Kaya Scodelario

  • Crawl (2019)

    Crawl (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) Expectations didn’t run high for creature-feature Crawl, in which Floridians having enough trouble with a hurricane-flooded house also have to deal with alligators moving in. But this is the kind of film where execution can make or break a premise, and in the hands of noted horror auteur Alexandre Aja, the film manages to find an interesting balance between chills and thrills: Aja’s stylish direction goes for suspense whenever it can, but thankfully draws back on the gore and delivers a happy ending of sorts. (Don’t worry, though – the body count of the film is surprisingly high for something taking place in what’s supposed to be an evacuated part of Florida.) The atmosphere of a flooded, rain-battered house is convincing, especially given all of the CGI required for a film shot in Serbian soundstages. Acting-wise, Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper make for an effective daughter-father team, and they’re our anchors in what would otherwise be just gators chomping on supporting characters. It’s not a big or great film, but Crawl manages to hit just the right spot for a competent B-movie.

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

    Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2018) It’s been a frustrating ride on the Pirates of the Caribbean express: While the first film remains slick blockbuster entertainment, the second and third entries in the series quickly became self-indulgent to the point of nearly drowning their considerable assets in too much chaff. Given that the fourth film was surprisingly unremarkable (with surprisingly cheap production values considering its record-breaking budget), who knew what to expect from a fifth film? As it turn out, Dead Men Tell No Tales becomes a bit of a return to form. Never mind that Johnny Depp now plays Jack Sparrow as a buffoon with few of his previous redeeming qualities, or that the action sequences don’t make a whole lot of sense: the fun of the series is back, and the vertiginous set-pieces have a visually imaginative kick to them. Javier Bardem plays a great villain, Geoffrey Rush is back in a reluctantly heroic role, and Kaya Scodelario is not bad as a heroine. Perhaps the worst thing about Dead Men Tell No Tales is the way it suffers from the contemporary tendency of blockbuster movies to over-complicate everything from the visuals to the plotting details, to the point of risking incoherency whenever the slightest detail is out of place. A slightly shorter, substantially cheaper movie would achieve as much, of not even perhaps more. But go tell that to Disney, which is holding on to the series as one of its reliable cash cows. At least the series is now headed up again … although who can really tell how it’s going to be before the end credits of the next film?