Reviews

  • Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

    Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) Despite a languid pace, the original The Exorcist still holds up reasonably well today. The sequel, however, is pure and unmitigated crap. Destroyed by ridiculous matter-of-fact beliefs in psi powers (made even more sad by the age of the movie; how is The X-Files going to sound in twenty years?) and a worship of primitive cultures, the whole is so sleep-inducing that I ended up fast-forwarding most of the middle hour. The climax is laughable in the most inept-movie sense. The result isn’t even worth your time.

  • Enemy Of The State (1998)

    Enemy Of The State (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1998) A paranoid’s wet dream come true. The government can watch you everywhere from satellites! It can destroy your life! It can send hired killers after you! It can steal your blender! Poor Will Smith, unwittingly stuck in the middle of a high-stakes conspiracy… Enemy Of The State is an effective thriller, playing on some very real latent fears and the usual conventions of the genre. Fortunately, Smith and Gene Hackman are great, the story is nicely wrapped up, there are a few high-adrenaline moments and the direction is effective despite an overuse of jerky handheld shot and jump-cuts. A worthwhile usage of your entertainment dollars… even for the few non-conspiracy theorists left among us.

  • Elizabeth (1998)

    Elizabeth (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1998) This film plays loosely with the true (hi)story of England’s foremost queen, but manages to deliver a film that is interesting and well-made. Apt to disappoint historians of the Elizabethan era, Elizabeth contains a surprising amount of sex and violence –teenagers will be titillated. Otherwise, it’s the fabulous performances by Cate Blanchett in the title role that will capture the viewer’s interest. (Sultry French actress Fanny Ardant is also a lot of fun to see in an English movie.) It’s a shame that many moviegoers will miss Elizabeth, since it’s a better film than most of what’s been shown so far in 1998. It did reinforce my already considerably high opinion of the historical character. Worth hunting down in video.

    (Second viewing, On TV, April 2001) Ever read a silent review? As an experiment, I watched this film with the sound off while working on something else. My conclusion? While I can’t comment on the dialogue, Elizabeth remains a film with great visuals and gorgeous cinematography, directed with great skill. Oh, and Cate Blanchett makes a gorgeous Queen Elizabeth. (Have I mentioned I once knew a girl who looked exactly like her. Swoon!) It almost made me want to watch the film again with the sound on.

  • Easy Rider (1969)

    Easy Rider (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) This occasionally shows signs of brilliance, but ultimately fails at even the most basic movie-experience requirement; telling a coherent story. Granted, I am definitely not of the Easy Rider target crowd but still: the drug-inspired meandering of the two loser protagonists are more tedious than interesting and much more boring than insightful. It’s a hard case to decide what’s more funny; the pop-druggie-psychology spouted off by a very youngish Jack Nicholson (mixed with UFO lore), the completely inane New Orleans drug trip or the caricatural rednecks who finally shoot down the two heroes in a moment of motiveless end-of-scriptitude. If Easy Rider is the emblem of an epoch, then this epoch is better off dead.

  • Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1998, 740 pages, C$38.99 hc, ISBN 0-399-14390-4

    Tom Clancy has long been one of my first favourite authors, as far back as I can remember being able to form the concept of “a favourite author”. I recall plunking down a fair amount of change for a (then) complete paperback collection of his novels. (Since then, of course, I’ve discovered other authors even “better” than Clancy, but that’s neither here or now.)

    As might be expected, however, It always seems like the best books are from before you discover the author. Having read Clancy’s first five books in rapid succession, they still form kind of a superior unified work in my mind. As such, each new Clancy book is an anxiously anticipated half-disappointment compared to the classics.

    To that problem, we can add the very worrying trend of seeing the “Tom Clancy” trademark on a variety of inferior products. Since early 1996, Clancy’s name has been associated with inferior ghostwritten adventure novels, a very bad submarine game “novelisation”, many worthy nonfiction books and an array of computer games. We might ask; where are the novels?

    Clancy’s latest “true” book, Rainbow Six, almost straddles the line between novel and marketing product. It certainly didn’t sound good when I heard that a computer game called Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six was being coded at the same time by Clancy’s gaming company, aimed for simultaneous release.

    But Clancy fans can now buy in peace: Rainbow Six is Clancy’s first “real” novel since 1996. The difference is apparent: It’s a fat hardcover book, with the wealth of details, action and overwritten subplots that we’ve come to expect from the techno-thriller master.

