Reviews

  • Snowpiercer (2013)

    Snowpiercer (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, July 2013) Madness awaits those who try to interpret Snowpiercer as a completely realistic “vision of the future”: Its central premise (a train running into an infinite loop after a world-wide disaster, carrying what remains of humanity) is so deliriously impossible that a heap full of disbelief suspension salt is required before the film even begins. But moving on, since one big deviation from reality is what is required for nearly all SF movies… Snowpiercer‘s saving grace is that it’s well-directed and imaginatively justified: Director Joon-ho Bong brings visual inventiveness and slick action directing to the mix. It sort of helps, in this fable-like story, that the narrative structure looks so simple: An uprising of oppressed passengers starts at the back of the train, and makes its way forward –we know the story will reveal its final mysteries and conclude once the front has been reached. Chris Evans is solid as the protagonist, but an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton steals the show as an unhinged matron bureaucrat trying to perpetuate the train’s social order, with good supporting performances by Ed Harris, John Hurt, Ah-sung Ko and Kang-ho Song. Occasionally as visually warped as Terry Gilliam’s best films, Snowpiercer has a number of set-pieces that linger in mind: The darkened-tunnel action scene, the wildly impossible loop shoot-out, the demented classroom sequence… It almost doesn’t matter that the premise makes no sense (and that the ending, far from being triumphant, boils down to “and now their troubles really begin.”) when the rest of the film is so richly imagined and well-handled. Unlike a film like Elysium, which so clearly attempts to be realistic that it disappoints when it’s not entirely consistent, Snowpiercer carries with it an ember of madness (Swinton’s first big speech, for instance) that makes it easier to consider without perfect coherency. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a great SF movie, but it’s enjoyable and original enough. (And if nothing else, it’s quite a bit more satisfying than the original French graphic novel, which purposefully seeks to end without satisfaction.)

  • Daybreak Zero, John Barnes

    Daybreak Zero, John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2011, 400 pages, C$33.50 hc, ISBN 978-0-441-01975-5

    While I generally agree that all novels should stand upon themselves and require as little contextual knowledge as possible, there are exceptions. John Barnes has always been a surprisingly challenging author (his repertoire of authorial motifs often includes sexual violence, repellant protagonists, deliberate antagonism of his core-SF audience, tragic endings, and at least one novel in which the entire universe surrounding the protagonists changed every few pages) and in his case, I believe that as much external knowledge of the work is usually preferable.

    While Daybreak Zero may look like a bog-standard post-apocalyptic second-volume-of-a-trilogy, at least one piece of information may help in understanding it. [August 2014: Actually, two pieces of information may be best, but after reading the third volume of the trilogy, I’ve moved the second item to the review of the third volume. As a hint, though: The trilogy was never meant to restore civilized order, but to set up another series.)

    So: keep in mind that the book was the result of a somewhat unfriendly editing process. The story, simply put, is that Barnes was attempting a sprawling post-apocalyptic trilogy in his usual in-your-face fashion at a new publisher. (After years and dozens of novels published by Tor, this was Barnes’ first experience with Ace) Conversely, Ace wanted a safe and comfortable SF trilogy with clear heroes, despicable antagonists and a focused storyline. Add to that the industry context (falling sales during a recession, mid-list writers being squeezed out of the industry, the 2010 sea change in ebooks as signaled by the quick uptake of the iPad) and you can see how a novel like Daybreak Zero could be affected. As he writes on his too-infrequent blog…

    So the first two books were chopped way, way, way down, with me trying to keep them sprawling and ambiguous and undecided and interesting, like the world, and the editor trying to narrow them down to one-hero-one-problem-on-one-side like movies-on-the-reader’s-forehead. One way we frequently compromised was that I got to have some of the material left in but with scenes shortened

    So that probably explain the stop-and-go pacing of Daybreak Zero, which takes a break to tell us how a scoutmaster was able to survive an all-inclusive apocalypse, while setting up traitorous plot developments as quickly as it can knock them out in the next scene. There’s a bit of discontinuity to the book that could have been smoothed out with more breathing room. (Not helped along by a structure that takes place almost all “in real time” with quick little scenes that offer little opportunity for time-skipping such as “for the past three weeks, our characters had done this…”) A surprising amount of stuff takes place off-screen, or so quickly on the page that it may have not been there at all.

    I mention this because it helps a lot in forgiving some of the irritants in Daybreak Zero. I had a few others that were my own fault –I read Directive 51 four years ago, and didn’t remember some of the crucial details: So I was all ready with indignant objections that so many people would be part of Daybreak, until I was reminded that it was a self-sustaining memetic system partially prefigured by Barnes’ own One True series.

    Mind you, it doesn’t explain away the novel’s lack of overall plot development: Despite the trips and decisions taken, deaths of viewpoint characters (no less than four of them!), and ominous final developments, the shape of the world as the novel begins is very, very similar to the one it ends with despite pieces being moved on the checkerboard; the third novel, The Last President, should settle how useful this middle volume truly was.

