Reviews

  • Air (2015)

    Air (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2016) The best way to make a low-budget film is to reduce the number of characters and location, and suggest a lot of things happening out-of-frame. Air seems to take this intention to the limit with a cast of four real characters (plus a few voices and TV appearances), taking place in a 1970s-style bunker and darkened corridors. Through effective exposition, it sets up a world in which the air has been poisoned and a few hundred survivors have been cryogenically preserved in underground installations. Two workers are periodically wakened from their slumber to check the quality of the air and perform routine maintenance on the installations. After a predictably dull start, things quickly boil up when the equipment is damaged, a bad case of bunker fever settles in and the characters decide to go check what’s happening in a nearby bunker. The reduced cast allows for bigger names, and so Djimon Hounsou, Norman Reedus and Sandrine Holt are the stars of the film. Despite a reasonably good premise, the film eventually bogs down in a series of repetitive scenes in which two men threaten each other with guns and run through a deserted installation. It ends pretty much as expected, although the coda is quite good in its own way. Air may be remarkable more for the way it uses a small budget to deliver a claustrophobic tale of men contemplating the extinction of humanity and wondering what they’re doing is merely prolonging the inevitable. It definitely has its limits otherwise, but it does by decently as long as you accept its budget-driven premise.

  • Narcopolis (2015)

    Narcopolis (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2016) Ambitious but flawed, Narcopolis thinks big but can’t quite reconcile the two SF plot devices that it plays with. From an enigmatic opening to the film’s first half-hour, we’re stuck in a monothematic future in which drugs have been legalized for a while but no one can shut up about it: Every conversation is about drugs and their impact. It gets tiresome. Then Narcopolis goes crazy and takes on a different SF trope, or rather reveals what else was lurking in the background of its plot the whole time. The link between the two isn’t particularly effective, and the limits of Narcopolis’s budget prevent it from delivering a more fully realized vision of its story. This being said, there are a few good things here and there—more notably, Narcopolis doesn’t use its budget as an excuse to lock itself up in a single set with a handful of characters. But writer/director Justin Trefgarne doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with SF devices: he underscores some hints so much that they end up spoiling some would-be mysteries, and ends up being so on-the-nose in the last third of the film that what should have been a thrilling build-up and denouement ends up being a walk through predictable plot points. Coupled with the insistent world building in the first third, it makes for a Science Fiction film that doesn’t quite have the self-confidence to express itself fluently within the genre. That lack of fluidity definitely impacts the end result, which remains more promising than successful.

  • Inferno (2016)

    Inferno (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, February 2016) With Inferno, Tom Hanks is back for a third largely indifferent time as Robert Langdon, one of his career’s most undistinguished roles. One can’t fault Hank for teaming up with Ron Howard in adapting one of the most high-profile thriller series of the century so far … but the problem with Langdon is that he’s a character fully fleshed out by Hanks alone. There’s little on the page (either the book or the script) to make Langdon anything more than a fountain of information and a mannequin running through a convoluted plot. In the absence of such niceties, we’re left to rely on Tom Hanks, all-around American good guy, to give life to the series. To their credit, the filmmakers behind Inferno wisely dispensed with the most infuriating element of the novel’s conclusion, although they didn’t soften the moronic overpopulation rationale. The plot is ludicrous and the historical trivia is generally unremarkable, but the film does its best to wring a few honest moments of suspense from the result. I do believe that the film is an improvement over the borderline-unlikable book, but that’s not much of a baseline to begin with. (Inferno is the novel that finally made me give up on Dan Brown after being a bit of a contrarian cheerleader for him in post-The Da Vinci Code times.) You can argue that the story is more interesting than the previous two Langdon movies, but the freshness of the symbologist-as-hero premise has faded almost entirely. The result is average without dipping into mediocrity, which would have been a real danger at this point in the series. This being said, this is no call for a sequel. Let Hanks do something else.