    It’s almost a shame that Rainbow Six‘s biggest weakness is its premise: An international team of highly trained covert operatives is formed to battle terrorists. (Sounds like a G.I.Joe cartoon, yet?) At the same time, a band of fanatic environmentalist scientists is developing a virus designed to kill off the entire human race! Egawd! Will the Rainbow team defuse the threat? Duuuuh!

    Well, the good news are that once you’re in the novel, it doesn’t really matter any more. We’re back in the world-famous Clancy prose, which is part clunky, part limpid. As ever, the lack of stylistic touches possesses an undeniable rough elegance. Rainbow Six is also a return to Clancy’s earlier novels in that there are several well-executed action scenes throughout the novel, in opposition to several other recent works (The Sum of All Fears, Executive Orders) where most of the bang was held back until the end. Indeed, Rainbow Six does have something like an anticlimax, or at least a lacklustre finale.

    Be warned, however, that since readers demand big fat Clancy novels, Clancy has obliged and the result, as usual, could have been edited down by as much as twenty-five percent.

    This is not, by the way, a good novel to enter the Clancyverse. Numerous explicit references are made to the events of earlier novels, and newer readers will be frustrated. It can still be read by itself, but shouldn’t. (Clancy’s flagship character, Jack Ryan, is present, but in the background and then only referenced by title rather than name.)

    Rainbow Six does for Special-Forces teams (SWAT, SAS, Delta, SEAL, etc…) what The Hunt for Red October did for submarine crew: It offers a privileged (and, we presume, reasonably exact) glimpse in the lives of some very very special soldiers. After reading Rainbow Six, it’s hard not to trust their real-world expertise at intervening in tense situations.

    Given this, it’s a bit of a shame that Clancy had to resort to such dubious video-game premise to fuel his novel. (Not to mention that the virus thing has been done before… in Clancy’s previous novel!) It seems to me like smaller stakes (like the good action set-pieces in the first half of the novel) would have been amply sufficient… especially given the rather disappointing way the whole plot is defused.

    Clancy fans will love it. Not many non-fans will be converted. The computer game is said to be adequately good. Clancy delivered the goods: Even with every fault it has, Rainbow Six is a good read.

  • The Craft (1996)

    The Craft (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) Rather more pleasant than I had expected. Granted, the first half-hour of this tale of teen witches is long and tedious as the standard oppressed-teens-take-revenge- on-their-oppressors plot is set up and we go through all the expected scenes of outcast-being-laughed-at, babe-being-courted and nasty-people-doing-nasty-things-to-heroine. It’s after that boring setup, however, when things go past the simple revenge fantasy, that things get interesting. Granted, it never quite goes beyond the “okay entertainment” stage, but despite sloppy screenwriting (threads being abandoned in mid-flight, spring-loaded character evolution, one-to-one climax that leaves other characters neglected), the result is more than expected. Special Effects are nice and in-between leads such as Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell and Rachel True, The Craft is always interesting to look at.

  • The Big Lebowski (1998)

    The Big Lebowski (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1998) A typical “noir” plot starring a drug-using low-life unemployed -but cool- loser in the detective role: The Dude. Up to the Coen Brother’s usual standards of general weirdness and narrative drive, The Big Lebowski is hilarious. A great cast of great characters (Julianne Moore’s feminist caricature is almost as funny as bowler “Jesus” or the German nihilists) and a series of barely-related vignettes also helps. Not as coherent as it could have been, but still one pretty good comedy.

    (Second viewing, On VHS, September 2000) One of those rare comedies which appreciates with further viewings. Subtle details pop up, and since the humor is based more on finely-tuned incongruousness than surprising situations, the film is not harmed by knowing what’s coming up. It’s also far easier to see the obvious parallels between the Coen Brother’s script and the usual noir plot template. (Basically, steal an obvious noir plot, drop a pothead slacker in the middle of it and watch how everything is screwed up by the unwilling participant. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s a great literary experiment.) On the other hand, the conclusion isn’t as strong, as it becomes obvious that the film runs an extra ten minutes after everything is wrapped up. Still worth a good look.

  • Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

    Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) Unexplainably, I think that film is weaker than its sequel… but that’s just me. Still, Eddie Murphy is in top form as an unflappable Detroit policeman investigating a murder in sunny California. Watching this movie now is probably even funnier that it was then, given that the sunny-California-cop formula exhibited here has been copied countless times from the serious (Lethal Weapon) to the silly (The Last Action Hero). We get all the clichés. But I still prefer the sequel.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, August 2007) Holding up better than most contemporary releases, this first Eddie Murphy release still has some charm and interest. Though it can’t shake off the legacy of almost twenty five years of increasingly sophisticated Action/Comedy hybrids, this unexpected hit still works reasonably well. Eddie Murphy’s grandstanding can be grating, but the repartee with the other characters can be a hoot. Plus, hey, at least two pieces on the soundtrack have become classic pop music. The DVD edition contains a reasonably informative director’s commentary track, as well as a number of documentaries that rely a bit too much on archived footage.