    Still, I’m rather pleased by Daybreak Zero. The entire concept of Daybreak is ingeniously infuriating (although I do hope that its mysteries get cleared up nicely in the next volume), one character gets a terrifying arc from nerdy hero to brainwashed villain and, as is usual with Barnes’ work, Daybreak Zero remains a pleasure to read with plenty of narrative velocity. It doesn’t quite amount to much more than interesting sequences furiously aligned one after another, but that’s part of the problem in second-volumes of trilogies.

    Fortunately, those second volumes also require quite a bit less hand-holding than first volumes. Now let’s see what Barnes intend to do to close the story.

  • All is Lost (2013)

    All is Lost (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2014) Some movies demand admiration simply by sheer audacity, and All is Lost‘s ultra-minimalism in portraying a single man stranded on a damaged boat in the middle of the ocean is the kind of stunt filmmaking that makes for an intriguing departure from the usual movies. There is only one cast-member: Robert Redford, supporting an entire film on his shoulders while having fewer than a dozen spoken lines. Much of the film is spent seeing him react to the collision between his boat and an errant shipping container: as his situation gets worse (powerful storms don’t help when the boat is leaking), All is Lost becomes a pure survival thriller about a man losing everything and yet never giving up. Writer/director J.C. Chandor delivers a superb cinematographic exercise, considerably improving upon the directing in his debut Margin Call. There’s a refreshing lack of dramatic intensity at play: Redford underplays everything as would befit a man focusing on survival, while the score and cinematography also try to restrain themselves. But while the film is easy to admire, it’s not quite as easy to love: it’s a bit longer than it should have been, and the ambiguous ending will either work or not. Still, much of All is Lost‘s power comes from its self-assured portrayal of survival at sea under desperate circumstances. It would work as a good double-feature for either Life of Pi or Gravity.

  • Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with his Century: Vol2: The Man Who Learned Better, 1948-1988, William H. Patterson, Jr.

    Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with his Century: Vol2: The Man Who Learned Better, 1948-1988, William H. Patterson, Jr.

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2014, 672 pages, C$39.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-765-31961-6

    When the first volume of William J Patterson’s Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with his century appeared in 2010, my review reflected the critical consensus: While Patterson had better access to source material (including the cooperation of Virginia Heinlein) than anyone else and was able to shed light on hitherto-unknown aspects of Heinlein’s early life, the result was burdened in trivia, lacking in any critical perspective and so utterly beholden to Heinlein as to approach hagiography. Still, complete judgement had to be suspended until the publication of the second volume, which tackled Heinlein’s better-known era, his marriage to Virginia Heinlein and his accession to best-sellerdom. Now that the second volume is here, it turns out that… much of the critical consensus about the first volume also applies to the second one.

    The Man Who Learned Better starts in 1948, roughly coinciding with Heinlein’s third wedding and (after a brief detour via Hollywood where he worked on Destination Moon), gradual home-making in Colorado. Much of this second volume presents a detailed minutia of Heinlein’s life, almost day-by-day as he writes stories, attends events, receives visitors and becomes involved in various causes. Eventually, health issues come to the forefront, from the near-death experience he suffered in 1973, to a lengthy period of ill health, culminating in a series of crises that led to his death in 1988. The immensely detailed narrative often borders on the trivial, but the effect becomes strangely hypnotic, almost as if we were living with the Heinleins on a daily basis. Patterson may not have been a particularly gifted writer (see below for a few examples), but the book does have an affecting melancholy to its latter sections, as a couple struggles and copes with health issues that force them to downsize their life before the inevitable end.

    Anyone looking for re-interpretation of Heinlein, or expanded commentary of his work will be disappointed: Patterson is a biographer far more than he is a literary critic, and since he hews so closely to the Heinleins’ point of view, he too regards reviewer as either useless (when they praise Heinlein) or malevolent (when they don’t). Noted critics such as Alexei Panshin and H. Bruce Franklin both turn up as recurring villains, to say nothing about Forrest J. Ackerman. While we get a hint as to what caused the enmity (Ackerman misappropriated Heinlein’s work, Panshin had the annoying habit of making inferences about Heinlein’s character, while Franklin was –horror of horrors- a Maoist), the level of vitriol thrown at these three men is almost ridiculous.

