Reviews

  • Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

    Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2017) Clint Eastwood hasn’t done many comedies in his career, and Every Which Way But Loose may help explain why. While an undeniable popular (if not critical) success at the time, it’s a film that now feels almost humorless despite clear attempts at being funny. Eastwood himself barely cracks a smile, a joke or anything looking like self-deprecation in a movie where he’s asked to plays a brawler tracking down an unwilling love interest from Los Angeles to Denver. (A premise that has its own set of problems…) Among the film’s many distinctions is how it takes place in blue-collar settings halfway between cowboys and truckers, refuses to give its hero what he wants, and remains almost laugh-free even as it plays with big comic targets: yes, this is the film where Eastwood pals around with an orangutan and punches neo-Nazis in the face. The episodic structure does the film no favours, and the seriousness through which the comedy is approached doesn’t lead to extra laughs either. As an anthropological look in the working-class seventies, Every Which Way But Loose is mildly interesting … but as a look at one of the top-grossing films of the time, it’s more mystifying than anything else. Apparently there’s a sequel that closes the loop on some of the film’s most distinctive aspects…

  • The Hot Chick (2002)

    The Hot Chick (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2017) Body-swapping comedies are a weird enough subgenre, but gender-swapping comedies featuring Rob Schneider are all the way out there between “gross” and “really?” Still, there are a few surprises in this fifteen-year-old film—most notably seeing Rachel MacAdams (two years before her Mean Girls/Notebook breakthrough) slumming it up in the lead role as a popular high school girl who unwillingly swaps bodies with an older male petty criminal. McAdams is good, and so is Anna Faris in a supporting role … even though the rest of the film is almost unbearably dumb. I say almost because, for all of its sins, The Hot Chick can’t help but explore a bit of the gender-bending queerness (in the best sense of the word) that its premise would suggest. Those fleeting moments almost make The Hot Chick interesting on its own terms. Still, much of the movie clearly shows its Happy Madison lineage—at the time, Schneider was perhaps at the height of his fame as a comedian, and he didn’t get there by being clever or refined. Unbearable at times, almost interesting at others, The Hot Chick is perhaps best seen today as an early film for people who then did better … or faded away like Schneider.

  • Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

    Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2017) I’m as surprised as anyone else by the fact that I still like the Paranormal Activity series even at its fifth instalment, long after nearly everyone else has given up on it. The Marked Ones, to be fair, consciously sets out to do something different with the premise: Largely set within the Los Angeles Latino community, it features two characters held at arms-length from the events of the first four movies, and plays with the mythology in entertaining ways that nonetheless destroy any hope that it will all hang together in the end. But never mind: The Marked Ones is far more interesting when it spends time with its teenage protagonist, balancing joy and horror as his life is thrown upside down. Far more YouTubeish than the previous entries in the series, The Marked Ones nonetheless manages to be relatively fun, especially as a fifth entry in the series. The cultural context makes it more interesting than others (at least to me, given that I’m not exposed to the Californian Latino culture very much) and while the answers of the series aren’t coming, at least there are a few good set-pieces along the way.

  • Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

    Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2017) I will reluctantly concede a certain audacity in drafting a follow-up to Independence Day twenty years after the first film. In positing a fictional universe advanced by twenty years of international co-operation and repurposed alien technology, Resurgence takes us in relatively new territory as far as alien invasion films are concerned: As much science fictional on the human side as the alien side, rebalancing the usual power dynamics of the situation. Unfortunately, this ends up being largely window-dressing for bigger action sequences: the lunar tripwire gets ripped quickly, and it doesn’t stop a spectacular disaster sequence from picking up Abu Dhabi and dropping it on London (no, really). Twenty years later, advances in special effects technology do look like alien technology to 1996 state-of-the-art, and if Resurgence definitely has something going for it, it’s the quality of its special effects. As anyone would have anticipated, however, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest of the film is as good. While the script does acknowledge its own absurdity (“They do go for landmarks”, says Jeff Goldblum as famous monuments are destroyed), it doesn’t quite manage to build an interesting cast of characters, nor take us on a steadily engrossing adventure. In fact, the fan-service calling back the first movie does get annoying at time, hampering the film from managing something better than another battle on the desert flats. Among the cast, Jeff Goldblum is very enjoyable as an older but just as cynical version of his character in the first film, William Fichtner is exactly what’s needed as a solid military figure, Maika Monroe almost makes us forget that she’s taking over Mae Whitman’s role. Will Smith is sorely missed, with no one quite managing to step up as a replacement. As a catastrophe movie, the large-scale destruction is what director Roland Emmerich usually does best, and so Resurgence at least delivers on those expectations. Still, it does have enough promising elements to be disappointing in the way it puts them all together. There may or may not be another sequel, but the movie works hard at ensuring that we wouldn’t care one way or the other.

