Month: August 2019

The Racket (1928)

The Racket (1928)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) One of the things that has me most amazed as I explore movie history is the privileged position that we modern viewers enjoy over previous generations, even generations that were much closer to the older movies being watched. Often, some of the best-regarded films of previous decades were lost or went unseen for decades before being rediscovered much later. Sometimes, the continued existence of a film relies on a very thin thread. One of those rediscovered films is The Racket—not an insignificant title, considering that it was produced by mogul Howard Hughes and was nominated for the first-ever Academy Awards. And yet the film was lost for decades until a single copy was posthumously rediscovered in Hughes’s archives. So don’t complain when you see that the film as shown on TV and digital streaming has unsightly scratches—those are from the sole surviving copy of the film, the eye of the needle from which all digital copies have now been made. Those considerations aside, The Racket is quietly fascinating in its own way, given how it’s a gangster film from before the gangster film era—written and produced during prohibition, it predates many of the foundational gangster epics of the early 1930s, and yet tackles themes of police corruption as well as the complex interplay between criminals, policemen, media, and the politicians. There are a few directorial flourishes and special effects creating an effective sense of suspense—the camera moving (in a film otherwise made of static shots!) to reveal the geometry of a nightclub where everybody has weapons pointing at each other, or a dissolve shot to reveal the guns that everyone is holding underneath their hats. Those flashes of interest do help compensate for a story that qualifies as well-worn by today’s standards, although it ends on a bittersweet-enough note to make the film still feel relevant despite the period. It’s kind of amazing that The Racket has made it to us, but it’s an intriguing message from the past.

Escape Room (2019)

Escape Room (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) At first glance, Escape Room looks like one of those instantly disposable horror movies that have been part of the cinema landscape for a few decades—based on a fad, shot with a small budget in enclosed locations with a handful of actors, and ready to populate the multiplexes until the next such movie a few weeks later. A viewing will confirm this suspicion, albeit with an important caveat—Escape Room is fun to watch more often than not, and works reasonably well until its somewhat disappointing ending. You can certainly see similarities between Escape Room and such other notable titles as Saw and Cube—strangers trapped in an enclosed location, trying to decode the twisted logic that will free them. This being a horror movie, the titular escape rooms are fatal and specifically aimed at their victims—we know how close we are to the ending by the number of participants that remain. Some slick cinematography, capable direction from Adam Robitel, decent actors, restrained gore and a script that manages to succeed during its first two acts all help make Escape Room a serviceable horror movie—and if that sounds like faint praise, then you haven’t seen the depths to which many contemporary horror movies sink to. Escape Room isn’t without its problems, but it’s distinctive enough to be interesting, well-handled-enough to keep our interest, and features likable performers. Taylor Russell is quite likable as the obviously designated final girl, while Jay Ellis delivers a solid performance as an untrustworthy participant. Tyler Labine has a small but striking role, while Deborah Ann Woll makes the most of a sketched-in character. The script has its ups and down: on the positive side, it imagines some ingenious and terrifying escape rooms, and does manage to suggest quite a bit of background to the characters without underlining every single element of it. Less fortunately, it doesn’t quite manage a satisfactory ending: The “fatal game that rich people bet on” shtick is getting old (Unfriended: Dark Web didn’t get there first, but it’s only one of many other recent horror movies using the same plot point), and the way it’s handled smacks more of premature franchise announcement than a way to wrap up this film effectively. Still, I enjoyed Escape Room quite a bit more than I thought even with its various issues—Since a sequel seems inevitable, then let’s welcome it and see what it will have to offer.

