Reviews

  • Clash of the Titans (1981)

    Clash of the Titans (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2017) Special-effects-based fantasy blockbuster movies aren’t anything new. They’re far more common nowadays due to various economic factors, but Ray Harryhausen’s career is a long list of striking pre-CGI fantasy blockbusters. Clash of the Titans is the last movie he worked on, and it remains a worthwhile film even today. It’s certainly not perfect, especially from a contemporary perspective: the tone has a mock grandiloquent style that is now more funny than impressive. The special effects, as numerous and sophisticated as they were at the time, are clearly limited in their effectiveness. The pacing occasionally flags, the actors often seem ill-suited for their roles and the limitations of special effects introduce some very weird constraints when it comes to editing and continuity. We have, in short, seen much better in the thirty-five years since then. But what Clash of the Titans still have is, for lack of a better word, charm. Its arch leaden dialogue, creaky special effects and earnest performances by some old-guard legends don’t work in the conventional sense but create a fuzzy aura around the film that makes it hard to criticize seriously. Partially aimed at kids (as shown by the too-cute mechanical owl), Clash of the Titans did leave a mark—I don’t recall seeing it as an entire movie, but I recall seeing bits and pieces of it in class as part of Greek Mythology lessons back in the late eighties. It may be worth watching it on purely conventional grounds now that better examples of the form exist (starting with the decent remake), we’re free to appreciate the original as its own thing. Release the kraken!

  • Triangle (2009)

    Triangle (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2017) I’m always intrigued by movies that progressively gain attention by sheer word of mouth, and Triangle is one of those low-budget films that have steadily gained in popularity since its release. It regularly gets mentioned in mind-twisting movie recommendation discussions, can boast of a surprisingly healthy number of IMDB votes and sports at least half a dozen web pages explaining its ending. But does the hype exceed the material? As it turns out… Triangle is actually worth a look. As a group of acquaintances go yachting, they encounter mysterious phenomena and then an abandoned cruise liner. Once aboard, things get stranger and bloodier as a woman is attacked by a mysterious figure … and then turns the tables on her assailant. There’s a lean and mean rhythm to the film that works in its favour, and not just as genre entertainment—it’s a film that moves ahead quickly, which is often essential in the kind of closed-loop subgenre it has chosen. Perhaps the best thing about the film are the shock images (Those pendants! Those victims!) that suddenly suggest a vertiginously more complex film, ready to launch a thousand theories about what is happening. (Here’s my contribution: Three angles.) It gets into quite the mind-twister, and even though no theory explains everything, the film is sympathetic enough that it doesn’t really matter if there isn’t a perfect explanation. (And I write this as someone who prefers perfect explanations.) Melissa George is very good as the lead character as she becomes more and more damaged by the events of the film. Pre-stardom Liam Hemsworth briefly shows up in a minor role, but the star of the film is writer/director Christopher Smith’s taut screenplay and effective directing. I’m not sure if Triangle qualifies as a hidden gem when it’s still gaining word-of-mouth recommendations, but it certainly qualifies as a memorable film and one that deserves a look, especially for those jaded cinephiles searching for something unusual.

  • Tremors (1990)

    Tremors (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Fourth viewing, On DVD, August 2017) I don’t quite understand why there isn’t already a review of Tremors on this site given that I’ve seen it so often and enjoyed it every time. But my search engine tells me there’s a big Tremors-shaped hole in my reviews database, so that gives me a perfect excuse to rave about one of my favourite B-grade movies. Tremors is not perfect, but it comes really close in its chosen monster-movie subgenre. After an introduction in which we’re promised thrills, then introduced to a few sympathetic characters, Tremors ends its first act by cleanly explaining the nature of its monsters and why they’re so dangerous. Thus having set up the rules, it then spends the next hour inventively showing its characters outwitting the creatures, while the creatures themselves show signs of intelligence. It’s vastly wittier than most other monster movies, with strong characters and a convincing sense of place. A good sense of humour balances out the horror, turning the film into an unusually accessible thriller by dint of a light-hearted tone. Kevin Bacon is terrific in the lead role, but capable supporting characters include Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McIntyre and practical special effects that still hold up more than twenty years later. Writer/director Ron Underwood achieved something special here. Never mind the much-inferior sequels—the original Tremors is a near-classic, well worth watching or revisiting.

  • Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing (2004)

    Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) It seems odd that, for all that editing is essential to movies, I still hadn’t watched anything on the subject. But here’s Edge Codes to satisfy this sudden thirst. A Canadian documentary largely produced and shown to satisfy Canadian Content requirements for national cable channels, Edge Codes nonetheless remains a fast-paced, lively and informative overview of the history and practice of movie editing, featuring a number of critics, filmmakers (George Lucas) and editors (Thelma Schoonmaker!) intercut in-between illustrations of the practice. Much of writer/director Alex Shuper’s documentary is presented as a history of editing, opposing early on the American goal of seamless editing contrasted to the conscious emotion-begging editing style of Soviet cinema. Years later, the French New Wave brings its own innovations, followed later on by the impact of music videos on the editing grammar. Technological progress is also examined, as manual cutting is replaced by digital tools. The last quarter of the film gets more abstract as broader considerations of editing practices are examined. Many examples illustrate the film’s theses, including some of the most famous editing moments of film history from Eisenstein’s carriage-on-the-steps to Soderbergh’s The Limey. The documentary being already thirteen years old, it’s no surprise to realize that much of the examples given date from the late nineties … but who’s complaining when Run Lola Run, Memento and Out of Sight remain such striking movies even today? Wrapped within a speedy 75 minutes, Edge Codes is a great documentary that probably slipped underneath every cinephile’s radar. While I wasn’t too happy to see that the version shown on MEncore was a 16:9 blow-up of the 4:3 original (cutting information at the top and bottom, and muddying the picture quality to near-standard resolution), the film itself is compelling enough to overcome those issues.

  • Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)

    Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) I thought that the fourth entry in the Underworld series was a promising step up—modern, relatively well-directed, with interesting action sequences and an interesting push in the future of the series. Unfortunately, fifth instalment Blood Wars is a return to worse form for an overwhelmingly dull series. While director Anna Foerster manages a few interesting images along the way, the script she’s using seems intent on stomping further on material than had become flat by the second movie. Vampires versus werewolves again?! Regrettably leaving behind recognizable urban landscapes in favour of increasingly fantasy-based locations, Blood Wars is either dull or silly depending on how much you care about the material. Shot in the same boring black-and-blue scheme, it has little to offer to set itself apart from its predecessor—although some of the Nordic snow-and-ice stuff is occasionally promising. Kate Beckinsale herself is noticeably older than in the archival footage shown from the previous films, but she can still rock a skin-tight bodysuit as well as anyone can. Elsewhere in the cast, only Lara Pulver makes an impression as a competing vampire—the rest of the characters are as interchangeable as they can be. Blood Wars doesn’t amount to much more than instantly disposable entertainment, but it has the distinction of being slightly above average for the series, somewhere around the first film but far better than the snooze-inducing second and third volumes. There will be another sequel, we’re told. I’ll watch it out of misplaced completionism, but won’t expect much.

  • Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

    Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) I’m not always a good audience for period drama, but Dangerous Liaisons is something else. At times, and at first, it feels like top-class smut, as two obscenely wealthy members of the French aristocracy scheme the seduction of innocent women for nothing more than carnal stakes. There is quite a bit more nudity than expected (especially from Uma Thurman) and the dialogue is first-class. Behind the fine manners, elaborate costumes and lavish historical recreation lies a pitch-black comedy of cynical matters. John Malkovich are Glenn Close are superbly reptilian in their power games—Malkovich in particular is perverse in the best sense of the word. Familiar faces abound, including baby-faced Keanu Reeves and Peter Capaldi in minor roles. But what begins as comic debauchery soon turns to more serious matters, and by the time Dangerous Liaisons ends with death and dishonour, the ending has been amply set up by the journey. Knowing the origins of the story as an epistolary novel turned into a theatre play and then a film, the big-screen adaptation proved adept in incorporating the best elements of its complex DNA—letters end up being essential plot devices, the razor-sharp dialogue is as good as it gets, and the film manages to achieve a few authentic purely cinematic moments, either during the opening “dressing up for war” montage, or the ending sequence collapsing cause and effect of three separate scenes. Unusually for a historical drama, Dangerous Liaisons is fun to watch—either aghast at the character’s actions, or nodding along as those awful people get their comeuppance at the end.

