Reviews

  • Pacific Rim (2013)

    Pacific Rim (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2013) For many people of the geeky disposition, Pacific Rim reads like a dream project: Fan-favourite writer/director Guillermo del Toro, perhaps one of the most imaginative filmmakers around, taking on both the entire tradition of Japanese kaiju films, and blending it with the mecha subgenre… with a decent budget for once.  What’s not to like?  And, for much of its duration, Pacific Rim does deliver on its premise.  It’s a big blockbuster spectacular, made by someone who loves the genre(s), knows how to make a crowd-pleasing film and approaches the premise with a welcome blend of optimism and determination.  The first ten minutes, if it wasn’t for the flat narration, are almost a model for delivering a ton of exposition without undue strain.  Pacific Rim requires a significant suspension of disbelief to set up its premise (extra-dimensional monsters are one thing, but giant robots controlled by two mentally-linked people are a tougher sell when nuclear-tipped cruise missiles seem so much more appropriate) but the way it sells a fully-realized world affected by years of kaiju incursion is a good way to ease in even the most nitpicky viewers.  Where the film loses points, curiously enough, is in its depiction of monsters-versus-robots combat: For all of ILM’s eye-popping work in setting massive fights in complex environments, it’s not hard to look at the Hong Kong sequence and wish for longer, wider shots and the opportunity to fully take in a sequence rather than the visual confusion made by the neon lights, rain and quick cuts.  (This may be an unavoidable issue when hundred of special effects technicians slave for months on the same sequence: the temptation to add more, more, more visual detail may be irresistible, but it works at the viewers’ disfavour when it results in an overdesigned sequence.) In terms of sheer spectacle, the film also peaks at the three-quarter mark.  Even though nominal star Charlie Hunnam couldn’t be blander (about a dozen other actors could have done the same, or better), del Toro gets good performances out of his other actors, with a bit of special praise going to Rinko Kikuchi as the emotional center of the film, Charlie Day in a surprisingly compelling comic performance and Ron Perlman for being, well, Ron Perlman.  Pacific Rim is a good film, albeit one that I wish could have been great.  Del Toro has done terrific work here, but a little bit more oomph could have carried this even further.

  • Tom Clancy (1947-2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tom Clancy is dead.

    The news came in via the internet, as all things now do: Within moments, it was the at top of news sites, and managed the rare quadrifecta of topping Reddit’s /news/, /books/, /movies/ and /gaming/ forums –an eloquent testimony to Clancy’s impact in three very different fields, and his once-preeminent status as America’s best-selling novelist.  (Cardinal of the Kremlin was the best-selling novel of 1988 in the United States; Clear and Present Danger repeated the achievement the following year.)

    As I read the eulogies, what struck me is how distant the news felt.  2013 hasn’t been a good year for author deaths (Jack Vance, Richard Matheson, Vince Flynn, Iain Banks, Elmore Leonard, Frederik Pohl… geez, and that’s just a selection from relatively-famous authors I found interesting) but what was different with Clancy is that once upon a time, I could claim with conviction that he was my favourite author.

    The reviews of his work on this web site don’t accurately represent that: they were all written after 1995, past the point of Clancy’s most successful work.  By lieu of apology-by-eulogy, I thought I’d take a trip back in time and revisit myself as a younger reader.  There may be some autobiographical content below.  (And given the vagaries of memory, there may be some unintentionally erroneous material as well, but if you know the truth, don’t tell me –I rather like my version of the story.)

    It starts in Rockland, a small (mostly French-language) town in eastern Ontario, circa 1989 or thereabouts.  At the time, I’m a bright 13-year old mostly-francophone nerd just beginning high-school.  I love reading (well, in-between computer games) and I’m taking up more adult novels in English, but the local selection is limited: the (mostly French-language) school library is aimed at teenagers, the (mostly French-language) local public library is small and there’s no bookstore closer than the one 15 kilometers west in Ottawa-suburb Orléans.  Not that it would matter, since I don’t have any money.  My interest in science and technology make science-fiction my favourite thing, but the small local selection means that I have already read everything SF.

    Enters Clancy.

    Thanks to a kindly great-aunt who loves reading as much as I do, I end up borrowing The Hunt for Red October (a battered gray paperback edition, portraying a submarine through a periscope) and I get hooked: The writing is plain and effective, the plot moves forward relentlessly, the technology feels cutting-edge and, perhaps most importantly, the book is filled with the kind of delicious expositionary material that I had until then only seen in science-fiction.  Being thirteen-year old, I’m able to read my way through Clancy’s back-catalogue in a few weeks.  By 1989, he not only has a small back-log of six novels (all stocked at the local library), but his success has also created the techno-thriller genre.

