Reviews

  • A Walk among the Tombstones (2014)

    A Walk among the Tombstones (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) As much as I enjoy seeing Liam Neeson taking on action roles in borderline-exploitation thrillers, the problem is that he’s usually far better than the movies surrounding him, and he’s such a good actor that an unintentional layer of irony surrounds his Liamsploitation streak.  So it is that his most enjoyable roles have been in over-the-top thrillers, from Non-Stop to Unknown to The A-Team to Taken.  With the unusual exception of The Grey (serious film ; fantastic role), he doesn’t do as well in straight-up crime thrillers like A Walk Among the Tombstones, a humorless and dark suspense film in which he plays a private investigator tracking down the murdered wife of a mobster and finding a pair of serial killers.  It’s a dirty grimy little tale, and while Neeson is irreproachable as an ex-alcoholic retired cop turned to private investigations, the film itself is far duller than it ought to be.  In other words; Neeson is awesome, the film is not fun.  Adapted from a late-sequence Scudder series novel by Lawrence Block, the film sometimes feels like an overblown TV series pilot, complete with the story of how the protagonist meets and befriends his sidekick.  While it would be churlish not to like the result as a run-of-the-mill suspense film, seeing Neeson headlining the film does bring up unfair expectations.

  • Meet Joe Black (1998)

    Meet Joe Black (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2015)  It’s rare to squarely point at length as a film’s main point of failure; usually, if the film is good then a few lulls won’t damage it; conversely, if a film is bad it will feel long even at 85 minutes.  But Meet Joe Black is something else: A film with pretty good moments, marred by interminable subplots and, thanks to director Marti Brest, a shooting style that never makes a point in five seconds if thirty will do.  A very young-looking Brad Pitt starts as Death incarnate, taking a holiday among humans to understand how we act like we do.  Opposite him, Anthony Hopkins plays a Hollywood rarity: a wealthy man with some innate decency, a genuinely good guy who nonetheless escape caricature.  Finally, Claire Forlani has never looked better than she does here as the daughter of the wealthy man, seduced by Death’s innocence.  (Which leads to a pretty funny scene in which our businessman comes to realize that Death, nominally there to get him, has ended up sleeping with his daughter.)  The film does have an understated poignancy, as death and his target negotiate the terms of our businessman’s death over a few days, timing it to ensure a small triumph.  And while the film does have a few unintentionally hilarious moments (That shot of Pitt’s character being hit by two cars plays beautifully as a looped gif), it’s generally earnest in its musings.  But, as stated previously, the film is fatally wounded by its pacing.  There simply isn’t enough plot to justify the three-hours (!) running length –in fact, the pacing issues are glaringly obvious on an individual scene level as there is no snappiness to the editing and sequences always run longer than you’d expect.  Lop off an hour (from the script, not in the editing room) and you’d have a far more potent film.  As it is, though, Meet Joe Black will repeatedly put anyone to sleep.

  • 21 Grams (2003)

    21 Grams (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2015) I’m really not a very good public for the kind of everything-is-related heavy-duty drama represented by 21 Grams.  It may be a powerhouse demonstration of actors’ skills (Sean Penn, Benitio del Toro and Charlize Theron all make good impressions in emotion-heavy roles) and its non-linear structure may increase the film’s interest like a puzzle box, but sometimes I don’t really have to work so hard to piece together a story that is so heavy on emotional manipulation, grief, loss, and high-stakes drama.  Director Alejandro González Iñárritu certainly knows how to shoot (and edit) a film but the script is the kind of one-wild-thing-after-another pile of contrivances that can either feel profound or meaningless.  The mystical element announced by the title is more metaphorical than interesting, whereas the jumbled chronological order of the film saves it from feeling too much like an overblown movie-of-the-week.  It’s the kind of weepy tear-jerker that seems to exist for award season and however successful it can be in its chosen genre, it’s just now what I’m looking for.  I do have to wonder, however, about the role of mood (mine) is dealing with such a film –I wasn’t receptive to 21 Grams, and even acknowledging its strengths can’t actually make me like it any more.

