Keanu Reeves

  • The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

    The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, December 2021) Is it really a surprise if a Wachowski film ends up being a mixed bag of highs and lows? After all, that’s been the norm for them even since The Matrix — they never quite managed to recapture the blend of elements that made that film such a success, and it’s not The Matrix Resurrections that will break the streak. Let me be clear: The first Matrix film is (now) a classic, and (still) one of my favourites: As such, I could help but be attracted to and apprehensive about the idea of a belated sequel. To its credit, this fourth instalment does grapple with that apprehension: it features a lot of meta-referential material, especially in a first act that seems delighted in rerunning through the first film’s key scenes while joking about how it refers to it. Alas, it doesn’t start the film on the right foot: that first act can be tedious at times, as the references pile up and so many clips from the first films are shown that it creates the impression that this newest take lacks confidence in itself: “See how cool those first movies were? Yeah, we’re in that tradition!”  Except that it is not, at least crucially in the execution. While many will appreciate how Lana Wachowski, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are back, the absence of Bill Pope (cinematography), John Gaeta (Special Effects), Don Davis (score) and Zack Staenberg (editing) is far more noteworthy: The atmosphere of The Matrix series is absent, and what replaces it seems perfunctory most of the time. The action sequences are underwhelming (although they get better toward the end) and there’s nowhere near the degree of visual innovation in the Wachowskis’ previous work. As for the story, things improve after a fan-fiction-worthy first act: That’s when The Matrix Resurrections finally finds its own plot, makes intriguing additions to the canon (well, not all of them — I’m still wondering why Lambert Wilson showed up if it was to be a green-screen special) and engages in a surprisingly romantic arc. It’s the Matrix, but doesn’t much feel like it: in-between the humdrum directing and a script that features very little memorable material, it feels like a disappointment. Of course, the question can be: what was I expecting? One can’t step in the same river twice and all that, but even then, the result seems both ambitious and timid at once. I expect that it will take a while for people to decide whether this is a good film (let alone a fitting follow-up)… and I’ll probably have another look real soon to take it all in again.

    (Second Viewing, YouTube Streaming, December 2021) Whew—I hadn’t revisited a film critically at less than a week’s notice since, well, the last Matrix movie. But a second look at The Matrix Resurrections doesn’t really change my mind — There are some really interesting things in the concepts featured in here that are ill-served by their execution. A fair amount of meta-commentary on the nature of a next-generation sequel is amusing, but there’s a point when the self-reference becomes a dismissive poke at the fans who are the reason why the film was produced. (Similarly, self-awareness can be catnip for detached critics and a really great excuse for anyone arguing in bad faith to say, “If you don’t like it, you’re not smart enough.”)  Similarly, I liked the bold flashforward sixty years after the previous instalments and how some things have evolved, while others have not panned out to the previous generation’s hopes. But that aspect is shoehorned and relegated to supporting material, as the film is first consumed by its self-referentiality and then by a far less cerebral love story that feels stretched to twice the length it really needed. The idea of undermining the idea that Neo is the One to make him part of a pair is intriguing, but it’s completely botched in the execution, with a point made about him being supported by a flying Trinity… only to cut to a scene where the flying thing is a done deal. I certainly haven’t changed my mind about the lacklustre and plodding action sequences that are pale shadows of even the worst moments of the original trilogy. I thought that a lower budget may have been a factor, but then I learned that the film still costs a generous $160M to produce — clearly cost was not the limiting factor here, especially with cheaper CGI now available. Even after a second go-around, I’m still thoroughly mixed on the result, probably tipping toward “disappointed” — The Matrix Resurrections is not terrible, but it certainly causes irritation in many of the unforced choices it makes. Was that the result worth waiting twenty years for? Expectations do count for much.

  • Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2021) Bringing back a movie franchise after a decades-long hiatus is always a risky prospect, no matter how many commercial imperatives and fannish demands justify it. Bill and Ted being such a creation of their circa-1990 era, bringing them back nearly thirty years later -in an environment saturated with nostalgia—seemed wrong. But Bill & Ted Face the Music isn’t like most thirty-year-later remakes — perhaps the single key difference being that the core creative team behind the franchise is also back: crucially screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (who became a celebrity screenwriter in the meantime), but also Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in the two lead roles. This probably explains why the film is so comfortable taking the story thirty years later, with our visibly aged protagonists having daughters and struggling with a life that has not lived up to their youthful expectations. When further time-travelling shenanigans suggest that the fate of the universe rests on a crucial music performance, it’s off to the races in recapturing the charm of the earlier films. It, surprisingly, generally works: There’s a certain wit to the script, some funny takes on time-travel elements, and the two leads recapture their performances with some gusto. Better yet, the film’s secret weapons are Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters, each of them clearly taking after their fathers. Lundy-Paine is particularly amusing channelling Reeves’ specific tics as Ted. The rest of Bill & Ted Face the Music has ups and downs: recruiting past musicians is a good idea, as are the visits to increasingly older and more desperate version of themselves, but some of the other material is more laborious — a subplot involving a terminator robot with serious self-esteem issues sputters as often as it works. Fortunately, it does build to a rather nice conclusion that wraps up Bill and Ted’s story while opening the door just widely enough for the next generation to take over. Not that they have to — sequels aren’t mandatory, after all.

  • Toy Story 4 (2019)

    Toy Story 4 (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney+ Streaming, December 2020) No, we did not need a Toy Story 4. The third one was already a gamble, but it also ended in such a definitive way that any attempt to follow it up would be doomed to disappointment. To be clear, Toy Story 4 is not a failure: too much effort has gone into it from seasoned professionals that it still benefits from Pixar’s usual high polish, incredible animation and storytelling prowess. But even those advantages can’t quite conceal the hollowness at the film’s reason for existing. After the high note of the third film, this one feels like another episode without a point – a detour in a bric-a-brac that makes the series’ internal mythology even more confounding, with scant justification for the hijinks along the way. The “forky” character is a thicket of existential philosophy conundrums by itself that the film isn’t interested in exploring all that deeply, and the ending is worth a shrug more than anything else. The series is close to having nothing else left to say at a higher narrative level, so it’s a relief to find that, on a beat-by-beat level, Toy Story 4 is much better: there are a few fun set-pieces, one pleasantly loopy new character (Keanu Reeves voicing a Canadian stuntman toy), decent dialogue and a continuation of characters introduced in previous instalments. But in the end, the hollowness returns as soon as the end credits are done: this wasn’t much of an essential instalment, and now that we’re apparently going forward with this, what else is going to be added to the series, perhaps forever? (I wouldn’t be opposed to a remaster of the original, though.) I’m sure Pixar will find a way, no matter whether we want it or not.

  • Always Be My Maybe (2019)

    Always Be My Maybe (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2020) Let’s be thankful to Netflix for keeping the flame of romantic comedies lit – and carrying it just a little bit further. Ali Wong and Randall Park both write, produce and star in Always Be My Maybe, a charming romantic comedy that not only tells the story of two lifelong friends reunited for romance, but layers in added dimensions of social commentary and pop-culture humour. The rom-com framing is strong enough, with a newly single restaurateur (Wong) temporarily moving back to her home city of San Francisco and accidentally reuniting with a teenage friend/fling (Park). Will they pick things right back up? Well, first we have to deal with a romantic rival played by… Keanu Reeves, as a warped version of Keanu Reeves – quite a casting coup, and good for two scenes of almost-surreal comedy. The rest of the film gets back to more familiar stomping grounds, with matters of ethnicity, community, friendship and personal growth jockeying for time on the way to a deservedly happy finale. It’s all directed in straightforward but effective fashion by Nahnatchka Khan, who doesn’t reinvent the genre but gives it a very satisfying spin. Always Be My Maybe is the kind of mid-budget film that got lost in the major studios’ quest for billion-dollar blockbusters, and for all of Netflix’s faults, it’s nice of them to spare a few bills for that kind of project.

  • My Own Private Idaho (1991)

    My Own Private Idaho (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, September 2020) I suspect that most circa-2020 viewers will approach My Own Private Idaho because it happens to star young Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix and you know what? That’s a perfectly respectable reason. Phoenix’s talent, taken too soon, is showcased here, and Reeves turns in a looser performance than in many of his other roles. But it’s not the only reason to watch My Own Private Idaho. Some will flock to it because of its strong gay themes at a time where such topics were not yet part of the mainstream; others for watching one of writer-director Gus van Sant’s early efforts; and others for the film’s stylish presentation halfway between realism and dreamlike escapism. It is because of this whole package that My Own Private Idaho remains interesting, even to those who, like me, aren’t particularly interested in either of those specific reasons. It’s a film that doesn’t quite play out like expected. The expressionistic moments are refreshing in the middle of so much grimy meditation on the outcasts of society; and the narrative remains a stream of surprises. While I don’t particularly like My Own Private Idaho (too long, too scattered, too sad), I can certainly respect it, no matter why anyone would want to watch it.