  • Nocturnal Animals (2016)

    Nocturnal Animals (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video On-Demand, March 2017) Director Tom Ford’s second feature is often just as controlled as his previous A Single Man, but it doesn’t quite manage to fully exploit the material at its disposal. Amy Adams is her usually remarkable self as an art gallery manager absorbed by her ex-husband’s roman à clef—thanks to some clever cinematography and dark clothes, her head often floats alone on-screen, focusing our attention on a role with a complex inner component. Told non-linearly while hopping in-between a base reality and fiction, Nocturnal Animals is happy to remain enigmatic even when dealing with terrible events. The novel-in-a-film is about gruesome murder, vengeance and a man losing everything. But what I did not expect to find here is as good a movie portrayal as I’ve seen of the reader’s experience with a great book: the way we get hooked in lengthy reading sessions, the abrupt transition from book to real life, the way the fiction bleeds into reality… I’m not sure any movie has quite shown it like Nocturnal Animal. This, paradoxically, makes the rest of it weaker, especially when it becomes obvious that reality and fiction are meant to interact and reflect upon each other (what a great idea to have Isla Fisher play Amy Adams’ fictional counterpart): the conclusion seems to hold its punches, and seems limp in comparison to what precedes it. Otherwise, we do get great performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and a pleasantly gritty Michael Shannon as a doomed policeman. Add to that the terrific cinematography and Nocturnal Animals gets a marginal recommendation—with the caveat that it doesn’t all click as well as it should.

  • Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)

    Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2017) The latest resurgence in R-rated comedies has led to good, bad and indifferent results, with Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates ranking near the middle of the pack. The premise certainly seems optimized for comedy, what with two fratboy-type protagonists openly advertising for dates in order to attend their sister’s Hawaiian wedding. Things get even funnier when they’re targeted by opportunistic bad girls looking for an easy holiday. Copious swearing, risqué situations, some comic violence (but no graphic nudity, given the profile of the stars) ensue, with plenty of hair-raising moments before the suitably sweet conclusion. It’s all adequate without being impressive, although there are some highlights along the way. While Zac Efron and Adam DeVine are fine as the male anchors, it’s Anna Kendrick and especially Aubrey Plaza who get the most interesting roles as bad girls trying to look like angels. Kendrick is her usual cute self even when cursing up a storm, but Plaza succeeds by doubling down on the character she played in Bad Grandpa and so scores one of her best roles to date. The rest is scenery, with the Hawaii location used effectively—you’d be able to pair this film with Forgetting Sarah Marshall without too much dissonance. This being said, the actors and sets are better than the film itself, which lasts just as long as it takes to entertain but no longer.

  • Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

    Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2017) If you had been waiting for a true sequel to the first Paranormal Activity, then this fourth instalment almost delivers it. Fittingly enough for a series with a mythology as chaotic as this one, Paranormal Activity 4 picks up five years after the first one, through the viewpoint of a teenage girl who starts noticing strange things in her neighborhood. A murderous convent obviously show up in time, but not before a strange young boy and a ghostly presence. Paced more aggressively than its predecessors (with plenty of spooky moments throughout), this fourth instalment also feels a bit tighter. The use of webcams and a Kinect feels inspired, while Kathryn Newton makes for a sympathetic lead. It ends much like the previous volume, but there are a few chills and thrills along the way. This being said, I don’t think Paranormal Activity 4 has much to offer to those who aren’t already fans of the series … but then again, so it goes for horror series in general. I’m still reacting well to this franchise’s instalments, and part of it has to do with how they’re not glorifying the monster … at least not yet. On the other hand, I’m increasingly unsure that the series mythology will cohere into anything satisfying by the time they’ll milk the last drop out of it.

  • Allied (2016)

    Allied (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video On-Demand, March 2017) As someone with supposedly professional movie criticism credentials, I loathe to dislike a movie because of an unhappy ending, but here I am now thinking about Allied and what sticks in my craw is the ending. Much of it has to do with expectations set up much earlier in the movie. Allied does begin, after all, with a first act in which two likable heroes meet in WW2 Casablanca, fall in love and kill some Nazis in a guns-blazing action sequence. It’s fun and games and doesn’t really represent the rest of the film, which goes back to England for some rainy gloomy counter-espionage drama. It gets less and less triumphant as it goes on, while Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard are perhaps too successful in creating sympathy for their characters—by the time we see there is no issue for both of them, it’s too late. Otherwise, director Robert Zemeckis is up to his usual technically demanding standards in presenting a World-War 2 drama with flair and theatrics—there’s a love-in-a-sandstorm sequence that’s both effective and over-the-top, a decent recreation of covert work tension and fancy camera moves. While the film exploits WW2 spy tropes for drama, it remains grounded in some reality. (Well, other than Brad Pitt speaking French—while he’s supposed to be a Franco-Ontarian like myself, his French sounds exactly like an Englishman reciting European French phonetically—and no amount of in-script joshing about it can compensate.) A shame about the downbeat ending, then, because otherwise Allied is semi-successful at what it tried to do. Although, what can I say—I’m a guy. Spies, guns and car chases work better than tragic romance.

