Reviews

  • Time for Ilhan (2018)

    Time for Ilhan (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2021) Like many Canadians, I’ve been following Ilhan Omar’s career ever since she got elected to the US Chamber of Representatives in 2018. In an American landscape often divided between the right, far-right and moronic-right, it’s refreshing to see someone espouse values more similar to Canada than the usual American rhetoric. For a representative of a Minnesota district, she’s an incredibly visible politician for at least two reasons: First, as a transformative candidate (“The first Somali-American Muslim woman to be elected for state office in America”), she has become an obsession for the crazy-right wing. For another, she does have a history of making statements that go outside American orthodoxy and can be twisted into something enraging to, again, the crazy-right wing. (In Canada, she would be a fairly average NDP candidate.)  She’s a very interesting figure, and I welcome the thought that she’s going to remain part of the political landscape for a while — although time will tell the kind of legacy she’ll accumulate. In any case, Time for Ilhan takes us back to the 2016 campaign, in which she ran for a state district seat in Minnesota, facing long odds by going against an incumbent of 43 years. Much of filmmaker Norah Shapiro’s film is a pure campaign documentary, deep down in the trenches of local politics as she vies for the primary nomination and relies on a small campaign crew. This is not a documentary about her election to national office in 2018, but it’s a really good insight into her character. She does come across as charismatic, intelligent and empathetic — the obstacles along her way are clearly outlined, so the entire thing becomes an uplifting story of overcoming formidable odds. Some of the politics get rowdy, and even more so after her election as a crazy-right-wing smear campaign marks her as a figure of national interest. The 2016 election obviously has wider resonance considering the outcome of the presidential race, but the film ends with a kaleidoscope of non-traditional candidates running and winning elections, gradually shifting the American political landscape. Barely three years old, the documentary is already being left behind by subsequent history: Since its release, Omar has gone to national office, divorced, remarried for a third time, been the target of racist attacks by a sitting American president and said very many things (not all of them smart) that have led to right-wing outrage, while the third candidate in the 2016 democratic primary that she won later replaced her as state representative. (If you’re feeling that everything is on fast-forward: Yes.)  So do take a few minutes after Time for Ilhan to update yourself on what’s happening with her — we’ll probably get a follow-up documentary at some point.

  • La loi du nord [The Law of the North] (1939)

    La loi du nord [The Law of the North] (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) Following a viewing of Canadian Pacific immediately by a look at La loi du nord was probably a mistake, as it gave me a double dose of Canadian cultural appropriation by two different cultural hegemons: late-1940s Hollywood western clichés in the first case, late-1930s French exoticism in the other. Keep in mind that Canada occupies a strange place in the French-European imagination — often a wild frontier compared to the rigidity of French society, sometimes a gateway to the American continent, except in accented French. French-Europeans still consider French-Americans as cute colonials with a funny patois (I’ll tell you about my Paris trip some other day) and you don’t have to scratch deep to find hilarious misconceptions, such as igloos being a common type of dwelling in Quebec. As bad as those clichés are, they were far worse in the 1930s, and La loi du Nord clearly plays with those ideas. The plot has something to do with a New York businessman murdering his wife’s lover and escaping to the wilds of Canada, but viewers on this side of the Atlantic are likely to be more fascinated by how the country is portrayed by the European filmmakers (director Jacques Feyder being of Belgian origins). Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is that it features no French-Canadian accent and some curiously atypical mountains — something explained by how the film features only European actors… and was shot in Scandinavia. Eh. Plotwise, much of the film serves as a tragic romance between the belle of the film and three different suitors, with a rather tragic ending. Even in dispassionately looking at the film without commentary on Canadian cultural appropriation, it’s really not a great, and probably not even a good film — La loi du Nord tepid, badly justified and even more badly paced. But it’s good for a laugh or two.