    Still, it’s a useful clue at what the biography leaves out. Reading In dialogue with his Century, one gets the impression that Heinlein towers over everyone else. That he is never wrong. That he never changes his mind even as the country moved leftward. (Making a mockery of the title “The Man Who Learns Better”) That everyone who went against him was a simple-minded villain. This somewhat charitable viewpoint can’t quite paper over the fact that Heinlein, by all accounts, was kind of an arrogant jerk. (There’s a better word that rhyme with …hole, but it goes against the PG-rating of this site.) Contemporary accounts of his behavior make it clear that if Heinlein was a member of your family, he’d be the insufferable blowhard uncle who’s always right, always willing to harangue family members for their political opinions and usually ends holiday gatherings by leaving early after having insulted everyone. It’s this dimension of Heinlein’s personality that has so fascinated fans for decades, and it’s that aspect that gets the shortest thrift here.

    It really doesn’t help that Patterson, being an ardent fanboy, doesn’t just idolize Heinlein (the introduction starts with “Mr. Heinlein”, always a bad sign for a biographer), but seems more than willing to co-opts Heinlein’s opinion into the current right-wing mindset. So it is that Heinlein-extended-by-Patterson gives us gems such as the Baltic states being enslaved by the USSR because they didn’t want to “do what must be done”, unlike the Scandinavian states (has Patterson ever looked at a map?) [P.198]. Such overreach of contemporary political opinion over historical events were easier enough to accept in the first volume of the biography which discussed a time too far away to be controversial, but it proves harder to tolerate with more contemporary events and figures.

    Furthering the problem is Patterson, graceless style. There are moments so clumsily written that they jar any reader out of the narrative. Take, for instance, this paragraph about a visit to Rio de Janeiro…

    …they drove up Corcovado mountain to see at first hand the monumental Christ the Redeemer status overlooking the steep hills over Rio –and, what the Heinleins may not have realized they were overlooking, Rio’s favelas, some of the worst slums in the world, so legendary in their poverty, violence, and crime that they are still being used as the setting for many “shooter” video games. [P.105]

    …and tell me how we can justifiably go from an account of a 1950s trip to a faintly reprobate mention of contemporary video games. Worse yet is the following:

    …During the course of the operation, Heinlein received blood transfusions collected from five anonymous donors. Since Robert had an uncommon blood type (universal recipient – Ginny had the even rarer universal donor type), it was almost certain that his life had been saved by the efforts of the National Rare Blood Club he had come across while researching I Will Fear No Evil. [P.320]

    As written, this makes almost no sense: Heinlein did have a rare blood type (AB+, roughly 3.4% of the population) but as a near-universal recipient, he could have received blood by nearly everyone –hence instantly debunking the assertion that his life had been saved by the National Rare Blood Club. (Notwithstanding the above blunder, the two chapters covering Heinlein’s year-long involvement with Blood donations reveal much about one of Heinlein’s most underrated life achievements, and stand as a highlight of the book.)

    Insufficiently copy-edited, the book also contains a number of typos and small annoying mistakes. Even my casual read of the text showed typos such as “Candian”, or “crities” (this one quasi-maliciously incorrect, as it refers to a section of Alexei Panshin’s web site), or more seriously “November 23, 1963” as the date of JFK’s assassination, when it actually took place on November 22nd.

    I hope that my exasperation with the text comes through. In details and in larger interpretation (or rather a lack thereof), In Dialogue with his Century is an immensely well-documented book that nonetheless seems to avoid commenting on the man at its center. Patterson seems to know everything about Heinlein but understand quite a bit less. To see this, the work of two lifetimes, result in a biography that falls substantially shorts of the gold standard of the genre is an exercise in frustration. This biography should have looked at its subject sympathetically but not uncritically. Even today, Heinlein does not need hero-worshipping –he needs someone willing to do what Heinlein himself couldn’t bear to do, which is to explain who he was. Readers can work from inferences (it’s no surprise that a trained military officer would later turn out to be particularly paranoid about threats to US hegemony) but for a biography claiming high that Heinlein avoided simplistic reductions, the fawning uncritical look at Heinlein seems unworthy of the subject. On related matters, we get some information in this volume about Leon Stover, first chosen biographer to Heinlein (and who was later removed from the project by Virginia Heinlein for “unauthorised” enquiries) but little about Patterson’s involvement itself.

    Still, it’s a heck of a scholarly work. There’s a lot of stuff in this second volume (from a scholarship aspect alone, I expect it to be nominated for a Hugo next year… even if the book really isn’t as good as it could have been), and I hope that it will become a reference for anyone writing a better biography. It’s also a tremendously rich book to discuss: My list of notes and items of interest from the book easily contains twice as many things I have the time to write about, and as a reviewer this is the kind of book that I love to discuss endlessly, largely because it isn’t perfect and could be improved.

    I’m also saddened to report that Patterson died barely a month before this second volume was released. For all the faults we can find with The Man Who Learned Better, his death leaves the ensuing conversation about Heinlein without a crucial voice, and without someone to receive and collect information that could have been raised during this discussion. (As Patterson himself writes in the appendix to his second volume unearthing new information about Heinlein’s early years, “the good stuff” invariably comes out shortly after publication.) Still, Patterson does leave in his wake a massive work of scholarship that will hopefully inspire others to further examination in Heinlein’s life.