  • The Boxtrolls (2014)

    The Boxtrolls (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) I really would have liked to like The Boxtrolls more than I did.  At an age of fully computer-generated animation, there is something wonderfully tactile about Laika Studio’s blend of stop-motion animation and CGI augmentation.  Unfortunately, (and after Paranorman this seems to be a house style issue), Laika has one of the ugliest character design aesthetics in the business today, and the choices them make in building their characters is not helping the films they’re creating.  The Boxtrolls isn’t, per se, a bad or unenjoyable film, although the script is often too ordinary for its own good.  But for a film built around a visual experience, the grotesque character design takes it a step back.  Otherwise, it’s mildly enjoyable –as long as you’re not allergic to familiar plot elements, the film plays nicely from beginning to end, with inherent quirkiness, fast-paced action sequences and a fantastic attention to detail.  Emotionally, The Boxtrolls doesn’t pack the punch that previous Laika production Coraline or Paranorman managed –this is a more laid-back and unstructured result and the end result doesn’t redeem the design like Paranorman eventually did.  The technical wizardry is obvious (there’s a wonderful mid-credit moment where we clearly see the amount of work that goes into animating stop-motion films) but it feels a bit wasted here, in search of a more cohesive plan.  It’s still worth a look, but it could and should have been a bit better.

  • I Origins (2014)

    I Origins (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015)  Aaaargh: So much potential, so close to being exceptional.  At a time when science-fiction films are far more about spectacle than actual exploration of scientific issues, it’s refreshing to find a film that, at least, tries to grapple with a world-changing premise in a relatively realistic way.  There are times where I Origin’s low-key approach is a delightful change of pace, and if the movie could have sustained that tone, then we’d be looking at a far more interesting result.  But a good chunk of the film is either too silly or too obviously manipulated by writer/director Mike Cahill to inspire full admiration.  I’ll let much of the initial setup pass, as a young impetuous scientist meets a striking young woman and then reconnects with her through an amazing chain of coincidences.  If the film wants to start foreshadowing destiny-related themes, that’s fine.  The first of the film’s problems comes at the end of that sequence, though, with a scene so gruesomely morbid as to create more incredulous laughter than sadness.  After that, the films plod quite a bit – the protagonist is so obviously arrogant that it’s a given for his atheistic convictions to be shaken as the film goes on.  And so I Origins tips its hand very early, making the rest of the film feel like an often-tedious exercise is going exactly where we think it’s going to go.  I recall more or less the same core idea developed far more engagingly in Science-Fiction short stories.  Here, there’s no sense of discovery as much as long series of confirmations of what we already suspect: it doesn’t help that the film more slowly enough for viewers to race past it.  I still like much of the film’s layered thematic symbolism, its willingness to occasionally nod toward real science and a refreshingly low-key approach.  But it’s not very well-served by a fairly dull premise that seems to be holding back on more interesting extrapolations.  Wikipedia says that I Origins serves as a prequel to another film, but frankly I’d be more interested in seeing I than meandering in its prequel.  

  • Let’s Be Cops (2014)

    Let’s Be Cops (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) I’m not necessarily opposed to silly immature comedies, but Let’s Be Cops is… not a good example of the form.  The big premise here is how two out-of-luck young men hit upon the idea of donning police uniforms and pretending to be cops for fun and then love and profit.  Surely I can’t be the only one unaccountably bothered by this?  There’s a really good reason why impersonating a police officer is a jail-worthy offense.  It certainly doesn’t help that the film’s two protagonists are borderline-unlikable, their immaturity being a problem long before they start wearing their uniform.  (Damon Wayans, Jr. is slightly more tolerable than Jake Johnson, but I’m not sure that’s a quirk of the role or the actor.)  Let’s Be Cops may have played better in a year or two, given current issues of police brutality being in the news.  But as of today, it feels crass, and its lack of wit only makes it worse as it doesn’t deserve its infringement of social norms.  (Arguably, it doesn’t have the guts to exploit its premise at full-tilt.)  The criminal subplot isn’t much, but Andy Garcia does make an impression in a short time.  With little wit, few laughs, more than a bit of irritation and unremarkable directing, Let’s Be Cops is almost instantly forgettable… and that’s not a bad thing.