  • Canadian Pacific (1949)

    Canadian Pacific (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) The nice thing about the cultural appropriation debate is that unless you’re a white male Los Angeles-based filmmaker (and even then…), I can guarantee you that there’s at least one movie out there that takes your culture and gets it wrong. Even Canadians, so undistinguishable from Hollywood types as to silently invade their ranks, can point to a rather remarkable body of work from major studios treating Canadian history in weird and inappropriate ways. The Rose-Marie films (especially the first one) remain among the worst of those Hollywood-takes-on-Canada films, but Canadian Pacific does have a loopiness of its own. Never an attempt to create a Canadian western, it’s more like the screenwriter got hold of a children’s Canadian history book and thought it would make a different first act to an otherwise unremarkable western. Never mind the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway — an entire set of Canadian values are quickly thrown overboard as our hero (Randolph Scott) shoots down trappers, “Indians” (no relation with First Nations; all relations to Hollywood racist clichés) and fur monopolists and you’ve got the usual Western tropes playing out north of the border. The lower-cost colour cinematography (in Cinecolor, whose investigation will take you down a rabbit hole of alternative colour systems) does better justice to authentic Canadian landscapes than a black-and-white version would have. Alas, by the time the film gets down to business once it’s done explaining how Canadians are so different from Americans, it quickly becomes a very ordinary western, whose lack of qualities makes cultural appropriation even worse. Canadian Pacific may be worth a few laughs, but those laughs quickly stop once it starts portraying First Nations people as cruel and childish — get that out of here. I do believe that there’s a great movie to be made about how Canada united itself through two contiguous steel tracks — but it’s going to be made in Canada, and it will reflect the values of this nation rather than the dubious ones of another.

  • Dream Lover (1986)

    Dream Lover (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) There are times when, as a film’s credits roll, I have to remind myself of why I wanted to watch it in the first place. Was it the premise? The lead actor? Some kind of weird filmographic project I’ve latched on? Not surprisingly, these kinds of questions usually emerge at the end of a very specific category of bad movies — those so insignificant that their reason for existing is unclear. In Dream Lover’s case, the end credits answered my question — this is a film from well-regarded Alan J. Pakula, whose 1970s paranoia trilogy (Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men) remains a classic. But while Pakula scored a few hits through a nearly thirty-year career as a director, his filmography is not consistent, and Dream Lover is probably going to end up in his lowest tier by the time I’ll be done with his filmography. As suggested by the title, this is a film that deals heavily in dreams as plot devices, which (to seasoned filmgoers) means that it’s not going to make a single shred of sense. Indeed, as our heroine dreams of killing someone and being abused, the film goes so often for shocking dream sequences that viewer interest disappears maybe a third of the way through: when anything and everything can happen, when dubious pseudo-psychiatry justifications are used instead of narrative logic, Dream Lover becomes more grating and overlong even at 104 minutes. The script was written by the film’s producer, which is seldom good news — without narrative oversight, it careens from one fantasy sequence to another. I’m not fundamentally opposed to dreamlike films — I mean, there’s Inception and Dreamscape and much smaller films like the audacious (if not entirely successful) Canadian title Come True. But those better movies have some energy, wit and imagery to them, and Dream Lover doesn’t. It’s just one thing after another until we’re done, and very little of it sticks despite the potential of the premise. It comes across as substandard de Palma except without, well, anything that made de Palma so revered. On the upside, there’s now one less Pakula film on my list of films to watch, although if the remaining ones are all at the same level, I’m not going to have a good time.

  • Cause for Alarm! (1951)

    Cause for Alarm! (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) You have to have some appreciation for films that have the guts to pick a title like Cause for Alarm! complete with an exclamation point. A plot summary is almost useless: who can resist finding out what kind of title this is? Well, it turns out that the film is a bit like the title — unusual, flashy and a bit nonsensical in its hyperactivity. Often hailed as a film noir, it nonetheless features a narrative that takes place over the course of one beautiful sunny day in suburban Southern California. There’s a catch, obviously:  A death, and a survivor frantically trying to absolve herself. The twisted tale gets going when the heroine’s bedridden husband writes a fanciful incriminating tale and gets her to mail it before inconveniently dropping dead from a heart attack. What follows is a suburban race against time, as she frantically tries to get the letter back (the postman won’t have any of it — sacred duty to the mail, etc.) while her crazy deceased husband starts decomposing in the bedroom. It’s a bit silly (which the comic punchline of the film highlights), a bit timid (hinting but not delivering what, in a modern film, would be a consummated adultery subplot) and a bit too short to surprise at a mere 74 minutes. Reportedly shot quickly and efficiently in an attempt to rival the then-ascendant TV drama format, Cause for Alarm does, at times, feel like a TV episode writ large, with subplots distracting from a rather efficient suburban suspense premise. But it still works, and much of that effectiveness can be traced back to Loretta Young in the lead role. She looks amazingly beautiful here in long dark curly hair (a classic case of an actress aging gracefully if you compare it to earlier roles), and there’s a fascinating blend of repressed panic at play here, as she tries to keep up appearances even as there’s a dead husband elsewhere in the house and she must stop that letter from being sent. The sunny suburban setting does project an ironic counterpoint to the mounting darkness of the story, making the film still distinctive even today. Cause for Alarm may not be among the first choices for classic film noir, but it’s still an intriguing thriller that is sufficiently off-the-wall to remain interesting.