  • The Hot Zone, Richard Preston

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Anchor, 1995, 422 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-385-47956-5

    It’s invisible. Undetectable. Incurable. It can affect over ninety percent of the world’s population. It eats your insides, liquefying your internal organs. In the final stages, you’re essentially a bag of blood held together by flesh. Near the end, it will make you go in convulsions, sending body fluids everywhere. It rides on the blood, ready to prey on other humans.

    It’s Ebola.

    It’s not every day that you can read a book sporting a blurb in which Stephen King says “One of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.”

    After reading The Hot Zone, you might want to question the value of horror novels. Because The Hot Zone is nonfiction. Ebola is real. It kills and cannot be cured. The human race is singularly helpless before this microscopic predator. Far scarier than a couple of bomb-toting terrorists, vampires or doomsday devices.

    Richard Preston wasn’t exactly a novice when he published The Hot Zone (besides being a regular New Yorker contributor, he had published two other scientific / technical non-fiction books) but this is the book that made him famous. A chilling Ebola outbreak happened shortly after the book’s release and for a few weeks, The Hot Zone went up the charts and into public consciousness. At least one heavily derivative movie (OUTBREAK, 1995) was made. The French translation of The Hot Zone is simply called Ebola. My own paperback copy of The Hot Zone is a fourth printing.

    But beyond its great reputation, The Hot Zone is more than a book that happened to be at the good spot at the good time. Richard Preston has fashioned a good, solid, even gripping account of the virus threat.

    The Hot Zone is divided in four parts.

    The first one describes Ebola, and its initial outbreaks in Africa (Zaire, mainly) and Europe. Preston doesn’t miss the chance to describe extensively the effects of the virus and so we get lovely descriptions like:

    When a virus multiplies in a host, it can saturate the body with virus particles, from the brain to the skin. The military experts then say that the virus has undergone “extreme amplification.” During this process, the body is partly transformed into virus particles. In other words, the body is possessed by a life form that is attempting to convert the host into itself. The end result is a great deal of liquefying flesh mixed with virus, a kind of biological accident.

    After that, The Hot Zone moves to Reston, a suburb of Washington where an Ebola outbreak decimates a monkey house. Parts three and four of the book deal with the growing alarm, and decontamination of the Reston site.

    Part four is fairly unique: Preston packs his travel kit and goes to investigate Kitum Cave, the most likely source of the Ebola virus. He obviously survives to tell the tale, but the effect is delightfully unsettling, boosting both the book’s tension and the author’s credibility.

    The Hot Zone is that rarest of scientific books; A true-life thriller, a compulsively readable account and a lucidly described exposition of a complex subject. It does push the Big Buttons a lot, but with adequate reason to do so.

    The Hot Zone is not only a non-fiction account that will teach you things (with it, you might spot mistakes in OUTBREAK), but a largely-read book that reserves its reputation while at the same time making a substantial point: The world is a lot more dangerous that we complacent, civilized, contemporary humans seem to be ready to believe.

  • Permutation City, Greg Egan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Millennium, 1994 (1998 reprint), 310 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-75281-649-7

    I usually read two books at the same time. One hardcover for reading at home or for where carrying hardcovers around isn’t too much of a problem. At the same time, I usually carry a paperback with me to read on the bus or whenever I find myself with a moment to spare. Given that I’ve been doing this for more that a while (we’re talking half a decade here…), I was convinced that there was scarcely any difference between my perception of a book read on the bus or at home. Looking at the paperback copy of Permutation City on my desk which I’m supposed to review today, I’m not so sure.

    Permutation City is about a lot of things, but it really revolves around the concept that sometime in the future, humans will be able to be “copied” to electronic formats, which then live inside a VR environment somewhere on the Net.

    Bah! Déjà vu! will say some. Already seen. Sawyer did it in the Nebula-Winning The Terminal Experiment.

    Not so fast. Permutation City opens with a copy being activated, realizing that he’s a copy imprisoned in a computer and immediately reaching for the suicide button. Quite a contrast with Sawyer’s “oh yeah, cool!” approach. And, dare I say, somewhat more realistic.

    (Please don’t interpret this as unkind words about The Terminal Experiment which, despite significant flaws, remains of the of best SF books of 1995.)