    I’m not alone in discovering Clancy.  My small coterie of proudly nerd friends and I (“The Nerd Squad”, yup, we were nerd-chic a decade before it was chic to be nerd) find Clancy to be the best thing ever.  It helps that there’s a link with computer games (ah, the DOS version of Red Storm Rising: awesome!), that Clear and Present Danger is atop the bestseller charts and that the movie version of The Hunt for Red October is buzzing around.  I remember talking about specific chapters of Red Storm Rising at a hockey arena with friend Sylvain (hey, what’s two nerds to do when the school forces you to watch a game at the local rink?); I remember my dearly departed friend Yves (RIP) telling us about how a boating mishap sent the Rockland Public Library’s sole copy of Clear and Present Danger in the Ottawa River, where it “rolled in the water like a donut being fried” (the water-damaged version would stay on their shelves for years; I wonder if they still have it); or both of us arguing about whether it was OK to peek ahead at the last page of a novel as you’re reading it (he had read the last page of Patriot Games to make sure it wasn’t going to end badly).

    In some ways, Clancy leads us small-town nerds to the wider world.  I remember all of us Nerds Squad members making a then-rare road trip to go see the film adaptation of Patriot Games in theaters (in Gloucester, 25 kilometers west) on its first weekend of release in June 1992.  We start picking up other techno-thriller novels and exchanging recommendation.  My first big new-book book purchase, at Place d’Orléans’ Coles bookstore, is three mass-paperback techno-thrillers in the Clancy subgenre by Dale Brown, Larry Bond and Harold Coyle.

    At the time, Clear and Present Danger is the best thing I have ever read.  When teenagers tackle their first big adult novels, they feel insanely big and imposing, and so the details stick in my mind even though I’ve forgotten many better books in the meantime.  I still remember elements of the climax (such as Jack Ryan finding a long gash in his helmet, caused by a near-miss from a high-powered bullet) to be the measure of how thrillers should be written.  Heck, even without looking it up, I still remember the closing line: “Silence is the greatest love of all.”  (After checking: Aw, close: “silence was the greatest passion of all” [P.688, a page number I still remembered given the association with submarines.])

    Given the scorn with which I reviewed latter Clancy novels on this site, I feel almost obligated to point out how good the first half-dozen Clancy novels actually were.  Mixing up my own impressions of the novels with a wider critical appreciation of the subgenre:

    • The Hunt for Red October (1984) remains the prototype for the techno-thriller genre.  There had been earlier examples of the form (such as Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain (1969), Craig Thomas’ Firefox (1977), Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s The Fifth Horsemen (1980)) but this is the one that codified the form and made it popular: Blend in real-world references, high stakes, cutting-edge technology, detailed information lumps, plain writing and straightforward characterization.  Even as a first novel, it’s amazingly self-assured: the plotting is tense, the pacing rarely flags despite the digressions and protagonist Jack Ryan’s heroic journey as an analyst forced in active operations is credible.  It’s a terrific book, and I hope to be able to revisit it someday soon.
    • As a novel trying to describe an entire World War III in less than 700 pages, Red Storm Rising (1986) may read today like hopelessly outdated alternate history.  But in 1989/1990, even as the Soviet Union was breaking up, it still read like a chillingly plausible scenario.  What still works, as long as you allow for the WW3 scenario, is the complexity of the plotting and the success with which Clancy and acknowledged-but-uncredited collaborator Larry Bond manage to depict a multi-fronted WW3 through a few viewpoint characters.  It compares very positively with other WW3 fantasies that appeared on bookshelves during the end of the Cold War, most notably Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War.  I have great memories of the book, and it’s another one I hope to re-read some day.
    • Patriot Games (1987) proves that Clancy can be just as good with smaller-stakes.  This time (with a story predating The Hunt for Red October, something that had blown my unformed mind at a time where “prequel” hadn’t become a cash-in staple), Clancy focuses on a man protecting his family from terrorists and keeps up the tension even without world-threatening stakes.  Even if I’d probably find the ending overdone nowadays (what with a terrorist assault, a storm and a birth all converging) it seemed at the time like a perfect little ending to a perfect little thriller.
    • The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988) goes big once again, focusing on spying games between the US and the Soviet Union.  A direct sequel to The Hunt for Red October, The Cardinal of the Kremlin stands tall as a refined example of sophisticated late-cold-war spy fiction.  It blends together a number of political, military and technological elements that make it seem quite a bit more complex than the usual spycraft thriller.  Even today, there may not be a better late-cold-war spying novel.
    • Clear and Present Danger (1989) is discussed above, but I want to highlight how prescient it was at anticipating the post-Cold War era.  It may have featured drug-lord antagonists, but the real point of the novel was the tension within the US forces in authorizing operations running against public policy and ethics.  It’s probably Clancy’s most thoughtful novel, and the portrait of squad-level combat operations is still memorable.