  • Sugar Daddy (2020)

    Sugar Daddy (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) Even the dullest viewer will eventually figure out that Sugar Daddy is a vanity project for multitalented musician-actress Kelly McCormack, who wrote, produced and stars. When she’s not in the middle of the film’s scenes, it’s because the narrative stops dead in its track to deliver musical interludes that reinforce how other characters talk about her protagonist as a musical genius. But as with some other vanity projects, McCormack doesn’t self-insert as a flawless character. In fact, her protagonist is so flawed that she drags the film down with her: sullen, prickly, joyless, with such poor social graces that she turns to escorting older men when she gets fired from a last-chance job. (Somehow, her clients are charmed by her irritating bluntness — another mark of a vanity project.)  She sexually assaults her roommate at one point, hurls abuse at her sister for daring to sleep with that roommate… and yet somehow is supposed to be the one we cheer for. There are high points to the film, but you have to wait for them: Colm Feore is terrific as an older man seeking company, while the film’s high point is probably a frank discussion examining various perspectives on young women escorting older men (even in a non-sexual way). There’s some wit in Sugar Daddy, but it’s not carried through the rest of this singularly disappointing film. I strongly suspect that I’m the wrong audience for it, but that doesn’t excuse its missteps along the way.

  • Four Christmases (2008)

    Four Christmases (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2021) A while back, I made a list of the 1000 top-grossing movies of all time (adjusted for inflation) and I was a bit surprised to see what I’d missed even as a big Hollywood kind of viewer. While I scored an impressive percentage of those films seen (96% of the entire top-1000, 98.5% of the top-grossers since 2000), my recent misses usually were kids’ movies (which make bank but don’t get any critical attention, nor hold up all that well)… and one lone Christmas film: Four Christmases. It’s not all that surprising to find out that the film was an unseen box-office success: It’s a product of the Hollywood family holiday film production line, which means that it’s designed to pack audiences in the eight-week holiday release window and be forgotten the other ten months of the year. Back in 2008, it was a box-office success. Hard for it to be otherwise, considering that it features comedy fixtures Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as a high-flying couple abruptly forced to spend their holidays attending no less than four Christmases (one for each of their divorced parents). You can see the structure of the film hammered in front of you: Introducing the lead couple, then creating escalating comic hijinks in four different situations and family dynamics, then resolving the various conflicts in time for a happy ending. Having a strong supporting cast means an opportunity to cast known actors in smaller, wilder roles—which gets us notables such as Robert Duvall, Jon Favreau, Mary Steenburgen, Tim McGraw, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Voight and Sissy Spacek. But now that we’ve spent so much time talking about commercial intentions, structure and casting in an attempt to talk about the film’s effectiveness, let’s admit that the results are not up to even this most basic premise. Oh, it’s fitfully entertaining, with Vaughn and Witherspoon lending some of their accumulated comic goodwill to the results. Executed up to the standards of the Hollywood factory, it manages to create a watchable package out of a silly premise and misguided moments. But there’s a good reason why Four Christmases made money upon release and then failed to make a mark — it’s the kind of product that sells well to families looking for a movie escape during the holidays, but doesn’t interest anyone else after that.

