Hayden Christensen

  • Little Italy (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) As far as food-based romantic comedies go, Little Italy shouldn’t be mistaken for the lower-grade stuff made for TV – it’s not great art, but’s a bit spicier, more ambitious and more successful than its Hallmark channel equivalents. The increased budget shows, both in narrative structure (complete with an opening sequence presenting our protagonist as kids), the pedigree of the director (Donald Petrie, who has a few big-budgeted romantic comedies on his filmography) and in the grade of actors: Hayden Christensen, Emma Roberts and Danny Aiello aren’t the biggest stars around, but they are recognizable name actors, and they help make the film just that much better. (It’s also rated R for some language and racy content – a significant difference!)  Set in Toronto’s Little Italy, the film follows a young woman as she comes back from a culinary apprenticeship in London and rediscovers what happened to the neighbourhood during her years away: A feud has split the local pizzeria scene, her best friend as a kid has become an attractive man. The rest of Little Italy is familiar (all the way to, yes, a chase to the airport). But it’s the execution that makes it likable, whether it’s some saucy dialogue, likable character moments or the immersion in Toronto’s colourful multicultural matrix – even if the film doesn’t bother hiding its cultural stereotypes. It’s not much (and looking at the scathing reviews earned by the film, it’s clear that critics were comparing it to mainstream fare rather than the made-for-TV romantic comedies) but there’s a quasi-nostalgic throwback to Little Italy, which feels as if it could have been made ten or fifteen years earlier. I don’t necessarily think it’s that great, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

  • Awake (2007)

    Awake (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, December 2020) The hook to Awake is as terrifying as it is simple: What if, during open-heart surgery, you remained awake and heard… the doctor plotting to kill you? Of course, getting to that point requires a few specific circumstances that the film is happy to set up: Young billionaire, hot girlfriend, heart-surgeon friend and domineering mother – all the ingredients for a wild thriller. To its credit, Awake understands that it’s completely preposterous, and goes even further into the madness: not content with having the character awake during his own open-heart surgery, it goes for astral projection and lets him roam the corridors of the hospital during the surgery, free to collect the clues that will explain what’s going on. Then things get kicked up another melodramatic notch, as some people realize what is going on and try to save the billionaire from a murderously conceived operation. Awake ends far closer to fantasy than to medical thriller, but it’s not a terrible ride after all. Sure, there are plenty of plot contrivances and slack moments and some annoying mid-2000s directorial tricks. But it keeps viewers’ attention throughout, and can benefit from an interesting cast, whether it’s Hayden Christensen as a billionaire, Jessica Alba as his new wife, Lena Olin as a mother more complicated than at first glance, or Terrence Howard as a heart surgeon. Awake is not that good of a movie — but it’s fun, and I’ve seen far worse mediocre ones.

  • Shattered Glass (2003)

    Shattered Glass (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2016) The real story of Stephen Glass is improbable to the point of being unbelievable: A young reporter for a well-respected publication, boldly manufacturing stories and passing them up as facts. Yet it happened, and Shattered Glass provides a welcome sense of outrage about it all. Did it portend a media ecosystem in which truth isn’t quite as important as click-through? As for the film itself, it’s a quiet, procedural drama that thankfully delves deep into the minutia of magazine reporting and fact-checking … if only to show how Glass consciously gamed the system and faked his sources to the point of creating fake web sites and enlisting confederates to answer the phone. The mid-nineties are slowly accumulating a nostalgic patina. Perhaps inevitably, the character of Stephen Glass himself is obnoxious to the point of being detestable, transparently trying to ingratiate himself while covering his track. It’s probably a compliment to say that I profoundly hated Hayden Christensen’s performance. The rest of the characters are far more morally admirable, and a few surprise appearances spice up the film: Peter Sarsgaard is likable as an ambitious editor who is forced to confront the monster he has enabled, while Steve Zahn, Hank Azaria and Rosario Dawson show up as secondary players. I’m not particularly fond of the ironic framing device of having Glass’s character speak to a high school class about the ethics of journalism, but the rest of the film has a good forward momentum, especially considering the sometimes-abstract subject nature. It helps that the film seems reasonably true to the facts. At a time when solid journalism is under fire, it’s heartening to see movies such as Shattered Glass and people such as writer/director Billy Ray grapple with some of its core tenets, and how good people have to take action to drive away the bad.