  • The Boy Next Door (2015)

    The Boy Next Door (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, July 2015)  I’m not sure what’s inadvertently funnier: Jennifer Lopez in a role where she gets romantically involved with a much younger man (this is one instance when knowing the tabloid persona of the actor is detrimental to the film) or seeing the filmmakers bend themselves in pretzels pretending that this is a so-called “erotic thriller” when this isn’t much more than a schlocky fatal-attraction horror film.  The Boy Next Door’s plot feels intensely familiar, as a middle-aged mom sleeps with a young man and find herself the object of his unwanted attention.  It doesn’t take long for family, friends and pets to be threatened by a psychotic caricature of an antagonist, all the way to a bloody confrontation.  Not a lot separates The Boy Next Door from countless cheap made-for-cable thrillers, other than having Lopez’s bankable name on the marquee.  It certainly skirts the so-bad-it’s-good category, as nearly every minor jolt is underscored in the bluntest way possible.  (There’s a classroom sequence that’s, ahem, special.)  Lopez looks good, but otherwise there isn’t much to play here –and having seen her in a similar role a dozen years ago in Enough is, well, enough.  The film does have an entertainment value at odds with its qualities, but that’s the kind of compliment that leaves you guilty the next morning.

  • Batoru rowaiaru [Battle Royale] (2000)

    Batoru rowaiaru [Battle Royale] (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2015) The problem with infamous movies is that by the time you see them, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up with a big “that’s it?”.  So it is that I have heard about Battle Royale for almost fifteen years, but seeing it now only highlights how the hype is better than the source.  The shocking premise is having high-schoolers compete in a deadly tournament until only one remains, and pretty much the point of the film is ultraviolence by/on young people.  Needless to say, this isn’t as shocking today now that The Hunger Games has entered the pop-culture lexicon.  It really doesn’t help that Battle Royale doesn’t make any sense.  I never thought I’d say nice things about The Hunger Games’ world-building (which is terrible) but it’s at least better than the non-existent one in here.  (ie; we’re supposed to believe that Battle Royale was created as a social response, but the rest of the world looks identical, and it’s practically impossible to believe that Battle Royale, sprung forth without antecedents, would actually solve anything.)  But of course the point here is exploitative violence, not social extrapolation.  And once you get over the premise (again; thank you Hunger Games) there isn’t much more left.  It’s tough to distinguish actors when they’re identically dressed, let alone care for them.  There’s an ex-teacher subplot that barely makes sense. (I suspect that it comes from earlier rougher iterations of the script, and should have been removed once the rationale was clearer.) The film lives for its graphic death sequences, but the connecting tissue couldn’t be less interesting.  In short, I’m feeling neither impressed nor pleased by the result, and as my repeated references to the latter derivative Hunger Games suggest, I do not hold Battle Royale in any sort of awe.  Perhaps, someday, someone will do something interesting with the concept.

  • While We’re Young (2014)

    While We’re Young (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, July 2015)  It’s good to see Ben Stiller play something closer to his age, in a movie where he doesn’t have to mug for frantic attention via cringe-worthy humiliation, or competing with special effects.  Having him play an early-forties man in While We’re Young is still shaving a decade from his age, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.  It helps that this is a film about aging, and the aches and pain and nagging doubts of encroaching middle-age.  Stiller has been featured in so many broad comedies than seeing him in something more adult, more dramatic and more subtle is almost a revelation.  Here he’s paired with Naomi Watts as a childless couple suddenly confronted by the rest of their lives as their friends settle down with kids and they befriend a young hipster couple (Amanda Seyfried and Adam Driver is good performances.)  While We’re Young starts as a low-key observational comedy and does a lot of mileage out of ordinary middle-age anxieties, it does veer off into something a bit stranger by the last third: By the time our protagonist races down the freeway in an attempt to uncover the world’s most trivial conspiracy, it’s hard to avoid thinking that this is not the film it started to be.  Still, the interplay between Stiller and Driver, as well as the gradual revelation of a character’s true nature, provides a lot of dramatic mileage to the film.  There’s are little bits about hipsterism, the ethics of documentary filmmaking, couple relations, making friends in your forties, drug-fueled revelations, ambition masquerading as something else.  The film is surprisingly absorbing, truthful, sadly a bit underwhelming in its conclusion, but a good time nonetheless.  I suspect that I liked it because it’s reaching me at a very particular time in my life… but that’s how it goes.