  • Creature aka Titan Find (1985)

    Creature aka Titan Find (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2021) I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen Creature as a teenager: There’s something very familiar about its ending, in which the protagonist and two attractive women return home to Earth in a capsule during a weeks-long trip—with the film practically winking at the audience, “guess what they’re going to do during that time?”  Or I may have let my hyper-libidinous teenage imagination run away with the situation. There’s no way to be sure, not with the incredibly generic narrative that the film rips off from Alien. Once more, a spaceborne crew discovers an alien creature and gets slaughtered and you don’t really need more details than that, right? There are plenty of goop and black chitin and spikes and egg-laying parasites to go around, but the film itself is incredibly familiar. There’s probably a completely terrible movie marathon to be made from Alien clones (starting with Galaxy of Terror, then on to a few others), but the shocking thing is that Creature is probably among the best or rather the least awful of them. There’s some science-fictional awareness in the script (notably in referencing the classic The Creature from Outer Space), none other than Klaus Kinski drops by to chew some scenery worse than the alien, and the special effects are not that bad. (Ironically enough, some of the SFX crew would then go on to work on Aliens.)  It’s not much, but considering the abysmal quality of the subgenre, Creature is already far ahead of the pack. If you’re really digging for compliments, let’s just say that there’s a pleasant fuzziness to the early 1980s low-budget look and let’s leave it at that. Amusingly, it seems to be in the public domain, so there’s really no way to stop you from watching it.

  • The Tea Explorer (2017)

    The Tea Explorer (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2021) It’s fun to see someone nerding out in depth about a familiar but deep topic, and that’s exactly what Manotick-born explorer Jeff Fuchs does with tea during The Tea Explorer. The first part of the film takes us to China, where Fuchs describes the incredibly sophisticated tea culture over there (even though it’s currently being threatened by the rise of coffee as a favoured drink for young people). If you thought you knew about tea… you have a lot to learn, because this is a millennia-old culture echoing through today, and what Westerners think of as tea is, we’re told barely scratching the surface of what true connoisseurs know about the beverage. Fuchs treats the matter with enthusiasm and reverence, and it’s infectious. But the film’s true core comes in the second section, as Fuchs and a filmmaking crew led by writer-director-producer Andrew Gregg undertake a very long hike through one of the historical tea trading routes, walking through perilous mountains and crossing the territory of two dozen ethnic groups on the Tea Horse Road in order to mimic the way tea was traded for 1,300 years. Great landscapes are almost de rigueur for such a trek, and The Tea Explorer amply delivers. Among the film’s best moments is a walk through a tea tree orchard — taking us to the roots of something many of us take for granted. The key to a documentary on a niche topic is often the enthusiasm of the one telling us about it, and Fuchs makes a great host — friendly, knowledgeable and personable. Even if you’re not a tea drinker, there’s a lot to be fascinated about in The Tea Explorer.

  • The Final (2010)

    The Final (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2021) As I grow older, I have noticed that I’m increasingly liable to assess films from a moralistic perspective, especially in the case of horror films. I can give an easy pass on good-natured comedies featuring career criminals, but the more a horror film becomes nihilistic and gory, the more I will openly question why it exists. More horror films at least have the basics of a morality play — killers get killed, bad people get punished, plucky heroines survive. And then there’s tripe like The Final, which seems to be running on horror moviemaking autopilot without first stopping to check the basis of a narrative. Let’s recap for those lucky enough to not have seen the film: The Final opens on mild bullying of the “outcasts” (most of whom would be completely at ease in a normal high school) by “the populars.”  But if you’re expecting this to go the route of Carrie or even Tamara (which, as dull as it was, actually understood the fundamentals of a narrative) with extreme torment being met by revenge, you’re in for an unpleasant shock as the outcasts drug, bind, terrorize and torture the populars. Much of the film is spent in a haze of confusion, as the nominal heroes behave as psycho villains (to the point of gunning down one of their own), while the nominal victims are still reprehensible to the point of not caring for them. While The Final does try to have some kind of character with a neutral alignment (swept with the populars despite not being a bully and then escaping to get help), his subplot quickly degenerates into a quasi-comic sideshow that doesn’t bring much to the film. I’m not saying that The Final’s premise is hopeless —I can see several ways in which “bullied become the bullies” is an entirely workable premise, even working within the constrains of such an artificial distinction. But The Final is so terrible at execution that any possible improvement would require far more wit that the script or director Joey Stewart can bring to the table. You’ll have a hard time finding a film as confused as The Final — it simply leaves an unpleasant impression that the filmmakers are similarly morally confused and that the film is a sociopathic reflection of their lack of moral compass.