    By the time The Sum of All Fears was published in 1991, all of us Rockland nerds were ready to jump on the book.  My parents were kind enough to get me a brand-new shiny hardcover from the local Price Club as a gift: I devoured it in days.  If you chart Clancy’s career and critical success, you can make a case that his first five novels are all unchallenged successes, and that the slide down begins with The Sum of All Fears.  That’s certainly my thesis, and even at the time I noted that the novel took almost forever to begin and went nowhere while the plot strands were assembled.  The spectacular last 150 pages, taking the world all the way up to the brink of nuclear war even as Washington is paralyzed by a snowstorm, more than made up for the lacklustre rest of the book.  Still, even today, I think of the “timber” subplot as an example case in savvy plotting.  (ie; something like thirty pages, throughout the novel, are spent setting up a freakishly coincidental collision between a nuclear submarine and a piece of timber.  The whole thing starts with the lumberjack that fells the tree.  It works spectacularly well.)

    The next book, Without Remorse (1993), would be a return to an earlier time and simpler stakes, but not quite as effective.  As a Vietnam-era blend of combat and urban revenge story featuring another character from latter books, Without Remorse seemed a bit too simple even while it was, at a significant 639 pages, quite a bit overlong.  My friends and I still liked the book, but I was wondering about a few questions: Did we need the story to take place in the same universe as the one launched by The Hunt for Red October? Did the novel need to be so long?  Was anyone editing Clancy anymore?

    Knowledgeable readers here recognize the early trends that would send Clancy into a critical tailspin in latter books.  By the mid-nineties, Clancy had nothing left to prove.  He’d made his money, beaten down reviewers and conquered a loyal audience (such as myself) that would buy his books on sight.

    Debt of Honor (1994) was, I thought, a return to partial form: it moved the story back to modern times, and speculated a limited war between the US and Japan, with a big spectacular climax that not only predated eerie similarities with 9/11, but thrust once-analyst Jack Ryan to the presidency.  Bold, big, maybe highly implausible, but a heck of a conclusion nonetheless.

    Meanwhile, I had (more or less) escaped from the confines of Rockland, attending university in central Ottawa and suddenly having access to quite a bit more reading material.  While this would have disastrous consequences (some college freshmen can’t tolerate suddenly-easy access to alcohol, parties and partners; my own first-year grades were terrible because of too many books and early access to the Internet.) an upshot was a reading regimen that allowed for a bit more discernment.  I started reading SF by the bucket-haul and even publishing reviews online.  Along the way, I acquired all of Clancy’s mainline novels in hardcover editions, even a prized copy of The Hunt for Red October in its original Naval Institute Press edition.

    I soured on Clancy in 1995.  My parents were excited to report that Clancy had a new book out!  I was surprised to learn of it, and even more to learn that it was an average-sized original mass-market paperback.  Wasn’t Clancy supposed to write big hardcovers?  Well, it turned out that Tom Clancy’s Op Center was the first in a long, awful and unexplainably long-lived series of ghost-written “apostrophe” novels that carried Clancy’s name and none of his strengths.  The accompanying TV series wasn’t much better.

    (What were a bit better were the non-fiction trade paperbacks that, in seven installments from 1993 to 2001, gave an insightful look within elements of the US armed forces.  I’m still not sure that Clancy wrote most of those, or that they didn’t take away time and energy best spent on novels, but they were interesting to read.)

    When Executive Orders appeared in 1996, I’d started a reviewing web site –you can read my reaction to the book as I wrote it.  The review is a bit embarrassing to re-read more than fifteen years later –it’s one of my earliest entries and I wasn’t even 21 at the time.  This being said, I still stand by the overall critical assessment (“it isn’t Clancy’s best effort”) and note, while re-reading the review, that I’d started picking up on the right-wing politics, tepid pacing, loose editing and dubiousness of trying to keep up the Ryanverse.  Still; it wasn’t an embarrassing novel for Clancy, even if it was far from the best.

    What would be embarrassing is SSN, a 1996 minor videogame tie-in that has none of the flavour or interest of Clancy’s mainline novels.  My review (also embarrassing to re-read) started badly with “Tom Clancy wants your money. It’s as simple as that.” and then uttered the fatal “The sad thing is, he used to be my favourite author.” It’s so different (and worse) than his usual novels that I still doubt whether Clancy did more than contribute an outline.  Considering that Clancy was, at the time, moving toward video game conceptualization and had already started franchising his name, it’s a possibility that I’m not discarding.