The Navigator (1924)

The Navigator (1924)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) Part of the charm of Buster Keaton’s early productions is simply enjoying the flow of his films as they run from one imaginative set-piece to another, never minding the plot or the contrivances required to get there. So it is that with The Navigator, there’s quite a bit of plot business to attend to before landing our lead couple aboard a ship headed to nowhere, after which they learn to live at sea, repair the boat, land on an island filled with (what else?) bloodthirsty cannibals, and fend off their attempts to board the ship. It’s not quite top-notch Keaton, but there are some ideas here and some of the gags land solidly—whether it’s swordfish-to-swordfish combat, learning to cope with shipboard equipment or repelling attackers. An interesting moment, from a cinematographic perspective, has subtitles (in 1924! Yes!) to represent music in-time with a record playing. History notes that Keaton essentially bought the ship on which the film was shot (which had a cursed history of deporting Russians from America) and could do anything he wanted with it, up to sinking it if he wanted. The rest of the film was built around the prop. As a result, it doesn’t quite have the overarching plot of Keaton’s better films (the ending is noticeably weak), nor the grandiose over-the-top gags found in many of those same better movies, but even an average Keaton is still worth watching today.

Backdraft 2 (2018)

Backdraft 2 (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) Apparently, other people share my lasting liking for 1991’s Backdraft, to the point of seeing a next-generation sequel pop up almost thirty years later. Aimed at the direct-to-digital market, this Backdraft 2 doesn’t quite have the budget or the expertise to show us the fantastic fire effects of the original—all too often, we’re given some halfway-convincing CGI flames and explosion effects in carefully constrained sequences that never go as big or as ambitious as the original. I’d be exaggerating things if I claimed that the story makes up for it—Backdraft 2 tries to navigate between having its own story (focused on nothing less than international weapons smuggling) and tying itself to the original and it’s markedly weaker when it does nod at the first film, at one exception: Donald Sutherland’s two-scene role, in which he brings his devilish cackling insanity to the movie, looking terrible and enjoying it a lot. Meanwhile, our protagonist (a renegade arson inspector, meaning that he’s more of a Sherlockian action hero than a regular policeman) goes through the motions of an investigation according to the usual rules of film thrillers. There are odd issues of pacing with the film languishing on unimportant moments and rushing through others—with one of the returning characters unceremoniously taken out with no other reason than to provide motivation to the protagonist. Still, I rather enjoyed the call-backs to the first film’s (unrealistic) depiction of fire as a quasi-living creature, only understandable to those chosen few with the gift given to arsonists and arson investigators alike. Backdraft 2 isn’t that good of a movie, and it certainly doesn’t hold a candle to the first film, but on its own it’s a reasonably entertaining direct-to-digital film, at least if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing.

As Above So Below (2014)

As Above So Below (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, August 2019) I’m usually able to give mixed reviews even to terrible movies — If the premise doesn’t work, maybe I’ll praise a few good moments, or stop to talk about the performances, or discuss elements of the plot that were promising. But with As Above So Below, I fear we’ve reached a perfect trifecta of failure. The premise is dull, the cinematography is terrible, the characters are unlikable and the rest of the film is unremarkable except when it’s trying its best to exasperate its audience. Somehow, we’re meant to be interested in an expedition that goes deep in the Paris catacombs to find a magical device of some sort. Except that they keep going deeper and deeper into hell (or whatever), encountering mysterious things and being killed along the way. This already-uninteresting premise is made worse by its execution as a found-footage film (despite some of the footage being quite obviously inaccessible) with the camera constantly jerking around. But writer-director John Erick Dowdle then makes things even worse, because even the characters are terrible people upon whom the worse fates are actively wished for. The protagonist spouts some incomprehensible mystical jargon in between self-flattering moments that only made us dislike her more. (Tellingly, she describes herself seriously as a PhD “symbologist,” something not found outside Dan Brown novels.)  I rarely complain about horror movies in which the main characters survive, but I’ll make an exception in this case: I was really disappointed when three of them made it out alive of the catacombs in what may be the film’s only halfway-effective visual. The scares are dull, the claustrophobia not nearly as effective as The Descent, and whatever weirdness the film throws on-screen quickly makes the film jump into “anything can happen, whatever I don’t care” territory. Sometimes, you have to take some time away from a genre to appreciate its most average entries, but as it turns out I don’t miss found-footage movies in the slightest and the past five years haven’t done As Above So Below any favours.