  • Hollywood or Bust (1956)

    Hollywood or Bust (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) The Martin and Lewis comedy duo may have been legendary during the ten years it ran, but today is usually a footnote to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’ later solo careers. Hollywood or Bust came at the very end of their decade-long partnership, past the point when Martin was itching to get out of their contract considering that Lewis was getting all of the attention as the more overly comic half of the pair. That pressure is clearly at play here, as the film features Martin as a fast-talking hustler who is forced to partner with nerdy Lewis when they jointly win a car and decide to head southwest to Los Angeles. There are a few obvious resonances with the later Rain Man, but much of Hollywood or Bust is self-obviously about seeing Martin as the smooth talker and having to real with the insufferable Lewis along the way (and his big dog, because big dogs are comedy). There are plenty of period references for those well-versed in the period (including some worshipful shots of Anita Ekberg) and perhaps the best feature of the film is the capture (in colour!) of what a country-spanning road trip could mean before the rise of affordable commercial aviation. The gags are all over the place — if you’re the kind of person who laughs at Jerry Lewis antics, then the film will go over much better than otherwise. I liked it well enough (especially as the film reaches Hollywood and reaches into self-referential gags on the Paramount studio lot), but part of it is seeing earlier incarnations of familiar actors known for subsequent roads. You can certainly see echoes of Matt Helm and the Buddy Love here — although now that I know that Hollywood or Bust was made during a period of considerable tension between Martin and Lewis, I’m curious to see them at their best.

  • Toys of Terror (2020)

    Toys of Terror (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) One of the differences between a successful film and one that doesn’t meet its objectives is unity of tone, or rather the ability to make it look as if something produced over multiple months involving a crew of hundreds can carry a singular, unified creative vision. Most films that make it to a wide audience manage the trick, although not all of them so successfully. And then there’s Toys of Terror, which stumbles on its own blend of tones, makes baffling creative decisions and never quite manages to get out of the humdrum goals it sets for itself. The discomfort starts early on, with a very conventional opening that has us stuck with a reassembled family as they head to an isolated manor for Christmas, grumbling all the way. We eventually understand that the manor is the family’s Hail Mary shot at a payoff as long as they can flip the ramshackle mansion into something worth selling. Alas, there’s a rather vexing obstacle in the form of evil toys lurking in the house, eventually wreaking all kinds of havoc. It’s not a promising premise, and director Nicholas Verso’s execution is lacking in many ways — first with made-for-TV dialogue and characters, then with tepid pacing. I like Kyana Teresa and Verity Marks, for instance, but they don’t have much to play with (so to speak). But Toys of Terror gets much, much worse once the toys make their introduction, because they’re portrayed in what looks like stop-motion animation, which only reinforces the unreality of the execution, constantly punching holes in the film’s already-tattered ability to suspend our disbelief. But the nail in the coffin is a script that doesn’t quite figure out whether it wants to be a horror film or a comedy — the horror is tepid (the family even survives, although the film’s classicism is shown in how the hired help doesn’t) but the humour is even less effective. The film is billed as “comedy” in the TV guide, which is a misrepresentation bordering on lies. Unfortunately, it’s hard to call it a horror film either — Toys of Terror simply doesn’t work, no matter which side of the aisle it plays. It’s actually rarer than we think to see a film like this screw up so completely at such a basic level — it’s almost interesting to see it happen.

  • Freaky (2020)

    Freaky (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) Considering my overall loathing of slasher movies, I approached Freaky with reluctance. A body-switching horror/comedy in which a young woman switches bodies with a serial killer? Eh… But once it gets going, Freaky gets more interesting than I expected. Much of the film’s success goes to a smart script, decent direction and excellent casting. This is not the first movie to play off Vince Vaughn’s size, but few have done it so well, and none has even made good use of both his potential for intimidation and his gift for comedy — by the time he plays a cheerleader in a massive body (which is most of the film — Freaky doesn’t spend all that much time with him as a serial killer), we get some unusual acting. This also goes for Kathryn Newton, playing a bulky man learning how to use a young teenager’s body. (The film’s much-better original title, Freaky Friday the 13th, sums up much of its premise.)  The high school setting is almost used in interesting ways, with the script taking occasional pokes at the usual clichés. Freaky is also interesting that it is (one of?) the first body-switching film in an age of greater transgender acceptance, and that shows up in a few scenes that would not have been played the same way ten years ago. Some decent dialogues and characterization wrap it up (even if the camp gay character is a bit on-the-nose at first), although that’s not so much of a surprise coming from writer-director Christopher Landon, who seems to be carving a niche in spinning familiar premises into horror after the two Happy Death Day films. Where I reach my limit for my appreciation of Freaky is the choice to go equally hard on horror as comedy — there is a lot of gore here, and it does get in the way of enjoying the film as a romp. It also takes up one slasher cliché too many in adding a redundant climax-after-the-climax. But then again, you’d suspect a body-switching movie reviewer if I didn’t end up taking a few potshots at slashers in a slasher review.