    Rainbow Six (1998) would, at least, be a bit better.  It may even be Clancy’s last decent novel, although that assessment comes with a number of caveats: More than any one of Clancy’s mainline novels at that point, it would showcase increasingly right-wing politics, seal itself more firmly into the increasingly fantasy-based Ryanverse and display an author scarcely reined in by editors.  The writing got worse, the story got duller and Clancy got caught embarrassingly believing manufactures’ press releases with the DKL LifeGuard fiasco.  If there are a few good moments in the novel, they don’t amount to much in the aggregate.

    By the time the world saw the massive The Bear and the Dragon (2000), the decline was unmistakable, and Clancy was teetering on the edge of “bad”.  I wasn’t impressed: The novel has good moments, but they came at the expense of considerable time wasted, bad writing and a cumbersome attempt to reconcile the real world with the Ryanverse.  Unlike many of Clancy’s previous novels, it felt like a chore to read.

    Red Rabbit (2002) tried to deal with 9/11 by going back in time for another increasingly far-fetched prequel that contradicted much of Jack Ryan’s early history, messed up a number of key historical facts and simply didn’t add up to much.  It had the virtue of a slightly lower page count, but not much more action.  The writing got even worse.

    The last straw, as far as I was concerned, was 2003’s The Teeth of the Tiger: I spent nearly all of my review pointing with laughter at the book’s problems, from the writing to plotting to ludicrous attempts to reconcile the Ryanverse with real-world history to the crazy political stance that ran counter to Clancy’s previous better novels.  It hadn’t helped that 9/11 sent me politically leftward while Clancy grew more and more stridently right-wing.  (Or, more generally, that 9/11 sent nearly all military fiction authors into right-wing lalaland, leading me to lose touch with the genre.)

    Following The Teeth of the Tiger, I basically swore off Clancy, which was auspicious given that Clancy himself seemed to swear off writing.  For reasons that, I hope, will be elucidated by competent biographers, Clancy handed over his series to collaborators, retreated in non-writing pursuits and paradoxically saw his fame increase due to a well-received string of videogames sporting his name.

    By the time he died in October 2013, I hadn’t seriously thought about Clancy in years.  I haven’t bought or read a single Clancy book since The Teeth of the Tiger.  I don’t live in Rockland any more, I’m married, I’m raising a daughter and consequently don’t have as much time to read.  The Nerd Squad has long disbanded (one member dead far too soon, the other ones having moved on in their separate orbits despite occasional contacts throughout the years.  Half of the Squad have become video-game professionals.)  I’m reviewing movies professionally.  I stopped playing videogames due to lack of time.  Despite my voluntary sabbatical from reading, I still have a long list of favorite authors… but very few of them write techno-thrillers.

    But I would still like nothing better than to find an author who writes like Clancy at his finest.   I still do like the concept of techno-thrillers a lot, and I bemoan that much of the genre now seems so stupidly right-wing and insular.  I still own three linear feet of Clancy books, the earliest and best of them (from The Hunt for Red October to The Sum of All Fears) even adorning the “prestige” bookshelf meant to impress visitors.  In my own thankfully-unpublished fiction writing, I can recognize the mark left by Clancy’s clean prose and straightforward exposition.

    Like it or not, I’ve been shaped in some way by Tom Clancy, and the memories of his best books (alongside what they meant at the time) will remain with me.  His critical trajectory was an exemplar of the so-called “brain-eaten” bestselling author, but he’s hardly unique in this regard.  While I may have soured on his latter output, I’m still just as eager to suggest his first six novels as essential reading for thriller fans.  If you haven’t done so already, have a look at The Hunt for Red October and keep going until The Sum of All Fears.  Those are still books for the ages, and no amount of latter-day critical souring should change that.

    [February 2024: I have culled roughly a third of my hardcover fiction library.  The only Clancy titles that have survived are… His first six books, from The Hunt for Red October to The Sum of All Fears.]

  • Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

    Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) Here we go again: beloved kid’s fantasy series transformed into an overblown 3D Hollywood special-effects spectacle with a bit of snark.  If the criticism sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been the playbook for just about everything since The Lord of the Rings made so much money.  Here, The Wizard of Oz gets a prequel and while the results are familiar, they’re not as bad as they could have been.  James Franco may or may not have been the best choice as a con-magician forced to be a hero (with Franco, it’s hard to tell sincerity from laid-back detachment), but director Sam Raimi is certainly in his element in showcasing a bright and colorful Oz in all of its 3D glory.  Oz the Great and Powerful is not as derivative as it may first appear: Despite its kinship to L. Frank Baum’s work and the classic 1939 film, it feels relatively new and doesn’t try to ape the first film in its finer details.  Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis all do fine work as the three main witches, although it’s Kunis who gets the most interesting material and best make-up work.  The visual spectacle is worth a look, and if the film’s so-contemporary hip detachment is its own disservice (because much of Oz should be viewed with pure unadulterated glee), there’s enough here to make the film interesting to adults.  The result may not be particularly challenging, but it works well enough, and the de-emphasis placed on straight-up combat in favour of tricks and deception is a welcome change of pace from the usual epic fantasy template.