    I also suspect that this biography will act as another lightning rod in the current fracture within the SF field, the old-guard of fans trying to preserve the memory of Heinlein against younger, more progressive and far more diverse fans. In the old-guard’s minds, In dialogue with his century is an attempt to prove that Heinlein is still of relevance today; that his fiction remains exemplary of what SF means to do, and that his philosophy is still valid. In claiming the good old dodge “I didn’t change my mind, everyone else did”, In Dialogue with his Century moves goalposts, but also servers to illustrate the difference between this old school and the new guard: The old school sees “the country moving to the left” as a sorrowful conclusion, whereas the new guard will perceive older men like Heinlein being naturally left behind.

    As far as I’m concerned, I expected this second volume of Heinlein’s life to mark a capstone of sorts to my own dealing with Heinlein. While I found him tremendously influential as a teen and young adult (I’ve been reading his novels since I was nine), I have recently, through various experiences and life changes, come to accept his dwindling relevance to today’s readers: While I still hold tremendous affection for his work, I accept that he will, from now on, be read mostly as a historical writer: even in the SF field, where his influence is unparalleled, I see younger viewers rejecting his novels and claiming other (often newer) writers as relevant. And that’s fine: the genre is not stuck in amber, and we need to move forward. Isn’t it enough to realize that his place in history is assured?

    But something happened in reading The Man Who Learned Better: I felt some jitterbug energy coming back, compelling me to go and re-read some of his fiction. So it is that I’m embarking (even with my limited time) on a modest re-reading project: Heinlein’s four Hugo Award-winning novels, from Double Star to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, stopping by Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land for completeness. We’ll see if they’re dated, if they can’t stand contemporary social standards, and if they are as I remembered them. I haven’t read them in twenty years; now is the time to revisit them.

  • Redshirts, John Scalzi

    Redshirts, John Scalzi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2012, 320 pages, C$28.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-765-31699-8

    Geez: As recently as three years ago, I used to read (nearly) all Hugo-nominated novels as a matter of course –sometimes even before they were nominated. Now it takes a year before I get around to reading the one Hugo-winning novel. Life changes. Stuff happens. I’m busy. Insert your favorite excuse here.

    It’s not even as if I had any particular reluctance to pick up John Scalzi’s Redshirts: I’ve been reading Scalzi since the original hardcover of Old Man’s War, have the rest of his novels on my shelves and find him to be a highly enjoyable entertainer. His work tends to be slighter than I’d prefer, and not every one of his novel works (I’ll argue that Zoe’s Tale, as charming and readable it can be, is almost useless from a narrative standpoint when put alongside The Last Colony.) but he is, book-for-book, one of the most reliable professionals in the business today.

    But I’ve been taking a break from reading in general for the past two years, and it’s only now that I’ve got the time for Redshirts. I will admit that my enthusiasm for the title was tempered somewhat by the plot summary, concerned as it is with the fate of expendable people in a suspiciously Star Trek-like future. The titular “Redshirts” expression is an old Star Trek fandom joke (as in “if you’re wearing a red shirt, you’re in trouble!” –because you will die in the first act as a way to heighten suspense) and I wasn’t too sure what Scalzi would be able to bring to the concept.

    For a while, it looks as if he doesn’t do much more than bring his usual witty dialogue and light touch to the table. As five new crewmembers board the Starship Intrepid, the in-jokes fly thick and low: everyone aboard is terrified to volunteer for away missions, lousy science seems to be the order of the day, and none of our witty five new crewmembers have any clue as to what’s happening. It’s not unpleasant to read, but it’s not much above dozens of years of trek in-jokes and banter. In fact, at that point, Redshirts seems to be a sub-standard comic Trek take-off, unwilling to dig deeper in the inanity of Trek’s premise and markedly less amusing than what one would expect from a comic romp. Andrew Dahl and the Methods of Rationality this isn’t.

    But wait… because there’s some serious weirdness ahead. It quickly becomes clear that something very strange in happening aboard the Intrepid whenever events start taking on dramatic qualities. People act differently, not quite understanding why they do. Logic flies off the window, taking with it what a professional team should know. Ominous warnings are given about The Narrative. People die, following a logic that our heroes desperately try to understand before they, too, suffer the same fate.

    Before long, things turn severely meta and Redshirts finally becomes more interesting than the simple Trek commentary promised on the back-cover. Without spoiling anything explicitly, let’s just say that Scalzi revisits territory previously explored in Agent to the Stars, and questions of personal identity similar to The Ghost Brigades. The novel ends with philosophical questions about our relationship to fiction. Redshirts concludes quickly, leaving time for three codas that prove unexpectedly moving as consequences to the novel’s events are explored, further developing our understanding of the wreckage left behind by protagonist heroics. Redshirts gets more and more interesting throughout, eventually showing (among other things) why it’s not a bad idea for someone with a degree in philosophy to be writing science-fiction.

