Amber Heard

The Ward (2010)

The Ward (2010)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m sure John Carpenter had a lot of fun coming back to moviemaking in The Ward, after a decade away from feature film directing. On some levels, it does have the hallmarks of classic Carpenter movies: the isolated setting, horror minimalism, subjective levels of reality and potential to simply scare the pants off its audience. Taking place in a 1960s insane asylum, it features a group of girls being picked off by an evil presence, and our heroine trying to avoid being the next one. It’s clearly a horror movie, but it touches upon women-in-prison tropes (I really liked seeing Lyndsy Fonseca in old-school glasses, for instance) and ends on a hallucinatory note. There are clearly flashes of Carpenter doing stuff that he likes: As a veteran director, he knows how to block a scene, use his camera for suspense and lead an atmospheric horror movie. Unfortunately, none of these flashes of interest amount to much of an overall film. The final twist feels overused in a genre that has often used something similar; Amber Heard isn’t that distinctive as a lead actress and much of the film is spent going through the usual cascade of death sequences until the plot gets moving again. The Ward is clearly better than Carpenter’s 2001 Ghosts of Mars, but that’s not much of a recommendation. A decade later, this remains Carpenter’s last work as a director and it ends his career with a half-whimper rather than a bang.

Aquaman (2018)

Aquaman (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) Thankfully, DC is finally getting the hang out of that superhero movie thing after half a dozen attempts to boot up a DCU worth enjoying. Alas, by the time you’re done with Aquaman, there’s so much stuff in that film that you’re likely to feel punch-drunk. Seriously—by the time the film mentions seven realms, some audience members will groan at the thought of having to visit all seven. The immensely colourful atmosphere and cinematography are undeniable boons, but they do contribute to the cognitive overload skirted by the film’s last act. If Aquaman has two secret weapons, they’re actor Jason Momoa, and director James Wan. Momoa has been flirting with superstardom ever since his impressive turn in the first season of Game of Thrones, but he attains his potential here with the kind of performance that his royal character warrants. Meanwhile, Wan uses his experience directing special-effects heavy horror films and one Fast and the Furious instalment to good effect, fluently using CGI and colourful cinematography to make the film’s wild imagined world credible enough to enjoy. Typical to form for superheroes tentpole films, a few name actors can be found in supporting roles, with various degrees of effectiveness. (Amber Heard: No.  Willem Dafoe: Yes!)  It’s all remarkably good considering that previous DC films couldn’t make sense of similar material, but it’s not quite a home run: At 2 hours and 23 minutes, Aquaman would have been better cutting twenty minutes and a few million dollars’ worth from its budget in order to deliver a more focused story and a more visually intelligible cinematography. In a common failure state of films with near-unlimited budgets, there’s so much stuff on screen at any given moment that it eventually gets tiresome. When nothing is held back for the climax, the climax itself feels like more of the same thing. Still, I had a much better time than expected from previous DCU films: Aquaman has more humour, more colour, more likable characters and a globetrotting plot that has far more to show than an expected underwater film would have had. (There’s even a desert sequence.)  Momoa walks away from the film as an authentic megastar with a long future in the DCU, but time will tell if he’ll be able to play an equally regal character in the future. In the meantime, there’s flickers of hope for the DCU in between this and Wonder Woman. Imperfect and uncontrolled in both cases, but a great step up from the dour early films in the series.

3 Days to Kill (2014)

3 Days to Kill (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2014) By now, anything with Luc Besson as a screenwriter should come with its own warning: “Stupid stuff within.”  The problem isn’t that Besson’s name is usually associated with dumb scripts: it’s that the same issues keep coming back: dumb anti-establishment rants, moronic plotting, blatant misogyny and a striking lack of tonal unity that has the films jumping all over the place.  With 3 Days to Kill, writers Besson and Adi Hasak end up reprising the worst aspects of From Paris with Love: no skill in blending comedy with violence, dim-witted characters and plot-lines that would have been laughable thirty years ago.  Here, a CIA agent suffering from a fatal disease is manipulated in executing “one last job” while caring for his estranged daughter.  What follows is an unlikable blend of torture played for laughs, uncomfortable comedy, fish-out-of-water parenting and a portrayal of espionage that makes James Bond movie feel sophisticated.  The film hits its worst moments when it asks us to believe that a character would forget about violent torture in order to help his torturer bond with his daughter… moments after being electrocuted.  Such uneasy blend of jokes in-between deathly serious violence show the tone-deaf sensibilities of either the screenwriters, or fallen-from-grace director McG, whose Charlie’s Angels heydays are nowhere reflected in his recent work –it’s not this or stuff like This Means War that make him look better.  While 3 Days to Kill does briefly come alive during its action sequences (in particular, a chase sequence besides La Seine), much of the film is just inert, flopping aimlessly and failing to get its audience’s sympathy.  Surprisingly enough, Kevin Costner doesn’t emerge too badly from the ongoing train wreck –he’s able to display a certain weary stoicism through it all.  Once really can’t say the same about Amber Heard, playing dress-up as a would-be femme fatale when she’s got the gravitas of half a beach bunny.  (Her character may be badly written, but the way she plays it make it seem even worse.)  It’s refreshing to see Connie Nielsen in a motherly role, but Hailee Steinfeld may want to re-think playing such unlikable brats flouncing without reason.  3 Days to Kill redefines “scattershot” in the way its scenes don’t seem to flow along in the same film, and how it usually privileges the dumb answer to just about any plot question.  The predictable plot twists, stomach-churning “comic” violence really don’t help… but what else have we come to expect from Luc Besson?

The Rum Diary (2011)

The Rum Diary (2011)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theaters, October 2011) It’s a good thing that I’m a certified fan of Hunter S. Thompson’s work, because otherwise I’m sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed The Rum Diary as much.  It’s already a trying experience even for those who have absorbed Thompson’s life and work: Thompson’s bottom-of-the-drawer “first novel” was a triumph of atmosphere over plot, as it followed a young journalist as he made his way throughout 1960s Puerto Rico and lost much of his illusions.  Blending fiction with autobiography, The Rum Diary offered a more melancholic view of Thompson’s early years than you’d expect.  The movie version has a hard time trying to put a plot where the novel doesn’t have one, and the result is a bit of low-key comedy interspaced with more serious plotting about corruption and unbridled development.  Many of the anecdotes are amusing (although it speaks volume about the film’s pacing that the trailer has a far clearer sense of comedy), but the dramatic narrative of The Rum Diary peters off in a “nothing worked out, but we all learned a lot so… to be continued…” fishtail of a conclusion.  The film works best as an affectionate homage to Thompson himself, as it clearly feels like a romanced “birth of an author” narrative: If you don’t know what Thompson would go on to write after his own Puerto Rico transformative experience, then the ending of the film will be more frustrating than anything else.  Fortunately, Johnny Depp is wonderful as a young Thompson (it’s a performance clearly meant to lead into his own work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), while Amber Heard finally makes an impression in a paper-thin role.  As a drama for people who haven’t read Thompson, it’s a hit-and-miss film with a strong Puerto Rican atmosphere… but frankly, this one is for the fans.  And even they may feel that the two-hour film runs a bit long.