Reviews

  • Marley & Me (2008)

    Marley & Me (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2017) I’m more a cat person, so while I can appreciate the basic concept of Marley & Me (“A family’s life as seen through the lifetime of a dog”) as clever, I wasn’t brought to tears by the inevitable ending as much as satisfied that the story had been neatly tied up. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston star at the initially young couple that adopts a dog and then starts a family, experience setbacks, moves across the country and eventually settle into middle age while badly behaved Marley grows old. The stakes are very personal, and much of the film consists of episodes in the life of the protagonist, trying to balance family life and professional opportunities. The dog becomes progressively less important during the movie, but never quite goes away. Wilson slightly tones down his usual hangdog persona (a requirement of the character, who’s supposed to be universally relatable) and the result is a bit duller than expected. Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston is Jennifer Aniston, which is to say innocuously likable but blander than necessary. More successful are minor roles for Alan Arkin (as a crusty newspaper editor) and Kathleen Turner (as a dog trainer). Otherwise, Marley & Me is cleanly shot, stylistically ordinary (except for a frantic year-in-the-life sequence that drags a bit too long) and not entirely manipulative despite the subject matter, which is already quite a bit better than expected. But, as I said, I’m a cat person.

  • Hidalgo (2004)

    Hidalgo (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2017) I’m not much of a horse guy, and Hidalgo is clearly designed to be a movie about a man and his horse. As a late-nineteenth-century cowboy head over to the Middle East to compete in a desert race, this is an adventure story in which the various women encountered by our protagonist don’t ever measure up to his affection for his own horse. It’s not a short film—once you factor in the lengthy prologue, various desert adventures, lengthy pans of the arid scenery, theme-juggling and various character-building moments, Hidalgo clocks at almost two hours and a half. (For a film about a long-distance desert race, the race itself often takes a back seat to other more pressing matters.) Fortunately, there is something good at the heart of it all. Thanks to director Joe Johnston, the action sequences are capably put together and the adventure eventually gets a good sense of forward rhythm. Thanks to Viggo Mortensen, the protagonist earns our respect and pinto mustang Hidalgo himself makes quite an impression. Meanwhile, Louise Lombard and Zuleikha Robinson bring a welcome female presence to what could have been a mostly male story. In an effort to deliver a movie that has as much stuff as possible, Hidalgo also brews a complex mixture of thematic concerns, from a stranger-in-a-strange land narrative to a man-and-his-horse romance to more prosaic survival and rescue segments. As rousing desert adventures go (judiciously ignoring claims of it being “based on a true story”), Hidalgo is often better than most, even though some judicious cutting could have improved things for audiences who aren’t quite as much into horses and deserts as the filmmakers.

  • Safe Haven (2013)

    Safe Haven (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2017) Seasoned movie reviewers often praise execution over originality, and movies like Safe Haven tend to prove their point: what works in this film is familiarity, while what doesn’t work is audaciousness. As a romance/thriller hybrid, Safe Haven feels familiar from the get-go, although the opening segment insists forcefully on the thriller aspect of it. Things soon settle down on an idyllic portrayal of a woman on the run (Julianne Hough, unremarkable) finding temporary peace in a small coastal community. Preposterously cute, this segment of the film feels the most comforting: our protagonist soon finds a job, a place to live (without showing any papers!), friends and eventually an impossibly ideal boyfriend (Josh Duhamel, in a good role). It is, after all, adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel. In parallel, sequences featuring a dangerously unhinged cop suggests that this is all about to crash down … and it does, at the same time as lies are exposed, a relationship seemingly breaks apart and the town revels in its Fourth of July celebration. Familiar stuff, ably directed by veteran Lasse Hallström but comforting all the same: Likable actors such as Mimi Kirkland and Red West help sell the fantasy of a small town where people can just come in and be warmly received. But the film does have two twists up its sleeve and if the first one isn’t too far-fetched by the standards of the thriller genre, the final one (about Cobie Smulder’s character) just feels moronic, even by the conventions of heartwarming romances. It does help cement a generally unfavourable impression of a film that, up until then, was teetering between comfort and cliché. Once the final revelation rolls by, Safe Haven becomes easily dismissible as nothing more than romantic pulp, perhaps engaging at time but ultimately tainted by one useless twist too far.