    There are highs and lows along the way. Much of the writing is Scalzi’s usual mixture of snark and wittiness, which works well in blog posts but occasionally feels misplaced on the page. Many of the lead characters can’t easily be distinguished (this is played for laughs once, but it more often smacks of Scalzi-writes-one-kind-of-character-really-well. There are significant issues with willing disbelief in the middle third of the novel (including mentioning Star Trek by name), that are eventually papered over by the rest of the story. But, to its credit, Redshirts is rarely less than compelling to read: it’s got a lot of that elusive “reading fun” that so many other novels fail to achieve. Don’t be surprised to finish it within days even if you are a slow or busy reader.

    (I’m not quite as convinced it should have been a Hugo-award-winning novel, but I’ll leave that rant for another time.)

  • Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross

    Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2013, 336 pages, C$27.50 hc, ISBN 978-0-425-25677-0

    I grinned when I heard that Charles Stross’s Neptune’s Brood earned itself a Hugo nomination: Stross’s brand of densely-packed imaginative Science Fiction may not be to everyone’s liking, but it’s certainly a favorite flavor of mine. Stross is able to meld SF’s traditional core strengths with contemporary social sensibilities to produce SF that’s both recognizably in-genre, while reaching out to integrate new ideas and social inclusiveness. I welcome any excuse to read his books, especially when they take the form of a Hugo nomination.

    Loosely set thousands of years after the events of Saturn’s Children, Neptune’s Brood features a vast post-human diaspora settled on multiple worlds. Despite the lack of faster-than-light travel, technology has progressed sufficiently that people can be beamed from star to star… as long as the required infrastructure is in place. But even without the troublesome aspects of sending meat-flesh across interstellar distances, space colonization is hard. As Stross explains in an enjoyable series of explanatory passages, building a colony from scratch requires a ruinously expensive starship, dozens/hundreds of years of hard work in building laser transmission and reception infrastructure, and thousands of very specialized people working together. There’s no way to do that without incurring astonishing amounts of debt, and how do you do that across interstellar distances and years of separation?

    The solution, ingeniously posits Stross, is to develop “slow” money, algorithmically created in much the same way emerging digital currencies currently are, that are not subject to the same kind of fluctuations as “fast” money used in day-to-day transaction. Slow money, of course, is different from fast money: a single slow dollar converted to fast money is enough to make an individual rich for years.

    Having built a space opera on a physically-accurate economic framework, Stross then proceeds to deliver on of his usual thriller yarns, featuring an endearing heroine specializing in the history of frauds and on the trail of a massive financial con. Despite the heavy economic content, Neptune’s Brood is heavy on thriller plot mechanics, traditional SF devices and amusing set-pieces: By mid-book, we’ve been hanging with skeletal bots, zombie queens, space pirates and genetically-modified mermaids. Stross is clearly having fun, and it’s this blend of economic/futuristic speculation and out-and-out comic thriller sensibilities that make Neptune’s Brood so enjoyable.

    Seasoned SF readers will, as usual, find much to like here. Stross understands genre SF completely and fluently plays with typical concepts, subverting a few of them and faithfully upholding others. The way Stross manages to present a vivid interstellar civilization despite the limitations of STL is intriguing (even though he still had to get rid of unmodified humans to do so), and the conceptual economic model her proposes is the kind of work other authors will, or should, adopt as part of their far-future toolbox. Anyone looking for SF speculation probably won’t find any better book this year.

    As a long-time Stross reader who often peers over the author’s keyboard as he reveals aborted projects and odd sources of inspiration, it’s good to see his “Space Pirates of KPMG” pitch resurface after being deep-sixed as a sequel to Iron Sunrise. Neptune’s Brood will feel very comfortable to anyone who loves Stross’ far-future speculations (the indebtness to Saturn’s Children and the Eschaton series is obvious, but there’s shadows of Accelerando and Glasshouse in here too, and the criminal/financial theme finds resonance with the Halting State / Rule 34 universe as well.)

    I’m not completely blind to the novel’s faults. It’s part of the point of Neptune’s Brood that travel between systems is slow and expensive, but that limits the amount of space-opera scenery we get to see during the trip. There’s also a certain familiarity to the caper-and-thriller plotting that undercuts the originality of the premise; I recall having some of the same reactions upon Saturn Children‘s release. Finally, perhaps more importantly, the narrative ends more abruptly than expected, with nary a denouement to release readers after the climactic so-there.

    But those are relatively small quibbles in a strong SF novel in the classical mold, with enough speculation to keep core-SF readers happy, and enough thrilling action to satisfy adventure-minded readers. Stross remains at the top of the SF game and my reaction to Neptune’s Brood reaffirms why I should always make time on my schedule for his novels even as my leisure time has shrunk.