    As usual, Greg Egan packs idea upon idea and the results is as exhilarating as it’s mind-bending. One can rest assured that every new Egan novel will be cracking with new concepts and nifty setpieces. Like his other novels, it’s a trip, and a heady one. Unfortunately, Permutation CIty suffers from one usual Egan tic, and an unusual one.

    The usual tic is that by the end of the book, all laws are being rewritten, the action is quickly moving on the metaphysical plane and things simply don’t make sense any more. The good news are that Permutation City handles this breakthrough better than either Quarantine or Distress.

    The bad news are that Permutation City seems to suffer from a slower beginning than Egan’s other novels. Despite the gripping opening set-piece described above, the first half of the book settles down in a fairly hum-drum pattern that is either very subtle, or uncharacteristically overwritten. (Or, of a philosophical bent seldom seen around here.) This impression of a novel that should have been tightened remains even after the action starts. (Other nitpick: “baling out”… urgh!)

    Fortunately, the remainder of the novel brings up so many questions that readers are unlikely to feel cheated. Which brings us back to the paperback copy of Permutation City staring at me. I’ll admit that I wasn’t in my usual frame of mind while reading Permutation City (job interviews will do that to you). Who knows whether or not I would have read a hardcover edition with the same attitude? (Philanthropic readers who wish to contribute to this experiment are encouraged to email me…)

    This hardcover/paperback theme turned even stranger if you consider that the hardcover novel I was reading at the time was James L. Halperin’s The First Immortal, a novel about immortality that uses “copies” in what is again a gosh-wow fashion. Egan’s approach, using the usual cautious SF skepticism, does seem considerably more realistic that Halperin’s. It’s probably another element of the considerable different between the two author’s approach: Egan is obviously writing SF shaped by previous SF.

    For whatever reason, then, Permutation City didn’t grip me as strongly as Egan’s other novels. I reserve the privilege to re-read it again in the future and change my mind, while still encouraging everyone to grab whatever Egan they can locate. SF is terribly lucky, as a genre, to be able to claim such an audacious writer in its ranks. Let’s see where Egan goes next.

  • What Dreams May Come (1998)

    What Dreams May Come (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, October 1998) This film will undoubtedly appeal to some. Sugar-sweet moralistic fantasies about the possibility of an afterlife always reach a certain crowd (already satisfied in 1998 with the angel romance City Of Angels) and I suspect that this is where this movie will make most of its money. Me? As a coldly atheistic cynic, I appreciated the clever sights, but thought that it was a pretty good Outer Limits episode bloated to two hours and weighted down by incoherent dialogue and bargain-bin philosophy. Robin Williams is okay, as are Cuba Gooding Jr and Rosalind Chao. Not repulsively bad, or even displeasing, but not really one of the shining movies of the year; even taking “afterlife” movies as a category, Defending Your Life was much better.

  • The First Immortal, James L. Halperin

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1998, 342 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-345-42092-6

    Sometimes, it’s difficult to say what’s advancing faster; science or science-fiction. One of the best examples of this might be the recent interest in immortality. To live forever! To end death! To cast off the chains of predetermined lifespans! Sound interesting, but the wonderful thing is how we’re not only talking about it, but we’re doing so in a perfectly rational way. The underlying question doesn’t seems to be “is it possible?” as much as “when will it happen?”

    James L. Halperin’s second novel The First Immortal has a large canvas (two centuries) and an even larger goal: to be the definitive novel about the coming obsolescence of death. In many ways, it succeeds.

    Faithful readers might remember James Halperin’s first novel, The Truth Machine. An ill-written, but fascinating novel about the development and consequences of a perfect truth machine, it was a splendid example of pure Science Fiction written outside the genre of SF. (Both novel share the same universe, though The First Immortal goes further in the future.)

    The First Immortal is a bit like The Truth Machine on Prozac.

    On one hand, it loses the fantastically unlikely characters of the first volume and tones down most of the embarrassing tendencies of the first volume. The afterword is shorter. It’s better written too, although no one will praise the writing other to say than it’s readable. Halperin exerts more control over the plotting, and the result is a better novel.

    On the other hand, immortality is not exactly a new subject and considerably less so when compared to a perfect truth machine. A lot of the quirks that made The Truth Machine so infuriating at times also gave it its personality: Since these are ironed out, The First Immortal is less memorable than its predecessor. The ludicrous yet exciting main conflict of the first book has here been replaced by a series of believable, but uninvolving mini-crisis. No wonder that the half of the book is so excruciatingly long and the last hundred seems to be all sugar & sweet… (Idle thought: the book probably wouldn’t work half as well with crackerjax writing and characters… or wouldn’t be as accessible—same thing.)

