Johnny Depp

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

    Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2011) Expectations ran high for this spin-off to the swashbuckling action/adventure trilogy of 2003-2007, but few expected this follow-up to be this… dull.  Despite sporting the same screenwriting team than the first films, this fourth entry feels flat, unremarkable and even boring at times.  The scale of everything has been scaled back (there are noticeably fewer special effects set-pieces, and not a single sea battle), while the sense of fun that seemed so contagious in the first two-third of the series seems lessened as well.  The first few scenes show how off-track the film feels, with broad comedy that fails to amuse, familiar hum-drum action beats and incoherent plotting.  Those who couldn’t get enough of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow will reconsider as the series tries to promote him to protagonist status, putting far too much dramatic demands on a trickster/comic foil character.  While neither Depp nor Penelope Cruz as the feisty Angelica do badly, they’re not very well served by a script that feels noticeably uneven, even sloppy to the point of confusing the audience.  The film even feels cheap at times, its climax taking place on an obvious soundstage, three groups clashing without much of a sense of involvement.  There are a number of scenes that work well (the palm tree escape shows flashes of the madcap action sequences that made the first two films of the series so memorable), but they never sustain any kind of narrative energy.  (A sequence set aboard a perilously-perched derelict Spanish galleon ends up noticeably short, to the point of cheating viewers.)  In fact, the surprise about this film is how much intriguing material it squanders without care.  You’d think that it would take work to mess up something involving mermaids, Blackbeard, the Fountain of Life, bottled ships, Keith Richards, Gemma Ward and Judi Dench in a split-second cameo… and yet the film unspools without raising too much excitement.  Even the film’s link to Tim Powers’ fantasy novel On Stranger Tides is slight: the film is “suggested by” the novel, but it seems more like a case of retroactive acknowledgement of the first film’s debt than any correspondence to the written work.  This way, at least, Powers gets plausible deniability when people will ask him about the mess that is the film itself.

  • Rango (2011)

    Rango (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, March 2011) From a distance, Rango feels like a family western: a stranger comes to town, fights evil and drives the bad guys away.  Plot-wise, no need to look for a complex structure or a complicated sequence of twists and turns.  But everything’s in the details and it’s in its execution that Rango becomes interesting to older viewers.  Director Gore Verbinksi has an unusual track record for off-kilter projects, and this one is no exception: Filled with references to other films, torn between comedy and action, often breaking the fourth wall and leaving full place to Johnny Depp’s equally-offbeat personae in a scrawny animated chameleon body, Rango surprises as much as it delights in surrealistic interludes, caricatures (most will recognize Clint Eastwood; nearly as many will catch the quick reference to Depp as Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), throwaway gags and quirky character portraits.  ILM’s first fully-animated film features top-notch animation; it’s a shame, however, that the cinematography and character design are often a bit too busy (and brownish) to be instantly enjoyable.  Still, it’s the film’s constant oddness that makes it a small delight to watch, keeping us alert rather than carried along comfortably by a well-worn plot.  It’s the first film of 2011 that’s not only worth watching, but re-watching a few months later.

  • The Tourist (2010)

    The Tourist (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2010) In retrospect, The Tourist doesn’t look like the kind of film that’s difficult to mess up: Take two hugely popular stars, a picturesque location, and a premise that allows for both a bit of comedy and some action.  Easy!  Yet much of The Tourist plays as an introduction for a movie that never ends up on-screen… and the conclusion seems deliberately engineered to vex anyone still looking for some coherence.  Part of the issue is that the film occasionally presents itself as a thriller when it’s not much more than a romantic comedy and its attempts to play up the thrills are misplaced through a depiction of incompetent police operations, tepid action sequences and half-hearted justifications for the cops and criminals acting as plot drivers.  As a romantic comedy, The Tourist can at least depend on the presence of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, even though only Jolie seems perfectly adapted to her role as an elegant woman with secrets: Depp, on the other hand, seems uncomfortable playing a supposedly normal man thrust in the middle of so many shenanigans.  His specialty as an actor is the oddball character, not the kind of bland romantic lead that The Tourist wants him to play.  What doesn’t help is the unremarkable dialogue: despite the star power of the two leads with Venice in the background, the entire film is barely worth a shrug.  Perhaps worse than the result is the almost-there quality of the film it should have been.  Fans of Depp and/or Jolie may find enough of their favourite to be happy with the results, but anyone wanting something more than celebrity tourism may want to look elsewhere first.