  • Riddick (2013)

    Riddick (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2014) I’m constantly nonplussed at the insistence on making Riddick an ongoing SF franchise. Sure, I was an early fan of Pitch Black. Of course, I really like Vin Diesel. It goes without saying that I wish writer/director David Twohy the best in his career. But after the messy incoherence that was The Chronicles of Riddick, we’ve seen the best that universe had to offer, and it’s something best let go. Not that Riddick is overly enamored of its predecessor either: It’s impressively dedicated at erasing the memory of the previous entry, quickly and definitively putting Riddick back in his favorite environment: battling nature and human opponents on a planet where survival seems unlikely. The first twenty minutes of the film go by with nearly no dialogue, all the better to demonstrate against how much of an invulnerable bad-boy Riddick can be. By the time a “mercenary station” (WHAT???) is reached and two competing teams land to vie for Riddick’s head, the film settles into a comfortable B-movie routine. There are, to be fair, a few good moments here and there. By stripping down to the basic essentials of a survival thriller, Riddick judiciously focuses on its lead character and goes back to straight-up suspense rather than the nonsensical extended mythology of the second film. Other actors get a chance to try to equal Vin Diesel’s usual intensity: There’s a nice rivalry between Matthew Nable and Jordi Mollà as the rival mercenary leaders, while Katee Sackhoff gets to be a little bit more than just “the girl” in the script. Of course, there’s little suspense regarding Riddick’s fate – it’s the kind of film to be watched to see what the protagonist will do to his enemies. (In most movies, we fear when a protagonist is in chains and threatened. In this one, we sit back and anticipate the carnage.) Of course, Riddick is a movie for fans –essentially an attempt to gain operating capital for the next installment. As such, it’s a bit bland, a bit competent, a bit ridiculous and a bit enjoyable. There may or may not be another installment in the series –I don’t particularly care, which is actually a step up from how I felt at the end of the previous film.

  • In a World… (2013)

    In a World… (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) The nice thing about being a cinephile is that movies often self-congratulate themselves and their viewers. I’m not being malicious here: if you’re a fan of movies, you will find the best validation for your obsession at the movies themselves rather than in novels, music or other competing entertainment media. (The same goes for the other media, naturally). In the case of In a World, knowing about Don Lafontaine’s voice and how it was used in major movie trailers until his death in 2008 is enough to prime you for an entire movie about movie trailer voiceovers. But never mind those high-flying considerations, especially when In a World proves to be a perfectly charming low-budget romantic comedy. It’s certainly has to do with Hollywood insider material, but it’s accessible enough to wider audiences, and universally successful in how it deals with its characters. Actress Lake Bell successfully marks a transition to writer/director status with her first film, and gets a great lead role as a likable vocal coach who ends up in the movie-trailer voiceover specialty. There are plenty of conflicts involving her family and a blooming romance with a co-worker on the way to major industry recognition. It’s not a particularly dense film, nor much of an outright laugh-getter, but it feels genuine and friendly in a way many bigger-budgeted productions often don’t. Bell is exactly who she should be as the protagonist, but she also lets other players such as Fred Melamed claim a big place within the movie. The opening sequence is brilliant (seamlessly going from explaining Lafontaine’s legacy to introducing many of the film’s characters) and there are a few good plot twists on the way to a more conventional underdog-triumphant story. While In a World is universally accessible enough to be worth watching by anyone, cinephiles will get a lot out of exploring one of the hidden corners of Hollywood.

  • Dark Tide (2012)

    Dark Tide (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) Sometime, it’s obvious from the beginning that a movie’s not going to get any better. So it is that Dark Tide‘s opening sequence serves as a rote prologue and an eloquent warning: This is a movie about sharks. It’s not a refined effort. It’s not going to be particularly impressive. Halle Berry will bring nothing to the role. And characters will be eaten by sharks. Once this is established, there’s nowhere left for Dark Tide to go despite the remainder of its running time. The plot may move “one year later”, but we know what to expect as two tourists walk aboard her ship and head for the sea in an effort to swim with the sharks. Much of the following hour is spent in false scares, perfunctory character development and minor anticipation as the plot builds itself up toward a pre-ordained third act: By the time the storm starts, night falls, the boat capsizes, and sharks attack, well, we knew it was all leading to this. The only surprise is how badly-shot that ending sequence becomes: A mushy blur of black and white, with occasional flashes of red to tell us that someone is being killed. Director John Stockwell isn’t completely incompetent (there are a few sequences earlier in the movie to suggest that he has at least an idea of what he should be doing) but he completely loses whatever visual grasp he had over the story late in the film, and it’s tempting to simply fast-forward past the noise and the confusion to see who makes it alive to dawn. Berry herself gets a few dramatic bickering scenes with Olivier Martinez (usually a good actor, wasted here) but doesn’t seem to bring anything more to the role than the bikini used on the film’s posters. Dark Tide is really just a tedious and forgettable B-grade thriller, more or less destined to become cable channel filler material. Don’t expect much from it, and if you do there’s always the first few minutes to set you straight.