  • A Walk in the Clouds (1995)

    A Walk in the Clouds (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2020) Charming, dull, ordinary, overwrought—all of these things are true about A Walk in the Clouds, a post-WW2 historical romance that travels to the vineyards of California’s Napa Valley for a bit of a romance featuring a lovely Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and… Keanu Reeves?!? Yeah. Director Alfonso Arau manages to make the slight and melodramatic script look better by shooting a film with luminous cinematography to cleanly evoke an idealized portrait of the time, a conclusion that also applies to the actresses and their rather wonderful wardrobe. (Debra Messing is no slouch in a short but thankless role.) Reeves is earnest but too limited for the role—although, like many not-so-good actors, he sounds much better in the French dub. Despite a preposterous ending, A Walk in the Clouds is easy viewing, a bit dull at times but still comfortable material considering that there’s never any doubt as to how it’s all going to be resolved.

  • Chain Reaction (1996)

    Chain Reaction (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On TV, April 2020) There is something almost overwhelmingly 1990s about watching Chain Reaction again, nearly 25 years later. We’ve got young avatars of Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman and Rachel Weisz (plus Fred Ward) running around, unaware that their careers would blossom for another quarter-century. We’ve got the usual conspiracy theory nonsense about alternate energy. We have overblown action sequences, the best and most ludicrous of those being Reeves outrunning a nuclear-grade explosion on a motorcycle. (Alas, it only happens fifteen minutes in, not leaving much for the rest.) Director Andrew Davis’ execution is strictly by the books of 1980s–1990s thrillers and has not unpleasantly aged in the interim. The mid-1990s do feel much nicer now from the vantage point of a global pandemic, although much of this comfort is undercut by the decision to set this film in wintry Chicago and Washington, DC—the visuals are considerably grayer and duller than if the film had been set in a sunnier environment. With a quarter-century’s hindsight, I believe that this is still the only major movie to ever feature the word “sonoluminescence.” Otherwise, this is a familiar thriller-type kind of plot—scientists on the run, evil conspiracy to shut down their project, helicopters and chases and big holes in the ground. The plot makes little sense, as it mixes scientific research with shadowy well-financed research projects, but hey—we’re not here for a treatise on the military-scientific complex as much as guns and explosions. I remember seeing Chain Reaction in the late 1990s and not being overly impressed, and a second viewing now doesn’t change my mind much… although I have to admit that its period details are now settling into a nice little patina.

  • Parenthood (1989)

    Parenthood (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) At first, Parenthood looks like your usual middle-of-the-road Steve Martin comedy, with enough silliness and hijinks to cover up a lack of thematic intentions. Much like Cheaper by the Dozen, in fact. But as Parenthood develops, it gains a significant amount of sentiment and profundity as a multifaceted exploration of parenthood from toddlers to, well, far older kids. There’s quite a bit of Martin silliness (including a rather triumphant sequence as a fake cowboy that finally gets the character to earn a win after a film designed to undercut him at each instance) but it’s all in the service of larger interests. You can see the deeper themes at play in the film’s very entertaining daydream sequences, two of them contrasting extremes of fatherhood success. But it’s not all laughter as the film touches upon some dramatic material even as it’s designed as a comedy—parental anxiety is a real thing. With an ensemble cast but a stronger more interconnected plot than many episodic films, Parenthood steadily gains steam throughout its run. It helps when it knocks holes to deepen its initially-stock characters, such as when a teenage Keanu Reeves delivers sage advice to a young and nearly unrecognizable Joaquin Phoenix. Mary Steenburgen is as lovely as ever, while Dianne West delivers an Oscar-nominated performance. All told, Parenthood delivers more than what you could expect from later-era Steve Martin comedies—it’s occasionally silly for sure, but it does deliver on more nuanced material as well.