  • Lottery Ticket (2010)

    Lottery Ticket (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) I’ve been curious about Lottery Ticket all the way since seeing its trailer back in 2010, but it took until now to finally have a look at it. Having done so, I’m not going to pretend it’s anything more than a hood comedy featuring high financial stakes, as a young man with a variety of issues wins a gigantic jackpot and has to hold on to his ticket for the next three days. Most of the time, Lottery Ticket plays according to the standards of so-called black comedies: depiction of ghetto life, stereotypical humour, threats of thuggery and so on. That it takes place near Atlanta rather than in Los Angeles isn’t particularly important. As such, what you get with Lottery Ticket is roughly what you can expect from it. It could certainly use more tweaking, though: there’s often a tonal mismatch between the silly comedy of the protagonist’s entourage with the more violent scenes that come later on, or the middle section that deals in lavish excess. The jokes are merely fine, the film does indulge in its own depiction of the male gaze given its treatment of female characters, and there is little doubt as to what role each character has to play in the plot. At least there are known faces in the mix. While rapper Shad “Bow-Wow” Moss is featureless as the protagonist, Ice Cube has a small but important role as an ex-boxer, Terry Crews has a typically very funny small role as a reluctant bodyguard, and Leslie Jones shows up for a line or two. Lottery Ticket isn’t a particularly memorable or significant film, even as the black comedies subgenre goes, but it’s likable enough to be watched without too much effort.

  • Lion (2016)

    Lion (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) As much as it pains me to say this, I found Lion to be overlong, surprisingly dull and not quite as inspiring as it wants to be. The story of an Indian boy who ends up far away from home, is adopted by an Australian family and then (twenty years later) searches Google Earth to find his hometown, Lion should be far more interesting than it is. It’s certainly not without merit—the first half of the film does portray India with startling details, and it’s hard not to feel empathy for a five-year-old boy forced to survive so far away from home, with no idea how to get back. Then the film skips ahead, and can rely on the charm of Dev Patel as an expatriate finally using the resources at his disposal to find where he came from. There’s a little bit of modern technology marvelment as Google Earth is used to track down where he could be coming from, and then a conclusion’s worth of bittersweet happiness as he finds his mother again. But Lion is very, very long for the (admittedly true and untidy) story it tells, and at times it’s easy to wish that it would move just a bit faster. It also asks a lot of some viewers, and I’m not sure I can, as a dad, stomach the possibility of a five-year-old being lost so far away from home with no hope of returning. As a result, while the film is far from being a waste of time, I’m not quite as bullish on Lion as I’d like to be.

  • Waterworld (1995)

    Waterworld (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, August 2017) I’ve grown soft on some of the movies I loved to dislike back in the nineties (see: Independence Day), but as it turns out, Waterworld is just as dumb now than it was back then. From the first moments, the idiocies accumulate quickly, and it’s hard to remain immersed in a Science Fiction movie when you keep muttering “no, no, that’s just stupid” every thirty seconds or so. Soaked dystopia Waterworld desperately tries to make audiences believe in a world entirely covered with water, in factions repeatedly meeting on a featureless ocean, in scarce resources being expended wildly, in … oh, forget it. But there’s more to the annoyance than nitpicking the film to death: it really doesn’t help that Waterworld’s action sequences are so repetitive, either taking place on water or in rusted-out low-imagination post-apocalyptic environments. The film is dull and blurs in trying to recall specific moments. Costner himself is almost a caricature of his own stoic persona, and there’s added irony in contemplating that the film largely takes place on a sea over the American west … that’s right: Westworld is another Costner western. If the film does show most of its then-record breaking budget on the screen, it’s not particularly exciting nor engaging. Sure, Jeanne Tripplehorn is always interesting and sure, it’s OK to see Dennis Hopper ham it up as a villain made to scare kids but … really? Now that I’ve watched Waterworld again, I’m ready to go another twenty years (or more) not thinking about it.

  • Collateral Beauty (2016)

