we’re already looking forward to something else.

  • Lady of the Manor (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) For a low-budget comedy, Lady of the Manor certainly boasts an intriguing cast of actors with a known pedigree — Melanie Lynskey as a stoned unladylike underachiever who stumbles upon a tour guide position at a historical house; Judy Greer as the ghost of the lady she’s supposed to talk about; Justin Long as a likable history professor; Ryan Phillippe as the unlikable cad-of-an-owner who’s more interested in sexual harassment than historical significance; and even Luis Guzman as a harried bartender. Oh, and Patrick Duffy as a patriarch. It’s an interesting blend that can handle the film’s good-natured comedy that emerges when modern irresponsibility meets timeless grace. Much of the credit for the cast probably goes to Long and his brother Christian, since they co-wrote and directed the film. Lady of the Manor is not that impressive of a film considering its budget and limited ambitions, but it manages to get a few laughs, create some striking characters and wrap it all up in a satisfactory finish. The actors do much to elevate middling material into something more interesting than anticipated — in other words, some good work by the Long Brothers to do justice to their material. It won’t become a timeless classic, but it’s more than worth a look as a slow evening’s entertainment.

  • Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

    Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) There’s wild and there’s Nicolas Cage wild, but few filmmakers can actually deliver a film that matches Nicolas Cage wild. For better or for worse, that’s not the case for Japanese auteur Sion Sono, who concocts in Prisoners of the Ghostland a cyberpunk western fever dream that manages to be crazier than Cage himself. The worldbuilding is a nonsensical blend of nuclear catastrophe, Japanese iconography, American Wild West conventions and shiny expensive cars. It’s not meant to make sense — it’s meant to look cool and distinctive, and it certainly achieves that objective. The flip side of that is that if you’re looking for narrative substance to go along with Nicolas Cage screaming at Wild West Yazukas, you’re likely to be disappointed. This is a film that becomes increasingly ludicrous while explaining the constrained facets of its pocket universe where everyone knows everyone from ten years ago, and where Western tropes easily outweigh any attempts to make sense. It’s wild, but it’s also curiously forgettable as well: while Cage is in fine form, and Sofia Boutella improves the film like she usually does, the intensity of the images fades to nothing once the credits roll. It feels a bit long and repetitive once the sheen of its first wacky moments has passed. There’s probably an object lesson here — I suspect that we’re going to talk about Cage’s performance in Mandy long after Prisoners of the Ghostland memories fade away, and it’s a demonstration of how wildness should come accompanied by some substance in order to mean anything.

  • The Dorm That Dripped Blood aka Death Dorm (1982)

    The Dorm That Dripped Blood aka Death Dorm (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) With a title like The Dorm That Dripped Blood and a production date of 1982, right in the slasher boom of the early 1980s, any horror fan (or jaded cinephile) knows exactly what to expect from the film. And they would be right: It’s certainly a horror film in which young people get killed one after another in various gruesome and supposedly imaginative ways. Where writers-directors Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow are slightly more disturbing than usual is in the bloodier-than-usual killings and the decidedly downbeat ending that doesn’t even allow for a final girl. Such “innovations,” however, only serve to make the result even more unpalatable than the usual slasher — The Dorm That Dripped Blood quickly goes from slasher to British video nasty, unremarkable for most of its duration then unpalatable for the finish. If you already don’t like slashers, this one will feel even worse than usual.

  • Twas the Chaos before Christmas (2019)

    Twas the Chaos before Christmas (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2021) Competent enough to avid mockery but not enough to be memorable, Twas the Chaos before Christmas drapes the double-booked holiday destination trope with Christmas decorations. Mismatched families from upper-class New York City and middle-class North Carolina realize that they’re booked at the same Washington, DC rental house and so learn to live together and learn from each other. You can probably figure where the rest of the story goes — the uptight rich mom learns how to let loose and decorate festively, while the younger daughter and son from both families match well together. The initial conflict between the two families dissipates in a cloud of holiday spirit and the film becomes less and less dramatic until it’s time to wrap it up. Unlike other Christmas films (of which I’m seeing far too many these days), this one doesn’t bet everything on romance and does go for actual comedy. It’s a bit too muted for my preferences, but it works relatively well. Veteran actress turned director Terri J. Vaughn is already accumulating an impressive filmography in a few short years: her films aren’t terrific, but they’re usually better than average, and she clearly knows how to work a limited budget into something that looks reasonably good. Twas the Chaos before Christmas may not be the kind of film that sticks in mind, but it’s good December filler and doesn’t inspire sarcastic put-downs like many others of its ilk.