  • Demolition (2015)

    Demolition (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2016) This won’t matter to anyone else, but the last movie I watched in 2014 was an enigmatic drama featuring Jake Gylenhall and directed by a French-Canadian, and the last movie I watched in 2016 was also an enigmatic drama featuring Jake Gylenhall and directed by a French-Canadian. Demolition is far more audience-friendly than Enemy, though, even if much of the story takes place in the protagonist’s head as he acts out in strange ways. Everything starts when the protagonist’s wife is killed in a car crash. Our main character feels a curious mixture of remorse and lack of regret: He arguably contributed to the crash, but things weren’t all that happy between them. Now that his rich father-in-law is furious and his life is in shambles, our lead character flays for answers. He writes a letter to a vending machine company after a machine eats his money, picks up a demolition hobby (first with a professional crew, then freelancing on his own house), makes unlikely friends and lovers and looks at the world in a different way. As a portrait of a grieving man, Demolition is significantly more interesting than the usual, but even the surface distractions (all the way to a gaudy carrousel) can’t hide the sadness at the heart of the story. The quirky black humour does feel a lot like the current crop of independent comedies, but it helps the film stay more interesting than other similar films. Gyllenhaal is as good as ever in the lead role, ably supported by other capable actors in smaller roles. This being said, Demolition isn’t transcendent, and seems to avoid going to the end of its own train of thoughts: Even the titular demolition conceit seems to run out of steam at some point, muffled among other competing subplots. But even running at half-speed, Demolition works well and doesn’t waste our time. As a three-peat reunion between and Gyllenhaal and a French-Canadian director (this time, Jean-Marc Vallée rather than Denis Villeneuve), it keeps up the good quality of these collaborations.

  • The Neon Demon (2016)

    The Neon Demon (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2016) Had The Neon Demon been my first Nicolas Winding Refn film, I would have been furious at the downbeat fuzzy-plot nature of the movie. (Or maybe not—over the past few years, I’ve grown remarkably tolerant of movies that don’t put plot first.) But after Drive and most specifically Only God Forgives, I think I’ve learned to put Refn in a box alongside David Lynch: Visually spectacular movies with interesting set pieces but not necessarily a plot worth caring about. Expectation thus tempered, I was able to tolerate much of The Neon Demon without too much trouble … although, if scratched, I will admit that there’s a frustrating quality to the way The Neon Demon gets so close to having an intelligible story (fantastic or allegoric?), only to throw its chance away in a fit of artiness. In five-minute segments, though, the film is tolerable as it tracks the story of a new girl trying to make it in Hollywood. A fable about the exploitation of bodies in image-obsessed Los Angeles, The Neon Demon doesn’t try to stake out new ideas, but it does feature stylist cinematography, grotesque jumps into horror and an overall atmosphere of beautiful dread. Elle Fanning is OK as the deer-in-a-headlight protagonist, but Jena Malone steals her scenes as a makeup-artist-by-day, lesbian-necrophiliac-vampire-by-night. (Or is she?) Keanu Reeves memorably shows up as a menacing presence. Still, it’s Refn’s work as a visual stylist that remains most notable here and is most likely to remain in mind even as the insubstantial story wafts away unwanted. The Neon Demon is not for everyone (Even after the acclaimed Drive, Refn seems resolutely uninterested in mainstream appeal), but at least I’ll concede that it felt slightly less irrelevant as Only God Forgives.

  • Le Petit Prince [The Little Prince] (2015)

    Le Petit Prince [The Little Prince] (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2016) I’m quite amazed at how they managed to make a feature-length film out of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. The source material is short, surreal, enigmatic and intensely poetic—it’s been said that if you don’t understand it, you’re too old. The film manages to fit an entire framing story around the source material, and the surprise is that it works relatively well despite taking place on a far more prosaic level than the original. Here, a young girl destined to a rigidly planned life discovers the wonders of imagination and whimsy—the original material showing up as stories, flashbacks, and culminating in a third act that works as a sequel to the book. It’s complex material handled by a surprisingly deft touch—the book-inspired sequences are made out of beautiful stop-motion animation, while the framing device (which ends up being bigger than the original material) is in more conventional CGI. The two different styles of storytelling work together to build a film that uses the original as a springboard to discuss equally-ambitious themes, and if the conclusion is made accessible enough for everyone, the core of the story does keep its elusive quality. The material may be a touch too abstract for younger children, but the flip side is that the film can be enjoyed by adults as well. Quite a surprise—I would have bet on a butchered adaptation, but what we get is quite decent.

  • Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

    Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, December 2016) Comedy from drama is tough, but drama from comedy is even tougher. Someone deluded about the fact that she’s singing badly is prime comic material when it’s about a fictional character, but it can feel like punching down if the subject is a real person. Hence Florence Foster Jenkins’ modest success in discussing its titular character, a 1920s New York socialite who convinced herself of her singing abilities (up to an album and a concert at Carnegie Hall) despite, well, not being very good at it. How do you approach a subject like that? By going past the jokes and taking a look at the character. Our viewpoint character here isn’t Jenkins as much as her husband in an unusual marriage, seeing her delusions in a more objective frame of mind. Florence Foster Jenkins manages to be funny without being cruel to its lead character, and while Meryl Streep brings her usual gravitas to the role, the script deftly finds a balance between the comedy in her actions and the drama of understanding what moves her. Hugh Grant is suitably sympathetic as her husband, and nicely shows how well he’s aging into more interesting roles beyond the foppish goof persona he maintained for most of his career. In other smaller roles, Simon Helberg is surprisingly good as a pianist thrown into the madness, while Nina Arianda steals two scenes as a socialite who can’t help but say what’s on her mind. The depiction of a slice of 1920s New York society also has its appeal. While the result isn’t much more than the usual Oscar-baiting biopic, Florence Foster Jenkins has the advantage of being funnier, quirkier and even perhaps more resonant because of it.

  • Sing (2016)

    Sing (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, in theatres, December 2016) We’ve all seen Sing before: The animated film featuring a world of anthropomorphized animals. The musical comedy in which misfits gather together to put on a show to save something from destruction and rekindle their self-esteem. The madcap action sequences leading to laughter. Sing is that and not much more, but it does earn points for a breezy execution and an uncanny ability to play a jukebox of pop music to good effect. The French version of the film wisely doesn’t try to translate the songs and while the result may take bilingual fluency to decode (take it from me; bilingual dad got far more from the film than unilingual pre-schooler), it does keep much of the original-language humour intact … and features the original song performers. That’s not inconsequential when talents such as Tori Kelly (easily the best signer, but not the most enjoyable one) or Seth MacFarlane and Scarlett Johansson (not the best singers, but the best characters) are featured in the film. Animated with the big bold colourful style of Illumination Entertainment, Sing doesn’t ask much of its viewers and is built on top of the most basic plot structures available, but it’s friendly, snappy, halfway-clever in the way it moves familiar pieces and a lot of fun for the entire family.

  • Mary and Max (2009)

    Mary and Max (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Google Play Streaming, December 2016) For a movie that deals with crippling depression, loneliness, autism and lives going awry, Mary and Max has a surprising amount of charm and humour. Executed through Claymation by writer/director/genius Adam Elliot, this is a film that boldly runs into absurdity, laughter and tears. Narration by Barry Humphries helps a lot in smoothing the film’s affecting mixture of moods into a unified whole, but it’s Elliot’s script that’s the glue holding everything together. The digressions themselves become fascinating, improbably helping the film’s somewhat simple plot stretch satisfyingly over 90 minutes. It’s a fascinating character study of two lonely people (capably voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Colette) in a tone quite unlike anything else. It’s well worth a look, and that’s why this review is so short—Mary and Max is a film that speaks for itself.

  • Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

    Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, December 2016) I’ve been more upbeat than most Trekkers about the modern Star Trek reboot series, but even I have to admit that Star Trek: Beyond truly feels like the truest follow-up to the classic series so far. Structured as a standalone adventure in deep space, this third outing wisely focuses on smaller stakes, characters as developed in the first two movies, a bit of fan-service and an upbeat attitude that makes for a refreshing evolution from the first two films. In other words, it is pure classic Trek, done with today’s attitudes and special effects technology. The result may feel a bit restrained after the galaxy-spanning intrigue of In Darkness, but it’s also satisfying with fewer afterthoughts than in previous films. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban and Simon Pegg (who also co-wrote the film) continue to be exceptionally good at incarnating the newest versions of their Trek characters, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Motorcycle usage aside, there’s one borderline-excessive “Sabotage” scene that harkens back to the first film, but it actually works well and is decently funny in itself. Still, the best aspect of the film has to be the look inside the Yorktown space station, a vertiginous showcase of SF dreams brought to life, visual effects and variable-gravity scene-blocking. It’s as memorable as anything is the series so far, and exactly the kind of showcase sequence to expect from a big-budget Trek film. I’m certainly ready for a fourth instalment.

  • Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

    Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2016) Big, colourful and bold, Horton Hears a Who! Is nonetheless a wholly average animated film. I don’t mean this as a slam: After all, the bare minimum for a kid’s movie these days is something that won’t make adults run away screaming after the fifth repetition. In this regard, Horton Hears a Who! is decently successful: There’s a lot to look at in terms of animation, and the story is serviceable enough to string along the set pieces. There’s a good moment of needle-in-a-haystack despair late in the move that’s a bit heavier than I expected for a film for young audiences. While I’m told that the film is greatly expanded from the original book, much of Dr. Seuss’s particular whimsy is captured in the film’s aesthetics. (Unfortunately, I happen to dislike the Seuss style…) Voice performances are fine, the animation is decent … but the film as a whole remains just this side of forgettable. At least it’s not actively unpleasant, and that’s already something.

