Trace Sauveur

Freelance Film Journalist and Critic

United States

Hi, I'm Trace. I'm a freelance film critic and entertainment writer based in Atlanta with bylines at Paste Magazine, Awards Watch, /Film, Austin Chronicle, Dread Central, and more. I've covered festivals such as SXSW, Fantastic Fest, and London Film Festival, and reported on breaking news stories in the entertainment industry.

Let me write for you.

[email protected]

Portfolio
AwardsWatch
06/30/2026
'Minions & Monsters' Review: Illumination Says "Bello" and "Banana" to Cinéastes with a Chaotic,...

Few people can remain neutral about the Minions. The blobby, pestering mayhem machines have ruled children's pop-culture entertainment for the better part of fifteen years - their high-pitched gibberish and wanton puerile antics a regular, round-the-clock staple in homes with toddlers; their outsized reactions and foolish expressions a reliable go-to for reaction GIFs in Microsoft...

AwardsWatch
03/31/2026
'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' Review: The Iconic Platforming Plumber is Asphyxiated in an...

There's a sense of resignation that comes with watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. To see the sequel to Illumination's 2023 mega-hit adaptation of Nintendo's landmark platforming series - the start of a new fascination with cinematic ventures for the legendary gaming company - is to accept, within oneself, the limited quality of the franchise-abiding,...

AwardsWatch
03/15/2026
'Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice' Review: BenDavid Grabinski Asks 'What if Wong Kar-Wai Made a...

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is an increasingly rare variety of film, the kind that movie fans keep clamoring for studios to finance and produce. It's a mid-budget, movie-star-and-character-actor-driven high-concept sci-fi action-gangster buddy comedy romance, as reverent of the films it's directly riffing on as it is eager to break them down to...

AwardsWatch
03/10/2026
'Project Hail Mary' Review: Ryan Gosling is Stuck Between a Rocky and a Hard Place in...

Hollywood hasn't had a creative muse like Andy Weir in quite some time. Though not nearly as prolific, his combination of hard-science technical detailing imprinted onto hooky sci-fi concepts custom-built for big-budget film adaptations recalls the illustrious career of Michael Crichton. Weir has a long road ahead before producing source material that yields an adaptation...

AwardsWatch
02/12/2026
Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol on the Unlikely, Legally-Challenged Journey of Getting 'Nirvanna...

https://youtu.be/f4S7kiph8hI Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol desperately want to play the Rivoli in Toronto. That's been the ongoing premise for the two creatives' web series-turned-TV show-turned-movie for twenty years. They inhabit fictionalized versions of themselves as a two-piece "band" who co-op in their downtown Toronto apartment, practicing not-even-half-realized songs and performance pieces, and coming up...

AwardsWatch
02/02/2026
AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 330 - Reviewing Sam Raimi's 'Send Help'

On episode 330 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch contributor Trace Sauveur to discuss the latest film from director Sam Raimi, Send Help. You can listen to The AwardsWatch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more.

SoundCloud
01/25/2026
417 - RINGU (1998) + NOROI: THE CURSE (2005) ft. Trace Sauveur by SLEAZOIDS

Hosts Josh and Jamie and special guest Trace Sauveur discuss videotape J-horror procedurals involving supernatural folklore with a double feature of Hideo Nakata's ghostly slow-burn cursed videotape horror-drama RINGU (1998) and Koji Shiraishi's paranormal, conspiratorial found footage/mockumentary demon-horror film NOROI: THE CURSE (2005).

AwardsWatch
01/21/2026
'Return to Silent Hill' Review: Christophe Gans's Belated Sequel Gets Lost in the Fog of...

Fans of Silent Hill-legendary Japanese game developer Konami's landmark psychological horror series (typically) about the terrors lurking within a quiet, Midwestern American hamlet-have had a good couple of years. Silent Hill f, the first new mainline game in the franchise in 13 years, was released in September 2025 to a largely positive reception.

AwardsWatch
01/13/2026
'28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' Review: Nia DaCosta Charts the Middle Chapter of a UK...

Anyone who saw 28 Years Later would likely pinpoint the last two minutes of the film as a source of serious excitement, bewilderment, or some strange mix of the two. Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland's long-delayed continuation of their watershed zombie apocalypse franchise, which started in 2002, left audiences with a sequel tease...

AwardsWatch
11/24/2025
AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 316 - Reviewing 'Wicked: For Good'

On episode 316 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch contributors Josh Parham and Trace Sauveur to review the latest film from Universal Pictures, Wicked: For Good You can listen to The AwardsWatch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more.