  • Noah (2014)

    Noah (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2015)  When Noah was announced as heralding the return of the biblical epic, I’m not sure anyone quite expected… this.  Both faithful to the letter of the Flood and almost crazily unhinged as a fantasy film, Noah is certainly a bold bet by writer/director Darren Aronofsky.  He brings old-testament back thanks to a somewhat unique interpretation of angels fallen to Earth, introduces conflict among the Ark, meanders for two minutes in presenting a single-shot take on evolution, supposes a pre-Flood industrial society… it’s ambitious and scattered and impressive and exasperating at once, the film never quite jumping where one expect it to go.  Questions of humanity’s survival are bandied about, Russell Crowe goes brilliantly crazy at times, the building (and stuffing) of the Ark is handled in a semi-plausible fashion (given the existence of giant rock-monsters and sleeping potions).  As far away from blockbuster film as a reported 150 million dollar budget can allow, Noah is a definitive oddity coming from a major studio and the kind of flawed movie that makes a better impression than more successful, but more restrained ones.  It suggests (especially when juxtaposed with 2014’s Exodus) that in adapting classic bible stories it’s best to go as wild as possible.  Yet for all of its deviations of reality and borrowings from fantasy epic film, Noah does feel relatively respectful to at least the ideas of the Old Testaments… while delivering a big dose of wonder along the way.  Not bad at all, even though you may struggle to explain why, exactly, Noah feels so interesting.

  • Get Hard (2015)

    Get Hard (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, July 2015) There is something almost irresistibly promising about the premise at the core of Get Hard: What if a privileged naïf, framed for white-collar crime, had to ask for help in facing being locked-up?  What if the tough-black-guy asked for help was just as innocent as the convicted man?  Give the two main roles to Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart and you can almost imagine the film itself.  There’s even some room for social commentary, populist rage and racial-divide commentary.  But what do we actually get in Get Hard?  Alas: Racist, homophobic and just plain mean humor.  While a little bit can go a long way, the film is wearying in is near-constant carpet-bombing of the same jokes, repeated without much variation.  Rape isn’t funny, and neither is specifically homosexual prison rape, so it’s distressing to see the film reach for the same joke every five minutes or so, even in watered-down forms that look a lot like plain homophobia.  Much of the same can be said about the film’s lazy approach to racial stereotyping –setting a sequence inside a white supremacist headquarters can’t hid the fact the Get Hard doesn’t allow for much racial nuance in how it portrays its non-leading characters, and that the seemingly unconscious racism is used as a crutch instead of wittier material.  While Ferrell and Hart are adequate in their roles, they’re not fed very interesting material and the result feels like a waste of two talented comedians; at best, they rescue a script that would have led to a disaster in the hands of less likable performers.  While not entirely unfunny (thrown enough jokes at the screen and a few are bound to stick), Get Hard feels more juvenile than funny and while you may laugh once or twice, you may not necessarily like yourself for doing so.

  • Big Hero 6 (2014)

    Big Hero 6 (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) Disney Animation Studios have been on a roll ever since Bolt, and while Big Hero 6 is closer to Wreck-It Ralph than Frozen (in target demographics and to-the-moment hipness), it’s still a definite success.  Fit to make most kids dream of becoming an engineer, Big Hero 6 is about a teenager who goes on to have fun adventures with a team of genius-level friends and his own huggable robot called Baymax.  A fizzy mixture of science-fiction imagery, superhero theatrics and young-teen movie conventions (down to the hero being an orphan, aw c’mon Disney!), it’s both fun and heartfelt, colorful and grounded in emotional reality.  The connection with Marvel’s original comic book is kept low-key until the final mid-credit cameo, so there’s no need to feel excluded if you’re not familiar with the source material.  One of the best thing about the film is its San Fransokyo setting, the vivid east/west mash-up city in which everything looks possible.  The animation if state-of-the-art, with eye-popping detail and the layering of textures that distinguishes top-notch efforts from cheaper ones.  Big Hero 6 is, in other words, a pretty good time at the movies, with an inspirational message (go and develop robots!) and enough emotional depth to make things interesting.