    Collateral Beauty (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) It’s hard to accurately gauge whether an actor is smart from their screen performances alone. The best ones can play characters completely unlike themselves and we’d never know. But I have a growing suspicion that you can tell a lot about an actor by the roles they choose to play. Now, I won’t make any accusations about Will Smith (whom I still rather like a lot), but looking at a filmography that includes Seven Pounds and After Earth and now Collateral Beauty, I have to ask—is he even reading those scripts? Replace After Earth by the more respectable The Pursuit of Happiness and you would have an instant trilogy of manipulative faux-inspiring dramas that are so melodramatic as to court unintentional hilarity. So it is that Collateral Beauty is so ill-conceived from the start (something about a grieving man writing to Death, Time and Love, and then scheming co-workers hiring actors to play Death, Time and Love) that the first half hour plays as a farce despite itself, ridiculous while insisting otherwise. Things really don’t improve much during the last act of the film, in which two bigger revelations are dropped upon the audience, unfortunately earning nothing more than two big collective shrugs. Collateral Beauty is convinced that it has something profound and poignant to say, but it has forgotten to check whether audiences agree. I suspect that reactions will vary widely—as for myself, I’ve seen too many of those movies to be impressed. Now, I won’t make too much of Smith’s talents for script-picking considering that the cast also includes reliable performers such as Hellen Mirren, Edward Norton, Michael Peña and (to a lesser extent) Kiera Knightley. They may all have gone insane, but then again maybe I’m out to lunch on this particular film. Either way, I can only report that the result feels like a falsely profound tearjerker attempt. The premise seems so flawed that I’m not sure anything could have been done to rescue the result from unintended laughter. The twists won’t matter so much when it’s established early on that the movie stems from an inane place.

  • Tron (1982)

    Tron (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, August 2017) I approached a much-belated second viewing of Tron with some apprehension. While I remember being awed at the first one sometime in the mid-eighties (not to mention being aware of much of the promotional material upon the film’s release), I feared that the hype and subsequent cult-following would be detrimental to the movie. As steeped in then cutting-edge special effects, would Tron have aged gracefully? As it turns out … it’s not as bad as I had feared. Tron definitely has its rough edges. Never mind the special effects: just the script itself is full of clunky dialogue, badly-integrated elements, a tone that can’t quite figure out whether it’s addressing kids or adults, and insignificant tangents. The plot structure is a mess with characters being introduced (or removed/ignored) at odd times. It feels messy rather than complex, and the silly dialogue will make anyone itch for just one more script rewrite. Fortunately, plot is among Tron’s least important qualities. It’s far more interesting to talk about its visual design, relationship to socio-technological history and fantasy world-building. Tron has aged rather well as a special-effects showcase: While technology has evolved far beyond the simple CGI available at the time, Tron does have its own style and works best when it exploits the limits of this style. Reading about the film’s production history explains why the colour scheme is inconsistent (basically: they changed it during production), but much of it still impresses even thirty-five years later. Unfortunately, the world-building is inconsistent: while it’s really good in setting the story in 1982 and occasionally in creating a society within the computer, it quickly turns embarrassing in some of the ways it tries to develop the cyber-world aspects: Part of it is due to writing a cutting-edge film for young audiences, but part of it is also due to viewers’ greater familiarity with computing technology that would have seemed magical in 1982. For amateur techno-historians, Tron is a fascinating look at how society viewed computers early in the consumer electronics era, with a suspicion that there was more under the hood than we suspected. (Ah, if they only knew! Nowadays, computers can host rivalling bots, in-between automated update agents, organized crime botnet clients and intelligence agency backdoors…) I’ve got a vague idea in my mind for a retro-computing mini-film festival featuring Wargames, Tron and Superman III… [Oh wow, I’m only thirty-three years late to this grouping] Still, getting back to Tron itself, it has aged more gracefully than I expected. Style and audaciousness can help forgive plot and structure, then as now. It helps that Jeff Bridges had a charismatic screen presence, but even he would probably admit that Tron has enduring cult appeal not based on his looks as much as the fantastic images around him.

  • Stay (2005)

    Stay (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2017) From the very first disorienting moments of Stay, what with its first-person sequences, a psychiatrist protagonist and hints of something stranger going on, it’s obvious that this is going to be a twisty thriller. Ewan McGregor stars as a therapist trying to help a troubled young man not to commit suicide, but his probing only reveals more confusion. Meanwhile, Naomi Watts is troubled as his girlfriend and Ryan Gosling, back in his punchable-face pre-Notebook early career, is suitably abrasive as the suicidal student. As the movie goes on, it makes less and less sense and experienced viewers may choose to disembark from the emotional train at this point, suspecting that it’s headed for a crash. The resolution of the film would prove them right, as it conjures up a weak explanation for the film that nonetheless manages to make a mockery out of it, merely one step removed from “it was all a dream.” What a disappointment, coming from director Marc Forster (Stranger than Fiction, World War Z, etc.) and screenwriter David Benioff (Game of Thrones). But what saves the film from complete failure is Forster’s intense stylistic touch, infusing to the film a style that keeps it interesting even as we begin to suspect that it’s narratively hollow. I’d use “Lynchian” carefully, and not as a term of endearment. Small interesting segments do not amount to a satisfying whole, especially when it’s the film meta-narrative conceit that it’s a whole assembled out of fragments. I went into Stay completely cold (as in; unaware of its content) and can’t recommend the experience—like many movies who keep a self-conscious punch for the end, it may best be seen as warm as possible: Read the rather good Wikipedia plot summary first, and then see the film for yourself fully expecting the twist. Maybe it’ll be more satisfying like that.