  • Much Ado about Nothing (1993)

    Much Ado about Nothing (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) As I’ve mentioned before, I do have one significant failing as a reviewer for some movies: As a Francophone, Shakespearian English (especially when heard rather than read) breaks my brain. Short bursts of it are fine, but I usually can’t maintain my focus very long on classical English, and it eventually exhausts me. This is why you’re unlikely to find very detailed or meaningful reviews of Shakespearian adaptations unless they update the language or offer a strong visual element to go with the dialogue. Or so I thought before doing something very unusual and watching a French-dubbed version of Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing. (When it comes to dubs, I’m an original-version purist.) Suddenly, the language is simply delicious to listen to; the lines are funnier, and I can enjoy it to the end. Of course, it helps that the play, and its filmed adaptation, ranks among the frothiest and funniest of the Bard’s plays. It takes place in a gorgeous Italian estate, where Emma Thompson is cute, a young Kate Beckinsale is cute—in fact, everyone is cute. It’s amusing to see actors such as Michael Keaton, Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves go for classical comedy, and that makes it even funnier in turn. The cinematography is good, the directing is clearly focused on the actors, and the soliloquies—even in dubbed French—are very well done. I’m not enough of a scholar to determine if the French dialogues are original to this adaptation or rely on an older canonical translation (and this is not the kind of information easily obtained), but I suspect that they are original to this dub and they sound good. If I sound unusually enthusiastic about Much Ado about Nothing, it’s largely because it challenges my presumption that Shakespeare is hermetic. I had a good time watching it, and that exceeded all of my expectations.

  • Knock Knock (2015)

    Knock Knock (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) There are stories that men tell each other in order to keep themselves in line. Don’t crush on crazy; don’t crawl inside the bottle; don’t run with criminals; don’t stray outside your marriage; don’t neglect your kids. Elementary life lessons, but worth repeating, often with maximal effect, in order to feel better about an ordinary life. When those morals are handled through genre methods, they become high-impact morality tales. Think Fatal Attraction. And if you give the story to a horror director like Eli Roth … well, you end up with something like Knock Knock, in which a good husband/dad finds himself powerless to resist the advances of two women when they show up at his doorstep when his wife and kids are away. What follows is a pair of steamy sex scenes. But what follows what follows is a merciless takedown of the man’s life using video and social media. The moral of the story here is clear enough: Destroy Facebook. Japes aside, does it work? Well, yes and no. Famously stoic Keanu Reeves is a curious choice as a good husband/dad, given that his innate reserve doesn’t really help him reach the emotional extremes required by the script. On the other hand, Ana de Armas and Lorenza Izzo are good picks as the ruthless temptresses—fortunately enough, since much of the Knock Knock’s credibility (or what passes for it given that it’s a quick-and-dirty exploitation film) depends on them—de Armas is particularly good, which explains why her career has taken off since then. Otherwise, though, the film does feel as if it doesn’t have enough depth to sustain its straightforward warning. It ends limply, in perhaps the tritest possible way. As a horror-erotic take on the home invasion genre, it sits uncomfortably between two very different genre—I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one (or fifteen) XXX-rated parodies focusing on the eroticism, and we’ve already seen an entire pure-horror home invasion subgenre come and go and come again. For Roth, who straddles the line between mainstream and extreme filmmaker, this is curiously tepid stuff—he’s obviously daring enough to feature two very explicit sex scenes, but the rest of the picture goes nowhere. As a result, Knock Knock doesn’t unnerve as much as it annoys, and that’s a fatal flaw in the kind of moral lesson it almost tries to be.

  • 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.

  • John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

    John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video On-Demand, August 2017) The first John Wick was a small surprise: a lean and mean action film the likes of which hadn’t been seen in a while from big studios. It made Keanu Reeves cool again, showed why stunt-minded filmmakers could thrive in an age of CGI and made nearly everyone hungry for more. John Wick 2 arrives with self-awareness of what fans want to see, and the result is obvious from the opening action sequence bringing car stunts to the table. After that, the plot kicks in high gear by delving deeper in the comic-book-inspired mythology of the series, which features a shadowy underworld of professional assassins with hard-coded rules. The plot isn’t complex, but it works and its minimalism narrative leaves enough space for maximalist execution. Once again, the details and small action beats help sell the wild fantasy of the premise, such as pinning down an opponent while reloading, in the same movie where two assassins have a silenced gunfight in the middle of a subway station or a hallucinogenic hall-of-mirror sequence. Reeves is, once again, very good as the titular assassin, trying to get out of the hired-kill life but being drawn back even deeper. There are able supporting turns by Lawrence Fishburne and Ruby Rose. John Wick: Chapter 2 concludes on a note that is either an exhilarating set-up for a third volume, or a realistic acknowledgement that there is no end to violence and no happy ending for the character. Much of the original film’s surprise is gone, but it’s been supplanted with bigger-budget execution and much more of what made the first film so effective. There will be a third movie, and it’s eagerly awaited.