  • The Hangover Part III (2013)

    The Hangover Part III (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, October 2013) As someone who had a mixed reaction to The Hangover and an annoyed one to its nearly photocopied sequel, I’m almost unsurprised to find out that I don’t completely dislike the third installment in “The Wolfpack trilogy”.  At the very least, it disposes with the narrative scheme of the first two films and attempts something new.  It also brings back Ken Jeong’s unleashed character, a force of chaos that ends up driving much of the entire plot.  The result certainly has its moments, as it zigzags from Los Angeles to Tijuana to (much to the characters’ dismay) Las Vegas once again.  The comedy certainly is of the hit-and-miss type: some stuff works, some stuff doesn’t and viewers just have to wait for the next gag if one isn’t to their liking.  With this series, it doesn’t pay off to be offended, but it actually takes a while (arguably until after the credits) for this third Hangover to get overly graphic.  Perhaps the film is mellowing along its characters; perhaps it’s a recognition that you can only go back to the same raunchy source so many times.  Much of the film’s success has to go to the actors under Todd Phillips’ direction.  Bradley Cooper is still as preposterously charming as ever, while Ed Helms continues to undermine his own straight-laced image.  Zach Galifianakis remains annoying, but even that annoyance seems lessened here, largely because his character does get a bit of emotional growth along the way.  The Hangover III benefits from a few good comic set-pieces (the best of which taking place atop Caesar’s Palace), and manages to re-use a lot of material from the previous two film, even if only in passing.  The result may not be great cinema, but it’s decent comedy and it brings this would-be trilogy to a decent close.  It could have been worse, or at least far more similar to the first two films.

  • Burlesque Assassins (2012)

    Burlesque Assassins (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) How can you not like this premise?  In the depth of the cold-war 1950s, here is a trio of deadly… burlesque assassins!  It’s a charming hook, and the film certainly doesn’t forget how silly it’s supposed to be, as three lovely operatives take on Mussolini Jr., Hitler’s clone and what looks like Joe Stalin.  Still, viewers should realize that Burlesque Assassins is a low-budget Canadian film with more interest in showcasing burlesque than in being a polished comic thriller, and so adjust their expectations accordingly.  From the title and plot summary, it’s easy to imagine writer/director Jonathan Joffe’s Burlesque Assassins to be something it’s not.  The ultra-low-budget film is tailored to fit its single-minded burlesque boosterism and it often shows: Much of the film’s action, absent two prologues and three flashbacks, takes place in a single cabaret on a single night, the dialogue is often ham-fisted, the film’s plot is slowed down by burlesque numbers and the conclusion makes a mess out of whatever motivation the characters had.  There’s also quite a bit too much gore for the film’s tone.  Still, Burlesque Assassins has something that many more polished films don’t: charm.  The acting is more endearing than convincing, but it doesn’t matter given how likable the entire film becomes.  Armitage Shanks is constantly hilarious as the gruff-but-sensitive Johnny Valentine (it takes a strong man to do drag this badly), while Roxi D’Lite is pitch-perfectly doe-eyed as the new recruit in this trio of assassins.  Of the standalone burlesque numbers, Scarlett Martini has the most interesting performance –the rest sort of blurs together despite the big numbers and small patsies.  Still –and I can’t underscore this point enough– Burlesque Assassins makes up in likability what it doesn’t have in scope, pacing or polish: It’s the kind of let’s-get-the-gang-together small-budget filmmaking that’s hard to dislike or even dismiss.

  • Sinister (2012)

    Sinister (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) There are so many average horror movies out there that finding a decent one always seem like an achievement.  Sinister may not be exceptionally made or all that elegantly plotted, but it’s effective at what it tries to accomplish, and it manages a few dreadful moments along the way.  The story of a true-crime writer who comes to discover a supernatural serial killer, Sinister effectively sets up its premise and doesn’t waste a lot of time before unspooling its horror.  Audiences are likely to be as fascinated and repulsed as the protagonist in watching grisly Super-8 movies showing a few families’ final moments.  Sinister is a knowing horror film in that it manages to exploit a few well-establish tropes, upend a few others and twist a few more.  It doesn’t break out of the genre and has little meaningful social commentary to offer, but it creates a great atmosphere, a few jump scares, a relatively fresh take on classic material and some disturbing visual imagery.  The ending may be unsurprising, but it builds to a crescendo that matches good visuals with a fine sense of pacing.  Ethan Hawke doesn’t embarrass himself as the obsessed protagonist, while writer/director Scott Derrickson hits his intended targets –an underestimated skill in the horror genre.  Worth seeing, although perhaps not by the entire family!