  • Alice in Wonderland (2010)

    Alice in Wonderland (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, March 2010) The good news with Tim Burton is that he is guaranteed to put a vision on screen.  Alas, it may not be the vision you would prefer.  So it is that this loose sequel to the classic Alice in Wonderland is an affront to my aesthetic preferences: At the exception of the oh-so-cute Cheshire Cat, I found the film’s artistic choices ugly.  This is partly intentional; after all, the point of this follow-up is that Wonderland has grown tainted; the magic has fled the land and been replaced by corruption.  {Insert heavy-duty genre fantasy narrative schematics inspired by John Clute here.}  No wonder everything is so repulsive.  The showy use of 3D makes moments of the film look even more incomprehensible and overdone to 2D audiences.  But as hard as it is to ignore Alice in Wonderland’s visuals, the real snore comes from the plot, which feels as Alice filtered through the Lord of the Rings plot template that has informed almost a full decade of genre cinema fantasy by now.  It’s dull, and the overdone shot of the two armies running to clash together has become almost parody.  Alice in Wonderland becomes duller as it goes on, and not even Johnny Depp’s increasingly active Mad Hatter (or Anne Hathaway’s regal presence, for that matter) can do much to redeem the rest of the picture.  It’s a middling fantasy film at best: when “dull” and “ugly” crop up in the same review, there’s little room for favourable quotes.

  • Public Enemies (2009)

    Public Enemies (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theatres, July 2009): Depression-era Chicago, gangster Dillinger, early days of the FBI, Marion Cotillard as a moll, Michael Mann directing: What can possibly go wrong? Plenty of things, actually, starting with Mann’s increasingly ugly fixation for digital filmmaking: Public Enemies often looks cheap and out of control: a night-time shootout looks as if it’s been filmed on video by amateurs, the handheld camera is constantly used without reason, while several other scenes are insufficiently lit. Meanwhile, though, there isn’t much going on in the tangential and confused script: scenes come and go, but there’s little attachment to the characters, what they’re doing or where they’re going. Among other things, the story touches lightly upon Dillinger’s extraordinary popularity at the time, and messes up the chronology for several members of the Dillinger gang. Johnny Depp and Christian Bale star, but neither of them show the skills they’re best known for. The result is an overlong mess, and an uninvolving one… especially given the elements the film could draw upon. This is the third substantially-digital film by Mann, and after Collateral and Miami Vice, it’s clear that he’s getting less and less successful with each of them. What’s going on?

  • Blow (2001)

    Blow (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 2001) I believe that it’s unfair to compare a film directly to another, but Blow tries so hard to be another Goodfellas that -just this time- I won’t be able to contain myself. Unfortunately, putting Blow against Scorsese’s 1990 film is a perfect illustration of the differences between an average hack job and a true masterpiece. Blow at first suffers from acute averageness, as there’s really no reason to get interested in the story of George Jung, an American kid who somehow ends up being one of the biggest drug dealers in the history of the United States. Sure, it’s fun for a while as he collects money, cars and a trophy wife, but like a sugar rush, this soon passes to let way to Jung’s downward spiral and a film that ends up hypocritically asking us to pity the poor, poor drug dealer. It’s a repulsive notion, especially when that period where Jung imported “85% of the cocaine that came into the United States” is quickly glossed over with a funny thirty second clip about storing boxes of money, without any thought to the consequences of that traffic. It gets worse, as the onscreen action becomes more and more subjective, with poor George Jung being set up by police, wife and associates in the type of narrative that blames pretty much everyone but himself. The lack of depth of Penelope Cruz’s character will remind you of “psycho ex-girlfriends” stories. Still, the film is adequate, with some entertaining scenes and a good performance by Paul Reubens, who looks a lot like he did in Mystery Men. Of course, Johnny Depp does nothing less than great work in a role that requires him to look real bad. Still, a disappointment, a customary film and a curious attempt to redeem a character that, despite everything, remains a loser. Compare and contrast to Goodfellas‘ “Paul Hill”, a winner even at the end.