  • Dracula aka Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

    Dracula aka Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2016) My expectations were pleasantly exceeded by this Dracula’s grandiose and overdone take of Bram Stoker’s classic. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the film’s blend of pre-digital special effects, unabashed naughtiness, over-the-top direction (thanks to Francis Ford Coppola), melodramatic acting and scenery-chewing restlessness made it feel remarkably fresh even twenty-five years later. Adapting the epistolary Stoker novel will always be difficult, but Dracula gives it a spirited go, with a blend of various techniques to evoke the letters of the original, operatic visuals, dramatic dialogue and go-for-broke modernity. The special effects are made even better by the lack of a digital safety net, but Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins provide all of the film’s spectacle via consciously overdone acting. The film has far more sex appeal than I’d expected, laying bare the Victorian metaphors and double entendres that were in the novel, and making good use of Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost. (Plus, hey: an early role for Monica Bellucci.) The sour note here remains Keanu Reeves, earnest but sleepwalking though a role that demanded far more energy. Still, this Dracula is a lot of fun in its own devilish way, and it’s this eagerness to be as flamboyant as possible that makes the film still well worth seeing a quarter of a century later.

  • Point Break (1991)

    Point Break (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, May 2016) I must have first watched Point Break on TV sometime during the mid-nineties, but revisiting the film twenty-five years later reveals a stripped-down thriller that has aged into something of an enjoyable period piece. It helps that Kathryn Bigelow’s direction is almost timeless, using both snappy editing and long shots (such as the FBI office scene) to effectively make the most of its moments. The great action sequences complement a serviceable plot template that has been copied a few times—I’m looking at you, The Fast and the Furious. Keanu Reeves is practically iconic as the standoffish Johnny Utah, while Patrick Swayze remains effortlessly cool as the antagonist. There is, as pop culture has noted in the past twenty-five years (hello, Hot Fuzz), a considerable amount of overdone melodrama in the result—but that quality, paradoxically, has helped Point Break remain distinctive even today. The early-nineties details are now charming, while the core of the film’s execution remains just as sharp today as it was then. There’s now a “remake”, but it’s not really essential viewing.

  • Exposed (2016)

    Exposed (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, April 2016) What if you called for a police thriller and a psychological drama showed up? That was my first reaction after seeing the underwhelming Exposed, but after reading up on the film it turns out that the reverse is a pretty good explanation for what actually happened. Originally conceived as “Daughter of God”, a psychological drama with a minor police subplot, Exposed was radically restructured to put emphasis on the police subplot, leaving the rest of the film sticking out incongruously. (The director even took his name off the results.) It shows almost from the first few minutes, which presents what turns out to be a not-particularly objective sequence before the rules of the film have been set. The rest of the film feels a few frames away from a horror film, but turn out to have a rational explanation as long as your definition of “rational” includes hallucinations, twisted psyches and a gritty detour to the lower rungs of what humans are capable of doing to each other. It shouldn’t be surprising if the result ends up being a mess, and not a particularly likable one. The editing drags on, cuts weirdly and doesn’t do itself any favours with a deliberately off-putting mindscape even as viewers are conditioned to expect a straightforward police thriller. It really doesn’t help that Exposed ends abruptly, without tackling any of the consequences of what’s coming to the characters after the movie ends. A few good things do remain in the wreckage: a clean-cut Keanu Reeves isn’t a bad thing to watch (although his character doesn’t get any payoff from the cut-short ending). This is the first time I’ve seen Mira Sorvino show up in a movie in a long time, and the years have been kind to her, enabling her to play a minor role with far more gravitas than she would have been able to do a decade ago. But it’s Ana de Armas who shines in the lead role, doing well with a difficult character. Otherwise, the film just feels odd, and not in a deliberate way. The shift from police investigation to psychological horror could have worked with more forethought (I’m thinking about The Tall Man as an example) but here the film shows clear signs of production improvisation and it doesn’t take a tour through the film’s troubled production history to see the results of such tinkering on-screen.