  • Independence Day (1996)

    Independence Day (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, March 2017) Hoo boy, Independence Day. I first saw it on opening day back on July 4, 1996, and the whole thing remains vivid in my mind, from the time (at my uncle’s farm, lying down in the muddy straw, doing mechanical repairs on a baling machine) that I decided that I was going to see the film that evening to my naively infuriated reaction to the film’s scientific absurdities and self-satisfied stupidity. (I used to have a nicely hysterical 1996-vintage review of the Independence Day novelization on this site, but I did the world a favour since then by taking it down when I purged some of my more juvenile content.) For years, Independence Day (or, eek, ID4) was my go-to reference for “dumb Hollywood SF movies” in my smarter-than-thou rants. I may not have matured much since then, but I’d like to think that I’m slightly less deliberately abrasive—I was bizarrely looking forward to re-watching the movie, and not just as an exercise in checklist-marking before watching the sequel. Upon re-watch, you can’t exactly mark me down as a fan of the film, but I think I’m better able to see its strength and place in history. Perhaps the best thing it did was update a classic SF trope for a new generation of special effects. The alien-invasion story has been done many times before or since, but Independence Day takes a refreshingly blunt approach to it, with a large cast of characters reacting in their own way, still-spectacular destruction sequences and plucky humans mounting a satisfying revenge upon the invaders. Independence Day still doesn’t make a shred of sense (I spent much of the first half-hour muttering, “no, that’s not how it would happen. That’s not how any of this would happen.”) but I will reluctantly admit that it’s clever. Clever in how it moves its pieces, clever in how it acknowledges that the audience is in on the joke (there are at least three moments in which the film cuts to something, except to reveal that it’s not what we’d expect) and clever in how it maximizes every single opportunity it has for spectacle or overwrought drama. I still think the presidential speech sucks. I still think that the dog should have died. The special effects are dodgy, but there are a lot of them. I still think that as a Science Fiction film, it’s a blunt instrument at a time where we could use more scalpels à la Arrival. But Bill Paxton, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith deliver persona-defining performances, the film moves at a decent pace once the throat-clearing ends, and writer/directors Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin understood what audiences wanted from a summer blockbuster. In some significant ways, it seems obvious that Independence Day revitalized movie SF for a few vital years, playing with new special effects technology and proving the box-office potential of the genre for a few good years. I’ll even go as far as identify the quasi-nostalgic hunger for an Independence Day-style movie experience as a driver for the 2010–2014 resurgence of alien-invasion movies, the best of whom were good SF movies in their own right. Over a sufficiently long time, I think that most critical opinions reverts to the mean (either a tempering of praise, or a softening of condemnation), and Independence Day illustrates this better than most other movies I can think of at the moment. While I may have been willing to burn the movie poster in a one-star rant back in 1996, by 2017 I’m okay with a measured middle-of-the-road three-star critical essay.

  • Out of Africa (1985)

    Out of Africa (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2017) A big-budget dramatic romance set in Africa, featuring two megastars and a credible historical recreation without the tiniest bit of genre elements? No, they don’t make them like this anymore. Out of Africa is more than thirty years old and it often feels even older, what with its languid pacing, lush location shooting, and its young-looking Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Director Sydney Pollack clearly understand the film he’s trying to make, and the African locations are impressive in their own right. Streep is terrific in an Oscar-winning performance, Redford tempers his natural charm with a not-entirely admirable character and the complex story is a cut above the formulaic notion of “romance” that has dominated the genre over the past decades. (It helps that it adapted from a book.) While I’m not sure it’s possible to be enthusiastic about Out of Africa nowadays, it’s not that hard to understand why it swept the Academy Awards that year: This is big-budget respectable filmmaking in the classical mould. A modern version would be about 20 minutes shorter, but then again a modern version would be rewritten (for better or worse) by Nicholas Spark, make extensive use of CGI, probably feature a biplane/car chase and co-star Vanessa Hudgens and Channing Tatum (again, for better or worse). Perhaps it’s best if they don’t make them like this anymore.