  • Jeepers Creepers II (2003)

    Jeepers Creepers II (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2016) The first Jeepers Creepers surprised me a bit by its genre savvy and its ability to play with familiar tropes, and the best thing I can say about Jeepers Creeper II is that it’s almost as good as its predecessors at playing with familiar expectations. Largely set on a school bus under attack by a fantastic creature, this sequel milks its premise for all it’s worth, cleverly pacing its action to spend an unlikely amount of time on a deserted rural road. (That bus truly gets trashed by the end of the movie!) While much of the material is generally familiar, writer/director Victor Salva wrings some decent thrills out of his premise. While Jeepers Creepers II doesn’t manage to escape its “invulnerable creature” nature (it does eventually become exasperating to see the creature survive what should have been mortal wounds), it effectively plays within that sandbox and delivers the thrills that anyone could expect from a horror sequel. Heck, even Justin Long has a small cameo in the movie.

  • The Conjuring 2 (2016)

    The Conjuring 2 (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2016) The good news, I suppose, is that while The Conjuring 2 is significantly less impressive than its predecessor, the first film was so good that it makes its sequel a fair horror movie rather than a great one. Moving the action in England but keeping the first film’s focus on a family, our likable married heroes and a gradual cranking up of the tension (although the original’s lack of gore is instantly exceeded by a very violent opening dream sequence), The Conjuring 2 is more of the same, but less surprisingly so. Director James Wan is the star here, expertly moving the camera to show (or not show) elements crucial to the tension. The London-set poor-neighborhood is less inspiring than the first film’s farmhouse, and the broken family not quite as likable either, but you can see the script going back to the first film’s strengths whenever it needs a boost. The result may be far more ordinary, but at least it avoids sinking into exploitation or nihilism like so many other horror movies—there’s a core of sheer decency to the single mom trying to keep her family together and the heroic Warren couple (Both Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson are likable actors, and the Elvis scenes take their screen relationship to another level of sympathy), and it’s that kind of “this is why horrors are worth fighting” spirit that is all too often missing from cheap horror. This being said, while I was a vocal proponent of The Conjuring, I don’t expect to advocate for this sequel as much—it’s less of a surprise, of course, but it also looks as if it has a built-in public. I’m sure we’ll see a third film soon enough.

  • Genius (2016)

    Genius (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, February 2016) Even by the standards of Oscar-baiting historical docu-fiction, Genius seems tame and detached. It’s a problem that can’t be blamed on the actors—Colin Firth is good as legendary editor Max Perkins, while Jude Law is suitably unhinged as Tom Wolfe. Nicole Kidman is more disappointing as Wolfe’s one-time wife, but it’s not much of a role—and she gets to point a gun at the protagonist in the film’s most incongruous scene. The plot loosely talks about the working collaboration and tortuous friendship between Perkins and Wolfe over a period of a decade (two years go by in a blink during a montage) as they argue about Wolfe’s novels and the writer’s mercurial personality eventually leads him to paranoia. All well and good; as someone who’s fond of movies about writers; I particularly appreciated the editing humour and portrait of books as works to be rewritten rather than completed once THE END is first typed. Still, I could help but find the film long and meandering. Viewers may struggle to remain interested, and the film doesn’t help by taking occasional lengthy breaks in plotting. While well shot, with a convincing recreation of 1920s New York, Genius is a disappointment considering its source material. I’m glad it exists (what are the odds of seeing another major movie featuring a book editor as a hero?), but it could and should have been better.

  • Ghost Busters (2016)