  • Jason Bourne (2016)

    Jason Bourne (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, December 2016) This was a nearly useless movie in more than one way. After running the shakycam trilogy to its natural conclusion, The Bourne Legacy came and went without making much of an impact, its frantic chase sequences unable to paper over a lack of ideas. Much of the same will also be said about Jason Bourne and Matt Damon’s return to the franchise. Despite intriguing concepts reflecting the modern world in a thriller (in which riots in Greece, drone surveillance and cell phone hacking are considered to be normal), the film doesn’t do much but repeat ideas previously explored in earlier entries, and does so with the nigh-unbearable quick-cutting spastic camera style that is Paul Greengrass’ biggest problem. (There was, a few weeks before the film’s release, a making-of clip showing a camera and stunt cars smoothly weaving through traffic on the Las Vegas Strip. Cruelly, this sequence has been chopped to mush in the finished film.) For a movie as smart as it thinks it is, Jason Bourne can occasionally be tone-deaf: There’s a sequence early in the film where a businessman gets a round of applause from journalists for stating “our products will never spy on you”, whereas in the real world the reaction would be raised eyebrows followed by frantic attempts to disprove him. I’m also nonplussed by the dumb decision to kill off a long-running supporting character for what is apparently no good reason. And so it is with Jason Bourne: things happen for no good reason, except printing money from a series that most people remember. At this time, it looks as if the film was a modest financial success, virtually ensuring that we’ll get another equally useless new instalment in two or three years.

  • National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

    National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, Fourth or fifth viewing, December 2016) Surprisingly enough, I can’t find a review of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in my files even though I must have watched it a handful of times before. Heck, the film has even become a Christmas tradition in my household. What’s not to love about it? It’s an itemized look at the excesses of Christmas for the middle-class, deftly zigzagging between cynical laughs and exasperated sentiment. It’s a collection of memorable sequences, each of them madcap and taken to the limits. (My hands-down favourite: the “Squirrel!” sequence) It’s a showcase for Chevy Chase, who reprises his role as the Griswold patriarch, but gives him added depth by staying home. For men, it’s an excuse to look at the combined charms of Nicolette Sheridan, Beverly D’Angelo’s green outfit and eighties-chic Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It remains very funny even today, and I suspect that its timeless charm only makes it feel even more relevant nowadays. Worth seeing again; worth seeing every year.

  • Braveheart (1995)

    Braveheart (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, December 2016) It’s been a bit more than thirty years since I’ve seen Braveheart (I distinctly recall using the Internet in summer 1996 to look up historical facts about the film) but those thirty years apparently haven’t been kind to my appreciation of the film. Watching it today, I’m not sure what annoys me most: the bombastic and tiresome “THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FREEEEDOM!” message; the fact that the hero fails miserably at what he tries to do; the unnecessary deviations from the facts; or the excessive length of the result. Probably all four. I’m mellowing in my increasingly older age, and while I won’t yet pretend to maturity, I’m also getting tired of films with a 13-year-old’s understanding of ideology as being impervious to common sense. I’m also tired of movies making up lies (i.e.; jus primae noctis) to push their own dramatic agendas. I’m also tired of movies stretching out over nearly forever. No matter the reason, I’m not quite as enthusiastic about Braveheart as I was before. I’ll gladly concede that actor/director Mel Gibson knows how to make a movie: this is a slick production, well worth whatever Academy Awards it got. But I’m going to stop short from professing any overwhelming personal enthusiasm for it.

  • Big Game (2014)

    Big Game (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2016) Now here is a pleasant surprise: an honest big-budget slam-bang action thriller featuring iconic images about the American Presidency, coming from… Finland. What? Well, yes. Thanks to the magic of special effects, global financing, location shooting and well-paid actors, even Finland is able to put together the kind of movie that Hollywood wishes it could make. Big Game’s premise is absurdly simple (Air Force One is sabotaged and brought down deep in Finland’s forests—only a boy can help the President escape his pursuers) but it works, largely because writer/director Jalmari Helander is willing to go big and bold on his images and action sequences. It does help that the film can rely on Samuel L. Jackson as a curiously cowardly president, and Jim Broadbent as an oracle of truth with a hidden agenda (his last scene is fantastic). But when the film shows Air Force One crashing into a lake, or being ripped apart by its auto-destruction mechanism, or the President running in the woods like hunted prey, or a heliborne freezer slamming through a forest, this is the kind of action movie iconography that Hollywood has unexplainably abandoned lately. No wonder if Big Game works so splendidly well once it firmly engages into its first act: It plays the action movie Hollywood game better than Hollywood itself, and keeps piling up the cool stuff. It’s unabashedly a thriller and it doesn’t try to be anything else. As such, it’s a success … and it’s too bad that a lot of American filmgoers won’t even hear of it.