  • Omertà (2012)

    Omertà (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2013) I have fond memories of the original “Omertà” TV series that was broadcast back in 1996: A muscular police thriller set against the backdrop of Montréal’s organized crime, it put Michel Côté on the map, brought Hollywood-like production values to Québec TV and showed that home-grown entertainment could be remarkably enjoyable.  Omertà-the-movie obviously banks on name recognition, as it purports to follow Michel Côté’s character more than a decade after the conclusion of the third series.  The links between TV series and film aren’t thicker than two common characters, though: much of the rest is original, so that viewers without any knowledge of the series won’t miss much.  What follows is a tangled, even opaque, mess of double-agents, organized crime figures, corrupt law-and-order representatives and the occasional victim.  It’s not uninteresting (even featuring a daring death midway through) and filmmaker Luc Dionne’s work is generally solid… but the script leads to a big so-what of an inconclusive ending that doesn’t show bravery as much as it elicits frustration.  While the film has its moments, it seems to lead nowhere, and mishandle its own strengths.  As Québec’s “big movie” of 2012, it offers the usual casting gags and fixtures: Michel Côté and Patrick Huard are omnipresent on the French-Canadian big screen for good reasons, while comedian Stéphane Rousseau is a revelation as a villain (sadly, his characters is repeatedly qualified as a psycho without much on-screen confirmation, and his exit is a big disappointment) while husband/manager-of-Céline-Dion René Angelil as a mob boss is just… funny.  Alas, Rachelle Lefebvre is far less interesting than she should have been in her role.  While Omertà is a decent piece of filmmaking, it’s not quite the slick crowd-pleaser that it aimed to be.  It may be worthwhile to revisit the TV series, though, and I’m still interested in whatever Luc Dionne wants to work on next.

  • Cloud Atlas (2012)

    Cloud Atlas (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) At a time where big-budget filmmaking seems to retreat in familiar narrative structures and a complete lack of daring, Cloud Atlas comes as a welcome break from the usual.  Clocking in at nearly three hours, it features six loosely-linked narratives spanning centuries and several known actors playing different roles in each story.  Heralding the return of the Wachowskis siblings to the big screen after a few quiet years (they co-direct three of the six stories, with Tom Tykwer directing the remainder of the film), Cloud Atlas is big, ambitious and offers things that cinema doesn’t often get to showcase.  It is, in many ways, a singular movie experience, and one that deserves to be contemplated rather than simply liked or disliked.  As an adaptation of David Mitchell’s sprawling novel, it’s an excellent, even audacious re-working: the film’s structure works in ways that the novel couldn’t, and still ends up a fiercely cinematic work.  Most of the actors playing multiple roles seem to have a lot of fun, with particular notice to Tom Hanks (who gets to tweak his usual good-guy persona), Halle Berry (who gets one of her best roles yet as a 1970s journalist), an often-unrecognizable Hugh Grant, as well as gleefully multifaceted Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving –who even gets to play both assassin and nurse. (Some roles don’t work as well, such as when actors get to play outside their ethnicity or gender, but that happens.) The six stories interlock in subtle ways, suggesting both reincarnation of personalities and malleability of interpretation once truth becomes fiction.  For all of the good things about Cloud Atlas, it’s almost too easy to forget that this is not an easy or even completely successful film: You have to give it at least 30 minutes for the six stories to earn narrative interest, and there’s a sense that the film is definitely not tight or focused: it often appears to run off on tangents and forced similarities, and certainly will not please anyone looking for solid links between all elements of the picture.  Still, for jaded moviegoers, Cloud Atlas is as close as it gets to a truly new experience within the big-budget framework: it tries many new things, succeeds spectacularly well at some of them and leaves hungry for a bit more.  I could go on, but the film is too big to be adequately described within the constraints of a capsule review.