  • A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (2012)

    A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) Charlie Sheen and self-indulgence go really well together, but there’s a difference between showing it in tabloid headlines and seeing it in a full-length feature film. Billed as a comedy, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III stars Sheen as a circa-1970s graphic designer dealing with the abrupt departure of his latest girlfriend. Delusions, flights of fancy, anxiety attacks, crippling doubt all follow, inevitably leading to wacky despair-fueled hijinks and acceptance of sorts. It’s as good as any excuse to prop the Charlie Sheen persona as a romantic lead, and for writer/director Roman Copolla to do whatever he wants with the tools of cinema. (It all culminates, somewhat amusingly, into an intensely self-reflective final shot in which the actors name their characters and the artifices of filming are revealed all the way to a mirror shot of the director and camera operator.) As a light-hearted romp playing with cherished visuals, competent actors in small roles (including Bill Murray, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman and Patricia Arquette), A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III isn’t without occasional interest. It does not, however, coalesce into something more meaningful that scattered vignettes and Sheen playing some idealized version of himself. (Or, rather, some idealized version of what other people should be thinking about himself.) I’ll admit that it’s easy to transfer any feelings about Sheen-the-persona onto Swan-the-character, but then again the film makes it easy to do so. I don’t happen to particularly like the Sheen persona (although, like many others, I find it unexplainably compelling), and that may explain a decidedly tepid reaction to the film despite by usual fondness for meta-cinematographic tricks and showy set-pieces. At best, it’s a surreal, strange and kind-of-wonderful film. But for anyone even remotely aware of Sheen’s antics over the past few years, it definitely takes a special state of mind to go past the misogyny, self-adulation and conscious myth-making at play here.

  • Hummingbird aka Redemption (2013)

    Hummingbird aka Redemption (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) At a point when nearly everyone knows what “a Jason Statham movie” is supposed to be, here comes Redemption to show something just slightly different enough to be interesting, although not necessarily likable. It starts like many other Statham films, with the actor playing a down-on-his-luck ex-military protagonist scrambling to survive. But then an exceptionally lucky break allows the lead character to stop running and start improving his situation. Alas, this doesn’t translate in sweetness and light: our hero takes up a job as an enforcer and starts filling up his fridge with bundles of cash. Whatever emotion he’s got left are spent avenging a murdered friend and seducing a preposterously attractive nun. That plot summary fits with Statham’s righteous-avenger persona, but it’s the ending that sets Redemption apart, one where the character voluntarily accepts the end of his summer in the sun, and his fatalistic return to obscurity. Various odds and ends make the rest of the film more uncomfortable than it needed to be: the seducing-nun subplot is a lot less fun than you’d expect (it smacks of an exploitation device in a film that tries to be something more serious), there’s an off-putting human-trafficking sequence that causes more cringes than illumination, and the ending seems to reach for pathos that the rest of the film hasn’t justified. Perhaps worst of all is how slow and occasionally dull Redemption can be. Even as writer/director Steven Knight’s conscious attempt to tackle deeper themes within a framework immediately familiar to Statham and his fans, it doesn’t quite have the grace or the compelling hooks required to keep sustained interest throughout. Redemption is somewhat audacious, sure, even beautifully shot at times and symbolically deeper than anything we’d expect (all the while showing why Statham is both a limited and charismatic actor at once) but it doesn’t add up to something more than “interesting”.

  • Planes (2013)

    Planes (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) I can still remember the cackles that accompanied the first trailers for this “From the world of Cars” spinoff: Everyone knows that Cars and its sequel are regarded as the weakest Pixar movies yet some of Disney’s biggest merchandising brands. Now that Disney can do whatever they want with the concept, handing over the franchise to another studio and creating new licensing opportunities seemed like the easiest, crassest thing possible. But here we are now, with a Cars knock-off that barely attempts to hide its source of inspiration. The “little plane that could” set-up has the first half-hour of Cars (with small town characters, a wise mentor and scenery shaped like vehicles) leading to a globe-trotting tour borrowed from Cars 2. The film, obviously geared for boys, doesn’t spend much thought in trying to deliver something different, or to avoid casual racism-by-nationality. (Ah, yes, the harassment-grade romantic behavior by a Mexican boy-plane that eventually sweeps the French-Canadian girl-plane off her wheels rather than earn the harasser a restraining order…. is this the kind of thing we need to show today’s pre-teens?) The story is dead-simple, with obvious narrative threads picked up just in time for the predictable climax. Even the flying sequences seem surprisingly short. I’m not going to complain about the impossible logistics of the Cars universe any further except to say that this film just pushes the whole thing into I-don’t-care-anymore nonsense. And yet, for all the basic silliness, there are a few good moments in Planes: most of them have to do with the sheer joy of flying, and the animation can be impressive when the planes behave like planes rather than oddly-shaped characters. It’s not quite enough that make Planes a good film, but it is enough to make any adult sit down and watch the entire film, which is probably just what the filmmakers intended. As I write this, the trailer for Planes: Fire and Rescue is already out, making it clear that the Cars universe will keep spinning off more licensing opportunities whether we like it or not.