    Ghost Busters (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2017) I’m not that much of a Ghostbusters (1984) fan, so the news of a gender-swapped reboot didn’t trouble me much beyond my usual “eh, I’d much prefer if they did original movies”. The reactionary nerd rage at the film’s release was troubling insofar as was a reflection of the current unhealthy outrage culture—but let’s face it: people who get worked up about a female Ghostbusters movie are exactly the kinds of people who wake up every day being offended at anything that makes them uncomfortable. Given the track records of movie reboots, it was almost a given that the end result would be a mildly entertaining piece of fluff. So it is: This Ghostbusters (2016) is a technically accomplished but far more mechanistic version of the 1984 original. Both Kirsten Wiig and Melissa McCarthy play up to their persona in the movie, although McCarthy seems thankfully more restrained in a movie in which entire sequences are storyboarded for special effects. Wiig is up to her usual neurotic persona, which works relatively well here. The same can be said for Leslie Jones, likable in a stock role. The real surprise here, though, is Kate McKinnon, stealing nearly every scene as an eccentric scientist—again, it’s not an original character, but she makes it work. Meanwhile, Chris Hemsworth probably gets the biggest laughs as a scatterbrained hunk. Director Paul Feig keeps getting better every movie, and if his style is still generally bland, he’s able to keep up with the demands of a special-effects-driven production. His conscious decision to avoid glamorizing his character works well, even if some other intentions—such as limply incorporating original 1984 cast members—end up being more irritating than anything else. The upshot is a generally watchable film, even if it never steps too far away from the original film or from the basic special-effects-driven comedy template. This Ghostbusters is all surface and flash, with minimal character work and even shallower thematic concerns. It’ll do for an evening’s worth of entertainment, but I have a hunch that the original will remain the definitive edition.

  • The Man Who Would be King (1975)

    The Man Who Would be King (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2017) Maybe I’m seeing the wrong movies, but it seems to me that the large-scale adventure film is a lost art in Hollywood. Those seas of extras, trips through treacherous remote locations and against-all-odds stories seem to belong to another time. Maybe that’s for the best, considering the iffy colonial content of The Man Who Would be King. It’s one thing for noted imperialist Rudyard Kipling (a man of his time, and I’ll be forever grateful for The Jungle Book) to write a cautionary tale about two British soldiers becoming god-emperors in a forgotten part of the world; it’s quite another to see this story today through post-colonial lenses. The Man Who Would Be King does have the considerable benefit of a decent third act in which the so-called civilized men are punished for their hubris, but much of the film’s first hour plays uncomfortably, as white men scheme their way to an empire. Still, as a white guy, I have the implicit privilege of being able to picture myself in the lead role, and once I manage to do that, what’s not to like? Michael Caine and Sean Connery together in a single movie, with Connery sporting glorious handlebar facial hair! Shakira Caine (Michael’s wife) in a pivotal role! Christopher Plummer playing Kipling himself! The film does get substantially more interesting in the third act as the façade of the white men’s deception falls away with real consequences. The ending is very good and justifies the framing device. John Huston’s direction is clean and makes the most of the means available to pre-CGI filmmakers. With a scope and sweep that defies even modern films, The Man Who Would Be King is remarkable even today, and the slight discomfort that the first three-quarter of the film may cause to a modern audience is more than redeemed by a conclusion that must have been sobering even to the original short story’s Victorian readers.

  • The Call Up (2016)

    The Call Up (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, February 2017) By this point in video-game history, we shouldn’t be surprised when gaming tropes make it to the movies, or even end up being their premise entirely. The Call Up doesn’t waste any time in making it clear that this is a gamer’s film: As a bunch of strangers sign up for a virtual reality game, they’re astonished to find out that they’ve been equipped with the latest in VR technology, and the audience isn’t really surprised to soon find out that when the die in the game they (all together now, and gasp:) die in real life too. You can fit the plot of the film on a small napkin and still have enough space to wipe your mouth, and that does eventually become a problem when the dull-as-dirt ending comes along. But there are a few things worth noticing about The Call Up: The opening credit sequence is visually interesting, the special effects are cheap but plentiful and there is some clever interplay between the “real” world (a clean but empty office building) and the “game” world (a dirtied up post-apocalyptic version of the same building) as the players switch between one and the other. The actors aren’t worth mentioning, but writer/director Charles Barker is quite a bit better as a director—he stretches the limits of his budget and keeps things moving through kinetic rhythm, which is more than can be said about the forgettable and unsatisfying script. At worst, The Call Up feels pointless and hence sadistic in the way it kills off its characters. At best, it’s a competent low-budget action film that has fun playing with gaming tropes within a movie. I suspect the film will work a bit better for gamers and those with a tolerance for low-budget Science Fiction.