  • Gravity (2013)

    Gravity (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In Theaters, October 2013) I’m going to take a break from reasoned movie criticism and indulge myself in a few freefall back-flips about Gravity: This is a movie I’ve been waiting a long time to see, at least ever since I wanted to be an astronaut while growing up.  Alfonso Cuarón’s latest film takes us in orbit for 90 minutes, and I loved every moment of it, jaw hanging open in astonishment for much of that time.  The narrative setup couldn’t be simpler (accident in space; astronaut wants to go home), but the execution is almost perfect: Seen in 3D, Gravity is the definition of an immersive experience.  From the impressive 17-minutes-long opening take, this is a film that attempts something ambitious and manages a delicate balance between showing something new while trusting its audience to follow along without excessive dumbing-down.  It’s not scientifically impeccable (the orbital mechanics are simplified, the plot armor a bit thick at time) but most of the compromises are conscious ones made in good faith so that the story can work on a more emotional level.  Sandra Bullock is spectacular as the quasi-civilian thrust in an impossible situation, while George Clooney is his usual charming self as an old-school “Right Stuff” veteran doing his best to keep the situation under control.  But it’s writer/director Cuarón who earns most of the praise here, because Gravity is an insane gamble that works: A technically-complex film that features grand thrills, thematic depths, beautiful visuals and new ways of telling a story on-screen.  There are a few remarkable moments in this film, from seamlessly going to-and-from subjective perspective, soundless mayhem, zero-gravity fire and strong emotions conveyed without histrionics.  It’s both a science-fiction film (despite the lack of speculative elements, it’s a classic “Analog story”) and a memorable thriller, and it arrives in theaters as an invigorating antidote to the kind of cookie-cutter moviemaking that big studios seem all too eager to present.  It’s worth seeing in 3D, and it’s worth seeing in theaters: how many other films can claim the same?  Assured of a top-ten spot on my year’s end list, and most likely headed straight to the top spot, Gravity isn’t just a great movie: it’s one that makes it worth feeling excited about movies again.

  • Life of Pi (2012)

    Life of Pi (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) As someone who read Yann Martel’s novel a while ago, Life of Pi held few surprises from a narrative point of view: The big-screen adaptation faithfully recreates the novel’s structure, its main plot beats (including the slap-back ending) and a good chunk of the story’s thematic concerns.  As a result, I’m not overly bothered by the overdone spiritual content, or the trickster nature of the ending.  It remains, at its most basic level, the story of a teenager’s survival ordeal as he’s stuck for most of a year on a lifeboat with a full-grown Bengal tiger.  Still, as with the novel, I was far more interested with the detailed practicality of the protagonist’s lifeboat ordeal than with the multiple levels of interpretation, the spiritual content or the work’s boastful assertion that it will make audiences believe in God.  Much of Life of Pi is immediately accessible as a succession of terrific imagery, you-are-there details of lifeboat survival and good old-fashion resilience in the face of terrible adversity.  The special effects are terrific (the two storm sequences are simply amazing) and director Ang Lee’s skill in making the film both visceral and ethereal is something to behold.  You’d think that the film would start to repeat itself given the limited setting, but Life of Pi remains engrossing for as long as its characters are drifting at sea.  While I suspect that more spiritually-minded audience will get more out of the film, I’m sufficiently impressed that it can still manage to reach and fascinate audiences such as myself, purely as a survival thriller.

  • Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

    Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) Oh, we’ve seen this movie before: College kids go deep in the wood for a weekend party, meet creepy hillbillies and numerous deaths ensue.  But the scenario is familiar enough to have spawned parodies, and after The Cabin in the Woods, here’s Tucker and Dale vs Evil, which follows two good-natured rednecks on a weekend outing as they find themselves attacked by college kids following an escalating series of accidents and misunderstandings.  Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk star as the unlucky pair of heroes, bringing a good-natured charm to already-sympathetic roles.  But the star of the film really is the script, which manages to balance a tricky mixture of gore, comedy, trope inversion and self-aware idiot plotting.  It works, even though there is a moment around the half-way mark where it seems as if the premise runs thin and the gory deaths become a bit too gory for the comedy: Tucker and Dale vs Evil knows what it’s doing, and there’s considerable amusement in seeing would-be antagonists and protagonists switching roles.  Writer/director Eli Craig’s script isn’t bad, and the entire film is a great deal sweeter than anyone could have expected.  (That’s not entirely good, as the largely-useless final scene suggests.)  Of course, as with The Cabin in the Woods (which you can now purchase as a recommended double-feature DVD with Dale and Tucker vs Evil), this is a film that is perhaps best appreciated by those who are aware of the whole “hillbilly horror” subgenre, and who can stomach often-excessive amount of gore with their comedy. 