  • Monsters University (2013)

    Monsters University (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) No one really demanded a prequel to Monsters Inc, and the fact that Pixar delivered one anyway is yet another cautionary item in the growing list of why the studio had gone from great to merely good. Still, for all of the mixed expectations surrounding the film and the somewhat generic nature of the end product, there’s no use denying that Monsters University is a high-energy, high-concept, high-budget film, carefully plotted and attentively executed with an astonishing amount of near-imperceptible detail. Coming off as I did from an extended diet of low-budget films, it feels like a breath of fresh air and a reaffirmation of the possibilities of imaginative cinema. Oh, all right: Monsters University isn’t that good. It curiously adopts a college-film plot template in a film destined to older kids, presents set-pieces that are a bit scattered, suffers from a drawn-out ending, and doesn’t quite get full marks on the “Revenge of the Nerds” frat comedy character interest scale. On the other hand, well, the money shows: the animation is as good as any other animated movie so far, with the cartoonish nature of its creatures only enhanced by the photorealism of the background. The universe of the first film is expanded coherently, and the lead character work is just fine. As damning as it is, Monsters University apes one of its lead characters by being technically proficient but not quite fully invested emotionally. It’s a pleasant disappointment, a fun but ultimately forgettable piece of entertainment. It’s all well and good to stay in business and generate merchandising opportunities for monster-corporation Disney, but Pixar hasn’t become the dominant animation studio by taking the easy way forward. Is it now happier just delivering the expected?

  • Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story (2013)

    Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) Bob Guccione will forever remain famous as the publisher of adult magazine Penthouse, but for me he was first and foremost the mad genius who put together the now-legendary OMNI magazine in all of its blended fact/fiction science/speculation glory. Filthy Gorgeous takes us through Guccione’s full life, spending a lot of time on the more scandalous aspects of his career, while not forgetting the way in which he tried to move beyond adult magazines and create something new: The infamous exploitation movie Caligula, the launch of OMNI and other magazines, the ill-fated investments in fusion power reactors and Atlantic City casinos. Guccione remains a compelling figure throughout, as artist, businessman and dreamer, first-amendment fighter and social nexus for high-powered visionaries and supermodels alike. Guccione’s role in expanding the limits of allowable discourse is also carefully explained here, cementing his place alongside Larry Flynn and Hugh Hefner. (Ironically, though, the most infamous Penthouse issue, featuring a nude pictorial of then-Miss America Vanessa Williams, eventually proved a costly crest for the magazine, which suffered significant consequences from the episode and so may have started its own downfall.) As a documentary, Filthy Gorgeous is a fairly standard assortment of talking heads and archival footage, albeit with a bit of tasteful nudity in accurately portraying Guccione’s artistic pursuits. A fascinating subject makes for a fairly interesting documentary film, and it’s hard to ask for more than that.

  • Three Inches (2011)

    Three Inches (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) There is one truly essential thing to understand about Three Inches: It was the pilot to a never-approved series, and it’s quite specifically geared to be a TV show. This becomes obvious minutes into the film (from the dull opening credit, modest cinematography and obvious breaks where commercials should be inserted), but it helps understand why it seems to hold back so much potential, and also appreciate how a better-than-average script can improve even a failed pilot into something interesting. Three Inches tells the story of a young man who, thanks to being hit by lightning, develops an telekinetic ability –albeit limited to moving objects a mere three inches in distance. What seems like a near-useless supernatural talent, however, is quickly co-opted by a small team of similarly oddly-super-powered individuals, teaming together to accomplish contracts for wealthy clients. Three Inches is probably best in its opening minutes, as a sympathetic hero (Noah Reid) deals with his sudden superpower while undergoing the complicated life of an underachieving twentysomething: Good dialogue, self-aware plotting and decent characters (including a short but funny turn by Andrea Martin as the protagonist’s mom.) Then, alas, it turns into a somewhat far more ordinary quasi-superhero team story, and the freshness of the first few minutes evaporates. The budget issues also become more noticeable, and as the story wraps itself to a conclusion, there’s a strong sense of an entire series premise being set up. Sadly, that potential will remain untapped, as Three Inches will now only exist as filler for cable TV channels. Still, the film is quite better than its “failed pilot” label may suggest, and there are some undeniably good moments early on.