Belle de jour (1967)

Belle de jour (1967)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, August 2019) There’s quite a bit of (tasteful) perversity at play in Belle de jour, and it’s consistent with what I know of writer-director Luis Bunuel’s work. It does begin with a sequence that seems to go quickly from plausibility to complete deliriousness, only for the truth to emerge and make the sequence even more perverse as a fantasy. This lands us in the head of our protagonist, a married woman unable to be intimate with her husband, but increasingly tempted to become a high-end prostitute by day. Much of the remainder of Belle de jour is taken up with her experiences at the house where she practises her trade, various clients rotating through the film. Two more off-putting fantasies spice things up. It’s possible to see quite a few themes at play here, but the one I’ll highlight has to do with prostitution not as a sexual act, but as one of willing compliance—the protagonist learns from the other girls that the trade isn’t as much about pleasing clients sexually as presenting to them the façade of what they expect from a partner compliant to their desires. The switch between their two faces is fascinating and handled with a decent dark humour that prevents the film from being unbearable. Catherine Deneuve makes the most out of her 1960s doll-like features as the titular Lady of the Day—she’s fascinating and the film doesn’t have any trouble making us interested in what will happen to her next. I should also be noted that there is almost no nudity in Belle de jour besides a few exposed backs—the film takes place on another register, far more pernicious. It’s more interesting than I would have expected.

Watch the Birdie (1950)

Watch the Birdie (1950)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) Comedy is a weird genre: what’s funny today may not feel as amusing decades later, or even with an entirely different audience. So it is that comparing Watch the Birdie soon after its silent-movie inspiration The Cameraman shows the difference between the dumb loquaciousness of Red Skelton’s humour in stark contrast with the smart physicality of Buster Keaton. The correspondence is very, very loose, of course: We’re talking about Watch the Birdie riffing from a bare-bones plot summary of The Cameraman, as a sympathetic gaffe-prone protagonist grabs a camera in an attempt to impress a love interest. But whereas Keaton could only count on gesticulation and title cards, Skelton starts talking over the beginning credits (the film’s funniest sequence, actually) and never stops. He plays three characters (the protagonist, his father and his grandfather), which is one too much—the father character never makes much of an impression, let alone becomes funny in his own right. His humour is hit or miss—he likes making funny faces and looking confused a lot, whereas I think that’s reaching for the dumbest, least subtle comedy there is. As a result, much of Watch the Birdie feels forced—I won’t deny that it has a few laughs (the ending sequence, featuring a car chase with a tall Hyster lumber loader, feels very Keatonesque which may be explained by Keaton being an uncredited advisor for the film), but much of it labours mightily through pratfalls and grimaces. The film feels too long even at 72 minutes, especially considering its structure of gags strung along a loose plot. On the other hand, my first reason for watching the film is justifiable: Ann Miller is not only gorgeous but quite funny as well as she plays an intentionally dumb beauty queen who gets knocked around by male and female characters alike. I take it that Red Skelton did a lot of similar movies in the post-WW2 years, but that none of them are particularly well regarded today—indeed, I probably would have overlooked Watch the Birdie if it hadn’t been of its link to Keaton and Miller.

Watership Down (1978)