AwardsWatch
10/07/2025
'Tron: Ares' Review: What Kind of Legacy Is This? [C+]

As the world marches ever forward into an AI and virtual reality-driven era-one tech moguls and corporations desperately seek to define on their own terms so civilians experience their particular brand of real-life simulacrum-it's hard not to think a new Tron movie feels rather timely. Then again, with that inevitable trudge of technological progress, Tron...

AwardsWatch
09/11/2025
'Dust Bunny' Review: Bryan Fuller's Hybrid Fantasy-Action-Horror Fable Has an Endearingly...

There's not much talking at the beginning of Dust Bunny. The opening 15 minutes of the long-awaited feature-length film from cult favorite TV writer Bryan Fuller takes strides to establish its singular tone wordlessly, introducing a young girl named Aurora (Sophie Sloan) and establishing her classically childlike situation: she's scared of a monster under her...

AwardsWatch
09/09/2025
'Adulthood' Review: Alex Winter's Suburban Neo-Noir Dark Comedy is Dead on Arrival [C-] TIFF

Alex Winter hasn't directed a narrative feature film since 2015's Smosh: The Movie. In some sense, you could say we haven't gotten a real Alex Winter original narrative movie since his studio-botched 1993 co-directing debut (alongside Tom Stern), Freaked-a wacked-out, surrealist, gross-out body horror comedy with its aesthetic firmly rooted in their 1991 MTV sketch...

AwardsWatch
07/08/2025
'Superman' Review: James Gunn Reinvigorates the DC Hero with a Splashy Comic-Book Verve [B]

In 1978, Richard Donner helped Warner Bros. convince audiences that a man could fly with the Christopher Reeve-starring, groundbreakingly successful Superman. Over the 45-plus years since-with wonky direct sequels and reboots both quasi-faithful and abrasively alienating-the character of Superman has largely failed to soar in quite the same way that Donner and his team accomplished...

AwardsWatch
04/02/2025
'A Minecraft Movie' Review: The Best-Selling Video Game of All Time Becomes Generic Building...

The troubled relationship between cinema and video games-namely, the former's filmic interpretations of the latter-can often be distilled down to an attempt to translate an interactive medium to a purely immersive one. Every video game adaptation is working from a foundation of a property that gives players some semblance of agency, even if they're ultimately...

AwardsWatch
03/11/2025
'40 Acres' Review: A Familiar Post-Apocalypse Setting Gives Way to Socio-Political Critique and...

You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a post-apocalyptic film that doesn't feel cobbled together from a storied history of derivative parts. Stories of loners, families, or factions surviving a world gone uncivilized-searching for any vestiges of life while avoiding hostile survivors and being forced into acts of vicious violence-evoke dozens of familiar properties that define...

AwardsWatch
12/17/2024
'Mufasa: The Lion King' Review: If Lion Cubs Could Talk [D]

On December 5, 2024, film critic Matt Zoller Seitz published a profile feature for Vulture entitled "Moonlight in the Lion's Den." It traces filmmaker Barry Jenkins' decision to pivot from his intimate, adult dramas like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk to his next project for Disney: a multi-million dollar follow-up to 2019's "live-action"...

Awards Watch
11/12/2024
The Parrot Isn't Saying Anything: How the 2024 U.S. Election Has Proven 'Under the Silver Lake'...

Election fraud. A migrant crime wave. Immigrants eating pets. FEMA exploiting hurricane survivors. The Democrats controlling the weather. These are just a few of the widely circulated conspiracy theories that have fueled right-wing discourse surrounding the 2024 election cycle-entirely fabricated narratives that all but assuredly played a hand in the American people welcoming Donald Trump...

The Film Stage
09/26/2024
The Film Stage Show Ep. 549 - Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (with Trace Sauveur)

Welcome to a new episode of The Film Stage Show! Brian Roan and Robyn Bahr are joined by Trace Sauveur to discuss Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, now in theaters. Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor.

AwardsWatch
08/07/2024
'It Ends With Us' Review: Maybe We Should Have Kept Colleen Hoover on BookTok

It was only a matter of time before author du jour Colleen Hoover received the film adaptation treatment of one of her novels. Hoover made a name for herself, mostly among an audience of young girls and women, after her self-published works exploded across BookTok, the literary fandom corner of TikTok that features many content...

Paste Magazine
05/02/2024
Unfrosted Is as Bland as It Sounds

Jerry Seinfeld came out of billionaire comedy retirement to make a crappy Netflix movie about Pop-Tarts. Our Unfrosted review:

Awards Watch
05/01/2024
Interview: Michael Showalter on 'The Idea of You,' His Comfort Zone as a Rom-Com Director, and...

Michael Showalter was a bit of a weirdo comedy maverick during his initial years in entertainment. During his time at NYU, he joined an improv troupe called The New Group, which would later be known as The State and was populated by a bevy of now cult-famous alt comedians which included David Wain, Michael Ian Black, Joe Lo Trugio, Ken Marino, and Thomas Lennon, among others.