  • Paradox (2016)

    Paradox (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, February 2017) This is my fourth low-budget independent time-travel SF thriller in a week, but it turns out that Paradox can hold its own against similar films. It’s not, to be blunt, a good movie. The dialogue is often awkward, the acting isn’t much better (one actor tasked with playing the comic relief doesn’t quite get how to do it and nearly every line of his falls flat as a result—on the other hand, Zoe Bell seems better than ever here), the special effects look cheap, the gore is over-the-top and some climactic elements are needlessly puzzling. But on the flip side, Paradox treats viewers with a coherent future-time-travel closed loop, a decent mash-up of time-travel tropes, some moments of comedy, decent tension and a finale that does wrap things up satisfyingly once you’re willing to play along. It also features one of the funniest exposition scenes in recent memory: “And then, well, then he’s Schrodinger’s cat. Crippled and not crippled at the same time. Except not that. ¶ Is that the best you can do?” Plus, Paradox plays games with the notion of a viewpoint protagonist, something that becomes a big part of the ending. (See “puzzling” above, but also “satisfyingly”.) As a calling card for writer/director Michael Hurst, this is likely to get him quite a bit of attention, especially in the way he milks his budget to good effect. This film will work better on dedicated SF fans willing to cut some slack given budget limitations. In retrospect, I probably enjoyed it more because it was my fourth low-budget independent time-travel SF thriller in a week—I had more appropriate expectations, and the ways Paradox zigzagged with familiar tropes felt like a refreshing approach. Few people have seen this film, and that’s too bad—as a brainteaser, it’s quite a bit better than most big-budget studio films. Heck, I’d like to see a remake.

  • The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (2009)

    The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2017) At its most basic level, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans shouldn’t be much more than a crooked-cop thriller. You know the drill: bad cop uses gun, authority, aggression to get drugs, sex and money. We’ve seen this film before. But there’s a few things that make this Bad Lieutenant stand apart. First up would be using post-Katrina New Orleans as a backdrop, with signs of catastrophe still corrupting the scenery. Second would be giving the film to veteran filmmaker Werner Herzog, and allowing him to run wild with shots of wildlife, oneiric sequences and just whatever passes his fancy. Capable actors in supporting roles also help; Eva Mendes hits strong dramatic notes as the protagonist’s girlfriend, while Jennifer Coolidge gets a striking dramatic turn. Val Kilmer, Brad Dourif, Fairuza Balk and Michael Shannon also all show up in minor roles. But Bad Lieutenant’s main asset remains Nicolas Cage, turning in a scenery-crunching performance as the unhinged titular cop, combining his dramatic chops with the grandiose operatic acting style he’s come famous for. Under Herzog’s direction and working from a decent script, Cage’s madness is harnessed to the needs of the film and seems even more remarkable as a result. (Witness the “His soul’s still dancing” sequence.) This is the kind of Cage performance that fans talk about when they celebrate his standing as an actor. I held off on seeing this film partially given my unfamiliarity about the original Bad Lieutenant, but it turns out that this is more a remake than a sequel, and it certainly stands alone. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans is a good example of how an actor with an oversize screen persona and a fearless director can elevate average material.

  • Listening (2014)

    Listening (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2017) Ambitious but flawed, low-budget science-fiction film Listening tries to do just a bit too much with the means at its disposal. The muddy cinematography betrays the film’s micro-budget, but not quite as much as a script that leaps in one direction (as two scientists perfect telepathic technology and then discover that having no secrets isn’t a good thing) then another (as mysterious government operatives behave in ways they usually do in thrillers and take over the technology in an effort to enslave the world). The meandering, generally dull script can’t quite do justice to its central themes, and the result feels oddly off-mark. Listening isn’t all bad, mind you: there’s some ingenuity in the way writer/director Khalil Sullins stretches his budget, the actors do OK with the material they’re given, and the film has more ambition than most. Still, it feels off balance, imperfectly controlled and unsatisfying once everything messily wraps up. I’ve seen a lot of low-budget SF movies in the past week, so my expectations are properly calibrated—but Listening misses the mark enough to earn a middling recommendation for SF fans at best.

