Sophie Turner

  • Dark Phoenix (2019)

    Dark Phoenix (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) The problems with Dark Phoenix are numerous and significant, but most of them stem from one particularly boneheaded decision: Redo the comics’ Dark Phoenix arc, merely thirteen years after it was (badly) done in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Sure, superhero films aren’t known for originality—but this is being insultingly blatant about it, especially since you have the same scribbler, Simon Kinberg, penning the second script. But then further missteps accumulate: the decision to put the dramatic weight of the film on Sophie Turner is baffling considering her limited range, the “X-Women” pandering misandry [2023: A problem specific to Kinberg, as further demonstrated by his work on The 355], the limp action scenes, the way characters act out of character, an irritating pair of lead performances from Turner and Jessica Chastain, the humdrum direction, the fuzzy writing… It’s a surprisingly incompetent film, especially given the large budget it has to play with. Kinberg specifically beclowns himself here—not only is it his second time at bat as screenwriter for that specific story, he also directs and produces meaning that he only has himself to blame for the limp result. It’s not that the film is completely dull, but whatever highlights it has (from the opening shuttle sequence to the train-set final mayhem) are largely bits of special effects rather than character moments in a series that usually succeeded because of strong actors and dramatic highlights. The production history of the film suggests that it could have been worse—after multiple false starts and extensive reshoots to redo the entire third act (i.e.: the train sequence), the film was a box-office bomb that cut short any thoughts of a new trilogy launched by this film. Considering the tangled corporate restructuring that came with Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox (which cut off planned plotlines all over the place), there’s a very good chance that this is the last of the Fox-lineage X-Men movies and if so, it’s a deeply unimpressive finish—all thanks to Kinberg, who (after writing the previous two instalments) turns out to be the final villain of the series.

  • Time Freak (2018)

    Time Freak (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) I didn’t have the best of reaction to Time Freaks’ first act. As a time-travelling romance (a surprisingly robust subgenre) from promising writer-director Andrew Bowler, it features a physics genius inventing a time machine just so that he can go back in time and prevent his girlfriend from dumping him. The time-travelling mechanism isn’t particularly rigorous (sometimes going back in time at the touch of a smartphone app, sometimes requiring an audio-drive machine and for goodness’ sake don’t ask about the details) but it’s not really the point for a film taking a comic approach to the complications offered by time travel in recreating crucial moments of a relationship. My grumpiness at Time Freak’s first act had to do with two remarkably anti-romantic convictions (which you should forgive given that I’m in the anti-romantic phase of my life): The first being that whatever the protagonist achieves will be based on a foundation of lies that will not support a real relationship; and the second being that those two characters have no business being together in the long run. To my relief, the film does address the first point quite thoroughly (it becomes much of the film’s third act) and battered me into acceptance regarding the second point. Asa Butterfield does a fine job portraying a highly intelligent scientist with relationship issues (although the script often doesn’t do him any favours by re-highlight what should be obvious to anyone), while I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I don’t really like Sophie Turner even in a romantic lead role such as here. Skyler Gisondo does rather good work in a more broadly comic supporting role. Time Freak doesn’t always get its tonal shifts correctly, occasionally going from silly humour to romantic drama (and back) in a less than graceful fashion, but there’s an interesting thesis about relationship being developed through its time-travelling shenanigans—and it should be noted that while much of the film is about younger protagonists and their own relationship issues, it becomes more sombre once there’s a time-skip that takes us past college years. I gradually warmed to the film as it kept exploring its own ideas farther and farther, all the way to a conclusion that should satisfy both the cynics and the romantics. As low-budget science-fiction films go, Time Freak is really not bad, and a clear notch above most other straight-to-cable SF movies.