Paste Magazine
04/16/2024
Every Dirty Harry Movie, Ranked

Clint Eastwood's wondering if you feel lucky enough to read through our ranking of all the Dirty Harry movies.

Awards Watch
04/08/2024
10 Years Later, Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin' Feels More Timely Than Ever [Retrospective]

Jonathan Glazer seemed like one of the more unlikely Oscar frontrunners for the 2023 awards season. Up until now with The Zone of Interest, an unorthodox drama following the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss’s (Christian Friedel) home life living next to the concentration camp, his movies have followed the model of interpreting the pulp of genre film concepts through the lens of pensive arthouse features. His last film, Under the Skin, was released a decade ago to cult acclaim but no...

Paste Magazine
02/15/2024
Every Bogart and Bacall Movie, Ranked

Classic Hollywood never had another couple like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Here's every Bogart and Bacall movie, ranked:

Paste Magazine
08/04/2023
Every Jaws Movie, Ranked

Steven Spielberg's Jaws is one of the best movies ever, shaping blockbusters forever. But the sequels? Here is every Jaws movie, ranked:

Paste Magazine
06/21/2023
Food Fight: The Combative Relationship at the Heart of the Chain Restaurant Review Podcast Doughboys

“We should have ordered lunch.” “Oh, maybe we can find a dog and give you a pile of dog shit and you can eat that you piece of fucking shit.” This exchange is from the recent 400th episode of Doughboys, the self-described “podcast about chain restaurants.” It’s between the two hosts—the regret over a missed lunch from the eccentric and geeky comedian/writer Nick Wiger (Earth to Ned, Comedy Bang! Bang!), and the suggestion that he eat dog feces from the more rugged and combative...

Paste Magazine
06/21/2023
The Flash Cameos Give In to Superhero Culture’s Most Crass Impulses

Last week, in-theater photos and videos from the climax of The Flash, one of the last vestiges of the DCEU, leaked. The plot of the film is mostly convoluted superhero nonsense but, in essence, the scene in question involves multiple versions of the speedy hero watching awestruck as their actions start causing the different worlds of the DC multiverse to clash and collapse into each other. We are treated to displays of the recognizable faces that inhabit these worlds—specifically, digital...

Paste Magazine
06/16/2023
What Was George Romero Going for with Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead?

Let’s get this out of the way quickly: George Romero’s Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead are not very good films. The final two entries in the zombie auteur’s decades-spanning, intermittent franchise documenting the rise and aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, within distinct contexts and characters from film to film, have largely been disregarded as inferior entries in a once-great series. That’s hard to argue against—Diary and Survival are by and large shoddy, tedious films that lack...

Paste Magazine
06/09/2023
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Kind of Made Me Miss Michael Bay

While watching Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it felt like an apology. Within its flat blockbuster sheen, its seemingly benign but incessant Marvel-type quipping, and its flavorless sequences of CG action, all I could see was a product thought up by a room of suits that saw the criticisms lobbed at the previous mainline Transformers entries—all helmed by Michael Bay in his bad-taste maximalist machismo—and decided they had to have a big realignment....

Austin Chronicle
06/09/2023
Past Lives - Review

Past Lives begins in a bar, with an unseen couple playing a game where they attempt to figure out the relationships of their fellow drinkers. Right now, they’re probing the connections between three people: Nora (Lee), who is nestled between Hae Sung (Yoo) and Arthur (Magaro). Are the Korean Nora and Hae Sung together? Are they tourists here with their white tour guide? Or are Nora and Arthur actually the ones together? Nora looks into the camera knowingly, as if to communicate what the...

Austin Chronicle
11/04/2022
The Social and Personal Turbulence of Armageddon Time

After exploring the jungles of the Amazon in The Lost City of Z and the furthest reaches of outer space in Ad Astra, James Gray was beat. "I was anxious to try and rediscover what it is I loved about cinema, why I even wanted to make a film in the first place," Gray said. "I wanted to make something logistically simple. But that doesn't mean it's simple. I wanted to make something emotional." True to his desire, Gray's new film, Armageddon Time (which screened at Austin Film Festival ahead...

Austin Chronicle
02/26/2021
Austin on TV: The Bizarre Story of Cable Access

Everything changed for documentarian John Spottswood Moore when he learned about The Ol' Bitty Show. Originally from North Carolina but now resident in Austin, Moore was astonished hearing a pair of Austin-native co-workers reminisce that, in the Nineties, they would leave parties specifically to go home and turn on Austin Public Access. "When I was in North Carolina, public access was like church television," Moore explained. "I had no idea that you could actually do something...