Watership Down (1978)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) If you believe some of the chatter about Watership Down, you may expect an unbearable for-adult bloody drama featuring rabbits living in a dark and pitiless world. That’s true, but it may be misleading: Watership Down is shocking if you’re expecting a fluffy Disney wildlife fantasy featuring cute little bunnies, but if you go in the film expecting the worst, the result simply feels … appropriate for what it’s trying to do. Adapted from Richard Adams’s well-regarded book aimed at older children, this is an attempt to tell a more sombre story that acknowledges the merciless nature of wild animals in their natural environment. When a rabbit understands that their meadow is going to be razed over by residential development, he flees to greener pastures and encounters hardened opponents. The tone is resolutely not funny nor easy: Watership Down is tooth-and-claw nature, with protagonists either dying or coming close to it on a regular schedule, blood flowing from their wounds. It’s not gratuitous, though—despite the jerky, disappointing animation and the sombre tone, I found quite a bit to respect in the final result. The opening segment is wonderfully animated (far better than the rest of the film), and it sets up a very effective reprise of “First … they have to catch you” late in the film. I wasn’t horrified by the result (well, not as much as the generations of eight-year-old kids who legendarily sit down to watch another Disney movie and bawl their eyes out for 90 minutes) but neither did I like it very much. On the other hand, Watership Down is a respectable film, and one that should have had more imitators.

Come and Get It (1936)

Come and Get It (1936)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) I’m on a mission to watch the entire Howard Hawks filmography, and at this point in the process, having covered most of his classics, I’m starting to get to his lesser-known films. Come and Get It is one of those, and a bit of an oddball title as he was reportedly fired about two thirds of the way through. Adapted from a novel, it’s a complex and occasionally off-putting story of multi-generational infatuation, as a married lumber baron falls for the daughter of the woman he left behind decades previously. There are multiple complications, to the point of resulting in a messy plot that leaves few people happy when it reaches its ending, spurned would-be adulterous protagonist and all. (Note to modern viewers: The Hays Code was slightly more permissive when filmmakers worked from existing novels, but not that much—which helps explain the film’s jerky and unconvincing morals.)  Considering that Hawks didn’t direct all of Come and Get It, it’s hard to pinpoint his exact contribution, but the spectacular footage of old-school logging operations early in the film was enough to warm my French-Canadian heart and certainly resonates with other Hawks movies. Much of the film’s best moments come early on, what with barroom brawling and sharp scenes to establish the characters. It’s afterwards that Come and Get It seems to lose its way, never quite sure whether to commit to tragedy or romance. (Or to say something about environmental matters, which had been one of Hawks’ initial concerns.)  Three good actors manage to make the film better than its confused screenplay: Edward Arnold as the morally ambiguous protagonist, Joel McCrea as the romantic lead, but especially Frances Farmer in a well-controlled dual role. Walter Brennan is a bit annoying, but that’s his character more than the actor. Despite a fair start, Come and Get It ultimately feels aimless and maybe even a bit cut short—it doesn’t completely capitalize on its strengths, and knowing about its troubled production explains some of the issues.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, August 2019) To seasoned Science Fiction fans, there’s a big difference between genre SF and SF that merely uses the tropes of the genre without knowledge of the various techniques developed through generations of SF writers to maximize their impact. Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth is certainly an example of the second type of SF: It features David Bowie as an alien (great casting!) but doesn’t really commit to anything startlingly original in SF terms. Our alien is a smart fish out of water (literally so, as the film somehow has him coming to Earth to save his world from drought), but the script treats him as a punching bag throughout—his romantic relationship predictably fails once he reveals his true form, the government experiments on him for what suggested to be decades, and he spectacularly fails at what he came here to do. Expect no triumphalism, no victory, not much humour either: it’s a typically mid-1970s dour piece of work, predating Star Wars’ SF renaissance by a year and what feels like irreconcilable differences. I certainly get why The Man Who Fell to Earth earned a spot in the coveted Criterion collection: it’s meditative, self-consciously artistic, “not like those other childish sci-fi movies” and dull. It spends most of its time in strikingly unspectacular sets: a living room of a small rural house, most notably. Even today, it feels like an oddball entry in the SF genre, not particularly as interested in what SF fans want than in what the director wants to convey. As such, it has amassed a considerable audience over the years. But I’ll count myself out of it: I think that it’s possible to make movies that are both great coherent Science Fiction, playing by the rules of the genre and yet also profound explorations of the human condition. The Man Who Fell to Earth insists on the artistic effect and completely fumbles the SF side, feeling rather silly in its depiction. There’s been much better movies in that vein.