  • Spectral (2016)

    Spectral (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2017) Now here is an oddity: A big-budget Science Fiction/Action film produced by a big studio, but unceremoniously removed from theatrical exhibition schedules and essentially sold to Netlifx as an exclusive streaming release. Other than The Interview, there haven’t been many of those yet … but chances are that it will become more and more frequent. So: Is it because the film sucks? Actually, no: Watching Spectral, we’re reminded that while the film is not anywhere near a classic, it’s not that bad—there’s been considerably worse in theatres on a regular basis. While the story isn’t particularly refined (i.e.: undead entities killing US soldiers, set in an Eastern Europe city destroyed by combats) and borrow rather heavily from a mixture of Black Hawk Down, Aliens and Battle: Los Angeles, Spectral does have its strengths. The most noteworthy aspect of the film has to be the special effects, nicely executed and used copiously—for a supernatural war story with sprinklings of scientific justification (that is to say: blaming Bose Einstein condensates), Spectral does have a certain kick to its action sequences and for the novelty value of its concepts. A few clever sequences make things interesting, and the finale literally brings out the Big Guns for a spirited envoi. Writer/Director Nic Mathieu is more interested in delivering a big-screen videogame walkthrough, and the film does succeed as such. For Netflix, Spectral counts as a solid hit: a slick special-effects heavy action movie that delivers just enough to make its audience happy. Hopefully it sets a precedent for other similar deals between major studios and Netflix in the future.

  • Circle (2015)

    Circle (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2017) One good reason to enjoy low-budget science fiction movies is to see how writer/directors will manage to stretch limited budgets into imaginative premises. In Circle’s case, the solution is ingenious: a blackened-out set, with only a few overhead lights and coloured circles on the floor. Otherwise, fifty characters/actors dropping at the rate of one every minute and a half, as they’re all stuck in an elimination game. Who will survive the ordeal? After a pleasantly chaotic start in which the rules of the game are deduced, Circle becomes a series of moral debates as various versions on the “who deserves to live” theme are explored. The script does have a heavy hand, as may be expected from the setup, but after a while viewers will learn to follow along for the ride. While the ending won’t please those looking for a definite moral answer, it does conclude the plot threads effectively (which is more than many other low-budget SF movies do). Writers/directors Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione have crafted something intriguing and effective in Circle, and at barely less than 90 minutes, the result is well worth a look for fans of SF thrillers.

  • 400 Days (2015)

    400 Days (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2017) As horrible as it sounds, sometimes it feels good to hate a movie. While 400 Days is so-so with occasional intriguing moments for most of its duration, it firmly plans the nails in its own coffin in its final seconds, as it races toward an answer to all of the film’s mysteries—then cuts to black before offering any satisfaction. At that point, viewers are more than justified—encouraged, even—to throw soft things at their TV, curse the name of writer/director Matt Osterman, burn whatever Syfy fan club card they may have and vow to one-star the film on all available social media platform. If hate is your thing, they go wild—400 Days practically begs for polarized reactions after building itself as a mystery and withholding answers. As a younger man, I may have done any of these things. Nowadays, however, thanks to David Lynch, Nicholas Windig Refn and the Coen brothers, I’m more the kind of reviewer to shrug and move on. I have other things to do than to play whatever game the film is playing, and there are far better movies available from the same places that offer 400 Days. Had there been a better ending, I may have spent some time talking about the visual polish of the film, some interesting moments, adequate character works by the actors and how the movie could have pushed some intriguing themes further. As it is, though, I’m just tempted to just watch something else and forget much of 400 Days, with a note to my future self saying “don’t watch this again, it’s not worth it”.