    But considered on its own terms, The First Immortal isn’t bad as it may first seems. Halperin is an enthusiastic optimist (perhaps too much; the resolution of some problems is more formulaic than convincing), and the story shows it, with all its mock-newspaper heading chronicling humankind’s progress over the next hundred years or so. The result is uplifting. The ultimate prize being to live forever, who would dare not being pleased with Halperin’s extrapolations?

    From a scientific standpoint, the novel holds together very well. Halperin is obviously someone who’s as meticulous in his research and he is brilliant in integrating it. There are few discernible flaws in his argumentation (though some will quibble about deadline, psychology and sociology) but -ignoring the fact that the protagonists all seem to be world-leaders in their chosen genres- the scientific breakthroughs all seem plausible, even inevitable. Most extrapolative writers concentrate on a single technology at the expense of all others, but here Halperin makes a credible effort at creating an all-encompassing future.

    The First Immortal isn’t such a good choice for the die-hard SF fans, who are already quite familiar with cryogenics, A.I.s, nanotechnologies, virtual reality, digital personality copies, cloning and the rest. (In the introduction, Halperin caution the reader to be open-minded, a singularly useless caveat in the case of SF readers.) An intriguing use of the book, however, could be to painlessly introduce non-fans to a whole array of genre devices. Paperback stocking stuffers?

    If anything, it might popularize a more hopeful, more optimistic vision of the future. And that would be quite a coup in itself.

    Watch this space for “The First Immortal; a retrospective”, to be uploaded in… oh… January 2098.

  • Sudden Death (1995)

    Sudden Death (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 1998) A Die Hard clone taking place during the last playoff game of the Stanley cup hockey tournament. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, though that doesn’t really help. As a lifelong hockey fan, it’s clear to me that the writer of Sudden Death has no idea of what’s hockey… (“Sudden Death”, “The save of his life!”) …but I digress. Howlers here and there can’t damage the effect of Peter Hyams’ dynamic direction. Good fun for a late-night movie.

  • Speed (1994)

    Speed (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Third viewing, On TV, October 1998) This is still, after several viewings, a devastatingly effective piece of action cinema. Cleverly (if not exactly smartly) written by Graham Yost and marvellously directed by Jan de Bont, Speed understands the dynamics of an action movie, and keeps on delivering what the viewer wants. Great performances by Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock also help. Watch it again; you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

    (Fourth viewing, On DVD, July 2003) Good action films are hard to find, and viewing the best ones can be helpful in understanding why. In this case, Speed shows all the other upstarts how it’s done: With panache, taut tension, perfect understanding of technical aspects, sympathetic characters and a little bit of reality-defying insanity. Even after all the flack they’ve received for other roles, Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are truly a pair of heroes with whom we can relate. Jan de Bont’s direction has never been as good since, and the clean metallic sheen of the whole production gives a mean focus to a film that is all about never going under the limit. It’s not just good: it’s really good at a level that other action films only dream about. If only more filmmakers would study this movie… The “five-star edition” DVD indeed includes everything you’d ever wish to know about the film, from copious amount of production information to a pair of rather entertaining commentaries. The second commentary track is especially entertaining, as writer Graham Yost and producer Mark Gordon take apart the film in far more detail than even the most nit-picky viewers.

  • Soldier (1998)

    Soldier (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, October 1998) I usually have a very high tolerance for bad SF, especially if it can be enjoyed as cheap SF. Soldier started out as a promising prospect: Written by David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner), directed by Paul Anderson (Event Horizon) and starring Kurt Russell, it seemed to be headed for a mix of intelligence, dynamism and coolness. It ends up as a disaster with neither. The script is beyond ordinary, offering no surprises and ever fewer interesting moments. The direction is flat, a shocking thing from Anderson who, despite being a moron (read any interview with the guy) had proved himself to be a visually interesting action director in Mortal Kombat. The only star emerging with his dignity intact is Russell, who despite saying a handful of words (estimates vary between 69 (Russell) and 104 (Edward Johnson-Ott). I counted around 75.) does wonders with what he had. But even that can’t rise above the ludicrousness of the setup (as serious SF, it fails in the first minutes), the cheap-looking sets, the awful touchy-feely song used as montage backdrop near the middle, the boooooring “action” scenes and the simple lack of imagination. I might have accepted this from B-series newcomers with low budgets. But given the talent and money that went into Soldier, the result might be best confined to the garbage planet (*Garbage Planet?*) it’s taking place on.