Don’t Look Now (1973)

Don’t Look Now (1973)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, August 2019) I got a bit more out of Don’t Look Now than I expected. I was anticipating a weird early-1970s horror movie and I got that for sure, but I also got a haunting portrait of a couple grieving their dead daughter. I don’t deal well with that kind of topic matter, and so the first few minutes of the movie were difficult to watch. It does get into a more comfortable groove later on, as our two protagonists go around Venice renovating a church, being terrorized by a serial killer and escaping narrow death. The thematic concern of grief is never too far away, though, and it’s this heft that does make Don’t Look Now a bit more substantial than many other horror movies of its time, especially when its supernatural components remain ambiguous. Interestingly enough, while I’m usually a convinced backer of the most fantastic interpretation of any given borderline film (to the point of denying non-fantastical interpretations when available), I think that Don’t Look Now works better when considered as a weird psychological thriller with few or no occult elements. What does blur the line effectively between twisted realism and the fantastic is the film’s then-innovative and still-effective editing style, using associating editing techniques to take us effectively inside the protagonist’s mind as he flashes back to previous events and how they relate to his current situation. There’s a long death sequence, for instance, made more effective through the use of flashes of past events as we imagine the character’s mind grasping onto what just happened. It’s that kind of sequence that makes writer-director Nicholas Roeg’s work feel more daring and effective than more traditional approaches. The cinematography helps, as Venice is depicted as a sordid, humid, grainy hotspot of violent death at every turn. As protagonists, Donald Sutherland and his moustache are impressive, while Julie Christie is an able partner. Given the film’s success in terms of atmosphere, tone and cinematographic impact, it’s a shame that the story itself feels so thin and pointlessly cruel. It’s a weak spot in an otherwise better-than-average film with some curious emotional impact.

Scrooge (1935)

Scrooge (1935)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) According to Wikipedia, there’s been almost 20 straight film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (a number that swells well into the hundreds when you throw in the TV adaptations, parodies and derivative works à la Scrooged), and the 1935 version of Scrooge is certainly one of them. I kid, but the truth is that I overdosed in December 2018 on roughly five different versions of the story (including one whose production date I was never able to formally identify for sure) and even waiting eight months before clearing my DVR of Christmas leftovers wasn’t long enough to get me interested in any other straight take on the story. This being said, there is something intriguing about a mid-1930s version of the story. The images may be muddy, the sound may be fuzzy, the special effects underwhelming (some of the ghosts, intriguingly, are never quite shown) and the performances a bit overdone, but the nature of Dicken’s story makes it unusually timeless, even enhanced by those now-historical takes on the story. The language is theatrical, the black-and-white cinematography old-fashioned and production values deliciously old-school … far closer to the original intent than, say, the 2009 full-CGI version. At barely 78 minutes, it’s also admirably efficient in the way it rushes through the expected plot points and removes a few less-important ones. That the film feels like cinematic muzak, to be left on while doing other things around the house, does have its charm.

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [The Testament of Dr. Mabuse] (1933)

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [The Testament of Dr. Mabuse] (1933)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) I’m not going to dismiss The Testament of Dr. Mabuse entirely, because there’s quite a bit of interesting material here from writer-director Fritz Lang. Unfortunately, you do have to wade through more than two hours of deadly pacing issues and silliness in order to get there. The pacing is, alas, an artifact of its time—By 1933, the German film industry hadn’t universally let go of silent movie conventions, including the concision allowed by spoken dialogue. There’s a lot of repetitiveness to this second Mabuse story, going over the same plot points in excruciating detail. It leads to a somewhat underwhelming ending, blowing its biggest explosions about fifteen minutes before the end and leaving us with an underwhelming climax. There’s also an intrusive use of the supernatural (even as a suggestion) in a story whose point is to remain grounded in some kind of reality. The film does anticipate a slew of schlocky horror sequels in giving Mabuse an enthusiastic adept fit to power a sequel, but otherwise keeps with the spirit of the original. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is the way it portrays 1930s Germany struggling to keep up with a super-criminal dedicated to chaos. There are also some interesting visuals along the way, as befit a filmmaker of Lang’s stature. Still, it’s a bit of a slog to get through The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone but 1930s completists.