  • My Salinger Year (2020)

    My Salinger Year (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) While the contemporary filmmaking landscape is flirting with post-literacy (at least at the top of the box-office), we have recently seen a vigorous subgenre of dramas set in the literary world — I’m thinking of (among others) Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Genius, Trumbo, The End of the Tour, Tolkien, Wild Nights with Emily — and that’s only between 2015 and 2020. We can now add My Salinger Year to this boiling pot — an adaptation of a memoir from a young woman who momentarily became an administrative assistant in the agency representing Salinger, and who witnessed first-hand both the impact of the famously reclusive writer, but also the personality of the agency president in dealing with a client like Salinger. My Salinger Year is a modest Canadian production from writer-director Philippe Falardeau, but it clearly follows the precepts of Hollywood screenwriting: it’s about its main character’s voyage of self-discovery and only tangentially about Salinger. The look at the inner working of a creative agency is interesting but clearly subordinated to the requirements of filmed drama. Fortunately, a pair of good performances are at the heart of the film: Margaret Qualley as the young writer looking for a job and the courage to pursue her dreams, and Sigourney Weaver in fine form as the brassy agency owner who ends up teaching her many lessons. Salinger is a shadow here — often a voice, sometimes a silhouette. It’s all a bit mechanical, not really surprising, but still effective. The mid-1990s setting leads to a few cheap technology jokes, but the film itself does have a timeless quality. It makes for entertaining viewing, with additional bonus points if, like me, you’re invested in films about writers. The only problem? My Salinger Year is, like its title, something that passes and fades from memory.

  • Speed of Life (2019)

    Speed of Life (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) As someone who spent a lot of time reading prose Science Fiction, and who had a strong preference for scientifically plausible SF (save for an FTL handwave or two), I always get curiously annoyed by science fiction film that take a loose and fuzzy approach to their imaginary devices. Sure, I’ll allow that Speed of Life, which riffs off David Bowie themes in a way that’s closer to fantasy than SF, is not meant to be rigorous or even rational. It starts with an argument between an ill-matched couple, which gets interrupted mid-stream by the man falling into a wormhole that just opens in their living room. Fast-forwarding thirty years later, the woman (who’s about to flee the US for Canada due to restrictions on what 60+ years old can do) sees her life change when the wormhole re-opens and the man walks out, not understanding what’s happening. That, by itself, is a silly but workable Science Fictional premise, especially as the characters (and those around them) struggle with the consequences of having a man out of time in their midst, and how relationships are altered by this intrusion. Speed of Life’s willingness to present a future not unlike the present is blunt and not really sensical (has no one noticed that 60+ years old vote a lot?) but it’s there and tips the film toward genre-based assessments. There are a few good moments along the way: Ann Dowd is rather good as the older woman who sees a past love re-emerge into her life, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Vella Lovell in other films. Speed of Life occasionally scores good character-based moments, but it gets increasingly ludicrous and unfulfilling the longer it goes on. By the time the characters hop in time-travelling wormholes at will, the shaky rigour of the premise is completely shot and anything can happen — limiting the consequences of the choices. I also kept waiting for the film to at least acknowledge how the woman’s memory of the relationship was belied by what we saw (anyone witnessing that opening argument would think that a breakup was the only outcome), but that’s a topic that Speed of Life seems unwilling to confront.   In the end, a mildly intriguing opening ends up deflating to a big blob of incoherence and missed opportunities. While I like that writer-director Liz Manashil took Bowie’s death personally enough to create a film about it, the result stops well short of offering satisfaction, and feels undercooked at 76 minutes.