  • Universal Soldier: The Return (1999)

    Universal Soldier: The Return (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2017) “Utter and unmitigated trash” is a good starting point for discussing the low-budget sci-fi/action bunch of nonsense that is Universal Soldiers: The Return. Boldly presenting a story that has been done dozens of time before (i.e.; super-soldiers causing more trouble than they’re worth), this is a film that lurches from one ill-conceived sequence to the other, never straying too far from exploitation, familiar shootouts and that elusive but unmistakable stench of late-nineties bad action movies. An all-evil Artificial Intelligence is thrown into the mix for no other reason than “hey, why not?” The rest is just noise and flames and terminal boredom. Jean-Claude van Damme can’t save the mess, and neither can Kiana Tom nor Heidi Schanz as the female counterbalance to a testosterone-drenched film. It’s almost unbearably dull despite the explosions, shootouts, strip clubs and artificial intelligence working to enslave mankind (or something like that). It’s so bad that even the direct-to-video sequels ignored it. You might as well stay away.

  • Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

    Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2017) Boldly stepping back in time, Paranormal Activity 3 takes the found-footage conceit to the VHS era, presenting the formative childhood experiences of the sisters at the heart of the first two movies. Not stepping too far away from the tried-and-true methodology of the series so far, this follow-up does have a few canny new tricks up its sleeve. While some are obvious (the moment the oscillating camera is set up is the moment when we can anticipate the shocks it will deliver), the expansion of the mythology is also interesting, even though by the time the story wraps up we’re starting to predict how none of the male characters will make it out of the movie alive. On the other hand, that finale is quite a bit more intense than the quick bursts of violence at the end of the first two movies, so it feels as if the series is getting more ambitious with time. There really isn’t much else to say here. As usual for a film of this series, the acting is fair at best (although Lauren Bittner is probably the strongest lead of the series so far), the cinematography is muddy and the pacing is predictable. Still, despite the well-worn mechanics of the series premise, Paranormal Activity 3 is not a waste of time, and holds up enough new things to keep it interesting.

  • We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011)

    We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2017) Some movies are unbearable because they a terrible. Others are unbearable because they’re arguably too good at what they do. We Need to Talk About Kevin falls squarely in the second category, as it explores the inner drama of a woman who has to live knowing that her son killed her husband and daughter, then went on a school massacre. She doesn’t even has the luxury of mourning, as the son is alive and in jail. Ostracized by her community, desperately alone, stuck in a miserable house after losing everything in civil suits, our heroine reflects on her life and how it led to such terrible events. Ping-ponging through twenty years of history, gradually revealing its disgusting secrets in a way that’s as depressing as it’s predictable, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a horror film disguised as heavy drama. Surprisingly enough, it works much better than expected: The editing between the various time periods is clear and the sheer competence of the execution manages to rehabilitate a core story that could have been seen as far too melodramatic. The sociopathy exhibited by Kevin is off-the-scale to a point where a less confident approach might have sent the entire film falling apart. But writer/director Lynne Ramsay keeps everything under control, and she can count on Tilda Swinton for a terrific performance in a difficult role. All of this makes We Need to Talk about Kevin remarkable to watch, but it also makes it the kind of film you never, ever want to see again. Sensible natures should be forewarned: This is a movie that works far too well at what it does.

  • A League of their Own (1992)

    A League of their Own (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2017) There’s a good-natured quality to A League of Their Own that makes it hard to dislike, but that doesn’t mean the film is a solid home run. As a look inside all-women baseball leagues during World War II, it manages to thread a fine line between social concern and outright entertainment. You do have to be a baseball-loving American to get the most out of it, though, as the script quickly takes the familiar route of making baseball a national prism rather than a simple sport. At least Geena Davis is a good lead, with able supporting performances from Tom Hanks (in an out-of-persona turn as a boozy has-been) and (believe it or not) Madonna back when she was trying to be taken seriously as an actor. Jon Lovitz also shows up in a surprisingly non-annoying role. Much of the story will feel familiar, but the epilogue stretches our affection for the film by trying too hard for instant nostalgia for characters we’ve barely met. Thanks to Penny Marshall’s no-nonsense direction, A League of their Own is an effective, basic movie. Not too challenging, not too dry—just good enough to leave everyone happy but not bowled over.

  • Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

    Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2017) I was a surprisingly vocal fan of the first Paranormal Activity (which I saw in theatres), yet couldn’t be bothered to keep track of the subsequent series. But a cheap series DVD anthology can work wonder at sharpening my resolve, and so it is that I’m now on my way to watch the entire series. In a way, the lengthy pause between seeing the first and second film may have worked to its advantage, given how closely Paranormal Activity 2 tries to ape and one-up its predecessor. The central conceit remains more or less untouched despite more complicated family dynamics, and the rhythm is more or less the same as well: a lengthy build-up with more and more paranormal activities occurring, all the way to a violent-and-abrupt conclusion. Paranormal Activity 2 certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and if “more of the same with a bigger budget” was the goal, then it’s been thoroughly accomplished. Not bad, not good, just the same thing once again.