  • Doctor Dolittle (1998)

    Doctor Dolittle (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2015) “Eddie Murphy as a doctor who can talk to animals; the animals talk back” is the kind of comedy high-concept that seems hard to mishandle, and yet Doctor Dolittle comes remarkably close to it.  The biggest problem of the script seems to be that it can’t figure out whether it’s meant to be a harmless family comedy, or appeal squarely to the dirty-minded 12 years old boys in the audience.  So it is that aside from a wholesome message about taking care of animals, being unafraid of being oneself and being nice to each other, there’s a plot about hospital corporate takeovers, a substantial number of flatulence jokes and one distressing dog-at-the-veterinarian sequence with more anal penetration references than I’m comfortable with in a family movie.  Fortunately, the film stops far short of meanness; still, inappropriate and tasteless is a good way to describe much of its content.  These flaws would have been forgivable if the film had been witty or amusing … alas, it’s predictable almost from the first few minutes, not overly inventive and so broadly executed as to make caricatures out of everyone.  There are a few moments that actually work just fine, and much of the special effects still impress nearly twenty years later.  Murphy himself comes across well, although this roles clearly shows the road to the increasingly insufferable comic performances he would come to deliver in even worse movies.  Doctor Dolittle should have been quite a bit better; more tasteful, more focused, more interesting and certainly more inventive.  As it stands, it’s a mediocre film with tons of wilfully wasted potential.

  • The Holiday (2006)

    The Holiday (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2015)  Routine romantic comedies are usually best appreciated for their details rather than their familiar plot structure, and so it is that while you can read a synopsis of The Holiday (“two lovelorn women exchange houses for the holidays, finding love in the most unexpected places”) and have a pretty good idea of where the film is headed, but you may not suspect to which extent the film is filled with references to the world of movies.  Cameron Diaz play a movie-trailer editor (the fake for fake movie Deception, with Lindsay Lohan and James Franco, gets the film’s biggest laughs.) and thinks about her life via voice-over narration; Kate Winslet plays a British book editor on holidays in Hollywood, befriending an Oscar-winning screenwriter and getting movies at the video store (a sequence that actually reminded me that I do, on some level, miss video stores)  Some romantic comedy terms are explained, played with and sometimes even adopted wholesale.  Still, there’s a little bit more to The Holiday than movie stuff: The performances are pretty good (with Eli Wallach getting one last great role), the sentiments are heartfelt, the expected scenes happen roughly in the expected order.  In short (or rather; in long, since the film does run a bit too long), it’s a perfectly serviceable romantic comedy, fit to make the holidays feel even more like the holidays. 

  • Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

    Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) It seems amazing that an adventure film spanning several years, multiple countries, splendid mountain vistas and political upheavals would turn out to be so… boring.  A noticeably younger-looking Brad Pitt stars as a mountain adventurer stuck in Nepal during and after World War Two, eventually becoming an advisor to a young Dalai Llama.  Given the Himalayan setting, the scenery is spectacular, with a few mountaineering sequences to making this slightly less dull.  The problems with Seven Years in Tibet are common to a surprising number of adventure movies: It just feels interminable.  While doesn’t fall into the trap of loosely-structured episodes (even resorting to an artificial father-son bit of drama not found in the original book to provide increasing tension), this is a seriously long film that doesn’t go anywhere for a long while.  To the film’s credit, director Jean-Jacques Annaud does present a sympathetic representation of Nepal at a crucial time, and Lhakpa Tsamchoe is a rare example of a Tibetan actress being featured in a big movie.  In-between Pitt and the mountain scenery, Seven Years in Tibet does have a few things going for it.  But it could and should have been just a bit more interesting considering its subject matter.