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man (1973)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion streaming, August 2019) When I set out to watch the original version of The Wicker Man, I was expecting a sombre backwoods horror thriller far more serious than the bonkers 2006 Nicolas Cage remake.  But this original quickly proved itself just as mad once the lame musical numbers began. Not only musical numbers, but early 1970s folk musical numbers, which is enough to make anyone retch in disgust. Much of the film remains silliness piled upon silliness, as the dumbest policeman in the world meets the most obviously sinister village in the world and can’t help but make himself a target of their underhanded tricks. I’d pay some money for an alternate version in which a SWAT team takes down the village … but until then we’re stuck with a self-righteous cop with little sense of self-preservation. Much of The Wicker Man has aged exceptionally poorly, and I’m not talking about the infamous ending that everybody can see coming thanks to the rise of the folk-horror genre. No, the film is locked in its early 1970s origins (there’s quite a bit more nudity than I expected) and in no small measure to the wave of Hammer horror films that ran on promise more than execution. But for all of my reluctance to say anything nice about film, it does have a few things going for it: The scenery is nice, the tone is slightly more serious than the even-dumber remake, Christopher Lee does have a memorable role, and the film’s last five minutes do have a few good lines and moments (specifically the “you’re the next sacrifice” curse and then the “you get to be a martyr!” response) that suddenly elevate the film above the smothering silliness. I have a thoroughly mixed reaction to The Wicker Man, but remove the last ten minutes and my reaction is far more definitive … and significantly lower.

Gunga Din (1939)

Gunga Din (1939)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) As a straight white male, I’ve grown increasingly conscious of my own privilege in exploring Hollywood movie history—which was overwhelmingly built by and for straight white men, with the result that they are now best appreciated by straight white men (but maybe not the kind of straight white men who enjoy watching older movies). These issues are impossible to ignore while watching films like Gunga Din, deliberately set in an environment where colonialism is celebrated. Adapted by Rudyard Kipling stories, it’s an adventure film featuring three British soldiers somewhere around the edges of the British Raj, sent to repair communications but soon embroiled in the revival of a murderous cult intent on causing harm to the empire. (The histrionics of the antagonist get so shrill by the end of his speech to the heroes that I half-expected him to conclude with “ … and then I will molest your moms and kick your dogs.”)  Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. are the three likable male leads, with Sam Jaffe playing the titular Gunga Din as a native water carrier who would like nothing more than to fight for the empire. (He gets his wishes, suffers for it and it sent off with the ultimate colonial compliment—”he was a good soldier.”)  Joan Fontaine pops up as one of the soldiers’ fiancée, leading to some curious hijinks in which the two other soldiers do everything they can to sabotage his impending marriage. It all leads to some really good action scenes, suspense sequences and a grand spirit of adventure against overwhelming odds. And that’s the kind of film that Gunga Din is: at once a terrific adventure story in the old-fashioned mould, and yet a disquieting grab-bag of very outdated ideas focusing on the straight white male as the centre of the universe: Boys will be boys (yucky girls had better not disrupt anything), and non-whites are to be killed unless they’re willing to help whites kill other non-whites. Modern viewers will find the end result to be a steady whiplash of contradictions, any enjoyment of the film’s high points constantly being undercut by heave-inducing Victorian values. Even my own privilege failed me throughout Gunga Din: Despite my best intentions and proven capacity at ignoring the bad stuff to focus on the good wasn’t enough to get me to like the result. If I end up recommending Gunga Din in any circumstance, it will be to show how terrible these movies could be.