  • Les Misérables (2012)

    Les Misérables (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2013) A quick trawl through these reviews will reveal that when it comes to movie musicals, I’m a very forgiving reviewer.  I have embraced the musical in its post-Moulin Rouge era and a few disappointments aside, I’m usually fond of the genre.  So imagine my surprise when I found myself annoyed, bored and exasperated by Les Misérables, surely one of the most instantly recognizable examples of the genre to come down the Broadway-to-Hollywood route.  I groaned when I realized that Les Misérables would not only be wall-to-wall singing, but that nearly every song would sound the same and drag on forever.  More than once, I left the living room for errands and came back minutes later to characters expressing the same emotion.  For all of its nice cinematography and convicting re-creation of a troubled period in French history, Les Misérables plods on for more than an excruciating two hours and a half, on a musical register than barely varies from one song to the next. Perhaps my powers of concentration are gone; maybe I’m just picky when I should be forgiving.  And it’s not as if the actors are slacking, given how many of them do well with parts that exceed their signing range. Seeing Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen and a thoroughly unglamorous Helena Bonham Carter voice their miserable condition is interesting as in we-haven’t-seen-this-too-many-times-before, but they can’t make the pace move more quickly, or change the film’s intention to make nearly every line of dialogue sung.  (Still, I note that the most memorable performance comes from musical-cast-member Samantha Barks, who makes the most out of a limited role as Éponine)  Les Misérables is lavish filmmaking on the highest level –but it’s annoying for idiosyncratic reasons that I can’t fully articulate.  Upon reflection, through, it occurs to me that I’m fonder of original-movie-musicals rather than straight-up adaptations of existing Broadway shows.  Let’s keep the musicals on Broadway, and use the cinema screen for something that fully exploits cinema as a medium.

  • Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

    Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) Buzzwords from Silver Linings Playbook’s script read like a bingo card of stuff I don’t particularly care about: mild mental illness, ballroom dancing and rabid sports fandom.  So it’s perhaps a relief more than anything else that this dramatic comedy ends up being better than expected.  Much of the praise should go to Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who manage to navigate a tricky path in portraying badly-flawed characters that nonetheless become endearing.  Lawrence, in particular, portrays a character far beyond her age, rounding an increasingly multifaceted screen persona.  The rest of the film’s success should go to writer/director David O. Russell, who doesn’t specialize in easy movies and here manages to deliver a refreshing blend of independent sensibilities with Hollywood A-list actors.  The mixture is tricky and doesn’t always work (Anyone bored with sports fandom will find lengthy stretches of the film almost interminable, although Lawrence does get a laugh out-playing superstitious armchair statisticians.) but Silver Linings Playbook does work more often than it should and that’s enough to qualify it as a success.

  • Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

    Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2012) Now that 1980s kids have not only climbed the ladders of pop-culture production, but also form a substantial part of the paying audience, it’s no surprise that eighties nostalgia should pop up everywhere.  (It’ll get worse; we’re within ten years of a nineties revival.)  Given that video games were The New Thing for eighties kids, it’s no surprise that something like Wreck-It Ralph should make it to the big screen: An animated film exploiting videogame history seems like a natural fit, perfectly adapted to the kind of stories in the Pixar/Disney mold.  Clearly, Walt Disney Animation Studios have learned a lot from stable-mates Pixar (and creative director John Lasseter) because Wreck-It Ralph is as good as most of the Pixar films at exploiting a high-concept premise and setting a solid narrative within strange environments: As eight-bit villain Ralph sets out to become a hero in other newer games, we get a look at the inner life of videogame characters, plenty of cameos from thirty+ years of gaming and a rather solid story as well.  The film flows easily, and while it spends a bit too much time in Sugar Rush, there’s plenty to see and laugh about every few moments.  The visuals are spectacular, but Wreck-It Ralph never forgets that it needs a story and compelling characters.  Even non-gamers should be charmed by the film even as they miss many of the big and small in-jokes that pepper its running time.  As far as corporate exercises in nostalgia are concerned, this is actually pretty good.  It makes a powerful argument, alongside Bolt, The Princess and the Frog, Tangled and Winnie the Pooh, about Walt Disney Animation Studio’s surging relevance at a time where more and more animation companies are vying for attention.

  • Frankenweenie (2012)

    Frankenweenie (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) There’s something intensely familiar with Tim Burton’s Frankenwwenie, and that’s a good thing: After nearly a decade in the wilderness, here he is revisiting old obsessions and directing a film that’s close to the goth-suburban aesthetics of his early work, most particularly the classic Edward Scissorhands.  Inspired by two short films from Burton’s early career, Frankenweenie depicts a boy’s adventures after resurrecting his pet dog.  His secret doesn’t hold, his friends all try to emulate him and soon enough the entire neighborhood has problems with undead pets.  Filmed in sharp black-and-white stop-motion animation, Frankenweenie becomes homage to Frankenstein and Burton’s work, obviously, but also to sub-genres of horror cinema including kaiju monster cinema.  It’s not exactly a breath of fresh air, but it’s competently executed, somewhat charming for audiences with some horror-film background and a welcome return to form for Burton after a string of mystifying misfires.  It’s worth a look, even though it may ultimately prove to be forgettable.