Dina Meyer

  • Dragonheart (1996)

    Dragonheart (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On TV, January 2020) I first saw Dragonheart in theatres on its opening weekend, and twenty-five years later, this is clearly a different time for movies. Most strikingly, circa-2020 viewers have been blessed by a long list of very convincing CGI characters over the past two decades… no wonder if this early-CGI creation feels creaky. But Dragonheart was a pioneer in that space, and the thrill of seeing an ILM-created dragon emote and speak with Sean Connery’s voice back in 1996 has inevitably abated in 2020. Still, there’s a bit more to Dragonheart than a talking CGI dragon, and the film does manage to establish itself as an average medieval fantastic adventure. Under Rob Cohen’s direction, it does suffer a bit from less-than-convincing battle sequences (clearly, the money went to the CGI dragon), but redeems itself through acceptable comic sequences (including a prolonged standoff between a knight and a dragon) and a sombre finale. While I’d watch Dina Meyer wearing red curls in nearly anything, the film does belong to Dennis Quaid as a knight who’s not above a bit of film-flammery, with some assistance from David Thewlis and Pete Postlethwaite. While Dragonheart doesn’t quite have what it takes to be a good or great movie (it’s a mis-mash of high and low material, especially at the script level—the film’s production history is a horror show of dramatically lowered ambitions and the studio/director is probably to blame) but I can understand its cult popularity even now.

  • Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)

    Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2019) Don’t feel bad if you’re just learning that there’s a fifth Starship Troopers film called Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars—most people don’t even know that there was a second one, or that the second and third ones were low-budget live-action efforts before the fourth and fifth became photorealistic computer-animated movies. With such a messy pedigree, it’s kind of a surprise to find out that this fifth film brings back four of the characters and two of the actors (or at least their voices) from the first film, not to mention the same screenwriter. As a result, Traitor of Mars is an interesting follow-up—very much a follow-up to the fourth film in tone and execution, with links going back to the Verhoeven film through its satire of a militaristic society (“Would you like to know more?”) but also to the Heinlein novel in its uncompromising depiction of armoured-suit combat against the arachnid enemy. Much of the film is incredibly dumb, but at least it’s consistently dumb with the rest of the series so far—we’re not really supposed to believe in hordes of alien spiders taking over planets, or that military infantry would be the best solution to that problem, or people being so stupid as to blindly follow a military dictatorship. But those are the assumptions of the series, and Traitor of Mars does make the most out of them. Playing with science-fiction devices such as terraforming towers, this is a film solely dedicated to its action sequences, and accessorily to some kind of mandarins-eating-each-other political subplots making life more difficult for our fighting heroes. It’s actually fun to see all four lead characters of the first film back for more (even Dina Meyer voicing Dizzy Flores!) and the tone, despite the focus on action, is very similar to the original. What’s new since the fourth instalment, of course, if the photorealistic CGI—Traitor of Mars is similar to such efforts as Starship Troopers: Invasion, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and Resident Evil: Vendetta, all aiming to deliver as convincing a movie as it’s possible to do inside a computer. It falls short in presenting humans, but often succeeds in shots that don’t show human flesh—making it a perfect choice for exo-armour combat. I’m not going to argue that Traitor of Mars is any good a movie—it could go much farther in both the satire and the action, and at significantly less than 90 minutes it’s not trying to be anything much more than another instalment for the fans. Still, it’s not bad and can even present a few good sequences five movies (or three, depending on how you feel about movies 2 and 3) into the series.

  • Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

    Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, November 2017) I first saw Johnny Mnemonic in theatres, on opening week, fully aware of what it meant for the cyberpunk subgenre to have none other than William Gibson scripting a big Hollywood movie. The mid-nineties were a heck of a time for a nerd like me diving deep in the Science Fiction pool, studying computer science and finally meeting like-minded persons. Johnny Mnemonic was a bit silly back then, but it felt like the future. Twenty-two years later … it has aged considerably, to the point that its silliness has been transformed in a patina of endearing retro-futurism. The unquestioned assumptions of cyberpunk are now vastly more entertaining as a fever dream of a future that will never be, than the harbinger of something to come. The movie’s special effects are exceptionally dated, the sets look cheap, the all-dark cinematography is annoying, the story is dull but the pile-up of clichés is now more spectacular than annoying. Then there’s Keanu Reeves, far too wooden to be effective—while I still like his “I want room service!” speech that more reluctant heroes should have, there’s something cruelly accurate in the 1996 jape that the film was unbelievable because it asked viewers to think that Reeves’s brain could hold too much information. Still, despite its faults, the film has now become almost an artistic statement in itself. Mid-nineties hair-down Dina Meyer is terrific (despite playing a watered-down version of Molly Millions), Toronto’s Union Station lobby and Montreal’s Jacques Cartier bridge both show up as settings, and there are short roles for no less than luminaries Henry Rollins and Ice-T. I’d be curious to know what Gibson thinks of it as a retro-futurist piece, especially given that one of his first stories (“The Gernsback Continuum”) tackled that very topic at a different time. But then again, there’s my personal connection to the film and how it touched upon what I was thinking about in the nineties, how I was anticipating the future and who I hung with (down to one of the minor characters looking a lot like a friend of mine.) No matter why, I enjoyed watching Johnny Mnemonic again … even though I still wouldn’t call it a good film.