  • The Mission (1986)

    The Mission (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) While acknowledging that The Mission is a good film, I must also report my almost complete lack of interest in it. The story of missionaries deep in unsympathetic South American surroundings, The Mission is a heartfelt look at a difficult chapter in history. Despite the lavish location shooting, the colourful cinematography, the calibre of the actors (not only Robert de Niro and Jeremy Irons, but also Aidan Quinn and Liam Neeson in minor roles) and the serious subject matter presented soberly, I repeatedly failed to become interested in The Mission. Bad timing? Esoteric subject matter? Overdose of epic films? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try again in a decade or two.

  • Damien: Omen II (1978)

    Damien: Omen II (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) Laughing at deaths in horror movies isn’t necessarily a sign of psychopathy. As Damien: Omen II shows, it can be a perfectly valid reaction to over-the-top filmmaking. Let’s not pretend that this sequel is a vast step down for the series: The original The Omen certainly had its share of overdone moments and aggressive cues: its decapitation sequence remains a case study in how nominally terrifying material can become risible through pathos overload. Damien seems to have retained most of the wrong lessons from its predecessor in a very loose follow-up: Its death scenes are just as ridiculous, and its structure boils down to a series of loops in which secondary characters try to warn the protagonist about the evil of Damien, only to die horribly. It gets amusing, then ridiculous, then tiresome, then annoying. While I still like some elements of the film (giving the lead role to William Holden as a visibly elderly man, for instance, or the final twist in which the true allegiance of the wife is revealed), much of it is sensationalistic tripe with a blaring soundtrack that will tell you when you should be scared. The late-seventies atmosphere makes Damien slightly more interesting now than it was upon release, but that’s not quite enough to make it an essential viewing other than following up on the original.

  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

    Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) As a mild Harry Potter fan, I wasn’t expecting much from spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. With Colin Farrell lurking in a supporting role, I was even envisioning a Winter’s Tale-sized debacle. But the result, thanks to J.K. Rowling’s savvy script and Warner Brothers’ willingness to bankroll a lavish production, is surprisingly good. Eddie Redmayne is very good as Newt Scamander, an awkward wizard with more affinity with fantastic animals than people. He arrives in New York City in time for us to get a long good satisfying look at a lavish re-creation of 1920s NYC, crammed with details and enough CGI to impress anyone. Director David Yates moves the story along at a good clip, first as light comedy and then increasingly as a full fantastic drama. The ending deserves a special mention, as it is more thematically resonant than most other forgettable CGI fantasy fests of recent years—the hero doesn’t get to pulverize his opponent out of brawn, and whatever clichés remain (city in peril, memories wiped) and handled far more gracefully than elsewhere. Production design is important: The rebuilding-the-city sequence that so annoyed me in Jupiter Ascending is transformed here in a delightful sequence by sheer accumulation of details. Spending time in 1920s NYC turns out to be a lot of fun, and no expense seems to have been spared in putting details on-screen. Redmayne is backed-up with a good cast: while Katherine Waterston has a mostly unglamorous role as a flapper voice of reason, Alison Sudol is a lot more fun as her blonde bombshell sister, gaining importance as the story goes on and falling for Dan Fogler’s unexpectedly likable character. As far as big-screen CGI spectacles go, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is far more tolerable than most of the recent fantasy epics, and it feels substantially more sophisticated than many franchise-building attempts. It’s got a heart despite the big budget, and it’s so different from the Potter movies that it can be appreciated as a standalone effort. Its nature as a prequel doesn’t hamper its effectiveness or ability to surprise, and the way it leisurely reveals its fantastic assets is wondrous rather than slow. All in all, a better-than-expected effort at a time when we’ve grown used to the commodification of the fantastic in movies. All it takes is a good script and enough resources to do it justice…