Month: September 2019

The Name of the Rose (1986)

The Name of the Rose (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2019) It’s been decades since I’ve read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and I certainly didn’t understand much of it at the time—it’s the kind of novel with so much depth that it obscures its own narrative strengths through an excess of detail. Fortunately, writer-director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film adaptation wisely knows what to keep and what to simplify. The result is a surprisingly engaging story of murder, inquisition, books, sex, and hidden labyrinths set in a fourteenth-century monastery … featuring a medieval version of Sherlock Holmes. Sean Connery is splendid as the protagonist, a contemporary mind stuck in the dark ages, whose gravelly wisdom only breaks into giddiness within a library. (Ah, a character after my own heart!)  A still-impressive support cast rounds The Name of the Rose, with Michael Lonsdale and F. Murray Abraham being their usual selves, and early but substantial roles for both Christian Slater and Ron Perlman. Still, it’s the plot that takes centre stage, what with a murder investigation conducted very much against the leaders of the abbey, and a merciless inquisitor taking matters in his own hands. It’s a heady mixture, and the film never gets any better than when the characters break into a hidden library broken up in a maze. Annaud may have stripped much of the extraneous meta-semiotic material, but enough cleverness remains to make The Name of the Rose a superior thriller—more ambitious, decidedly more atmospheric and certainly more interesting than most.

Help! (1965)

Help! (1965)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2019) History suggests that The Beatles were high during a substantial portion of Help!’s production, which may explain why the film seems to stumble during its execution, circling its concept without reliably hitting its marks. It also serves to explain the bizarre sense of humour, a blend of non sequiturs and deadpan—history tells us the script is from The Goon Show alumni, but to modern viewers it will feel a lot like pre-weaponized Monty Python. The plot (and there’s one) has to do with murderous cultists pursuing Ringo Starr for the ring that’s stuck on his finger, but never mind that: This being from The Beatles, the highlights are musical interludes that feel like pre-MTV music videos, with the group goofing around as hard as they can. My favourite part of the film is probably the on-screen text adding contextual information and added jokes—the intermission alone is also very funny. Compared to A Hard Day’s Night, Help! feels very different: Not quite about the people’s idea of The Beatles and more about themselves. The budget is clearly higher and the script considerably less coherent—although that kind of anything-goes humour can have its charm as well. (The scene in which the Beatles record a song in the middle of a field, protected by a ring of tanks, is special.)  In keeping with the times, there’s quite a bit of Bond parody made even funnier by Bond saying that he didn’t like The Beatles in the previous year’s Goldfinger. The editing can be lighting-fast at times, helping the film stay remarkably interesting while still being dated in its references to the mid-1960s. It’s all goofy fun, but it’s clear why A Hard Day’s Night holds up better and is more often shown these days.

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2019) I’ve been watching so many great (or at least respectable) 1960s movies lately that an impulse viewing of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (motivated by no other reason that the title was similar to The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) brought me back to some kind of more reasonable assessment of the period—let’s face it: the 1960s weren’t all French New Wave and New Hollywood: there were plenty of crude B-grade (or worse) stinkers in the mix. So it is that The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is far closer to mediocre zero-effort filmmaking: pedestrian direction, lame jokes, unlikable protagonist (Don Rickles isn’t for everyone, I guess) and very predictable plotting in the Scooby-Doo vein. (Of course, it wasn’t supernatural… OR WAS IT?!?)  Even using the old favourite “spend a night in a haunted house!” premise doesn’t do much to raise any interest in the final result. There’s little artistic intent here nor skillful execution in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken—just a cheap comic star vehicle that falls almost completely flat if you’re not already a fan of the actor being featured.

Jules et Jim (1962)

Jules et Jim (1962)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, September 2019) Those who hold long-seated stereotypes about the French Nouvelle Vague as a talky genre in which characters chat ad nauseam about love and life are likely to walk away from Jules et Jim with their entire worldview confirmed. Much of the story is about a tragic romantic triangle set before, during and after World War I, anchored by a woman (Jeanne Moreau) and the titular Jules and Jim—one French, the other German. While the film is very, very talky and melodramatic, it’s also fluid and unexpectedly funny at times—writer-director François Truffaut blends several film techniques and interesting dialogue to make this a far more entertaining experience than the genre stereotypes and downer ending would suggest. There’s some interest in seeing how the sweep of history can affect some intimate relationships, and how the tension between the three characters constantly pushes and pulls at them. Truffaut is one of my favourite New Wave directors for a reason—Aside from my muted reaction to Les 400 coups, he’s usually able to find something interesting in nearly anything he touches, and Jules et Jim would be a far lesser film without his specific touch.

Fantasia 2000 (1999)

Fantasia 2000 (1999)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2019) The original Fantasia was planned to be an annual event—according to Disney’s vision for the film, it would regularly incorporate new segments and be shown around the country in slightly altered fashion, evolving throughout the years. This did not come to pass (World War II nearly bankrupted the studio and derailed most of their plans), but it does provide a bit of historical context to the Fantasia 2000 reboot, which keeps the famous “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from the original while introducing new animated segments focused on musical numbers. One of those films that work equally as well as an audiovisual spectacle and as musical accompaniment, Fantasia 2000 is about as accessible as classical music gets, with a little bit of jazz thrown in. As you can expect from a film with eight segments, the quality is variable— “Rhapsody in Blue” is terrific with its nostalgic depiction of an urban area, while the most striking thing about “Symphony No. 5” is how incredibly dated the CGI looks. Indeed, if there’s a point of comparison between this Fantasia sequel and the original, it’s how much of the sequel is irremediably dated by its reliance on CGI—the eighty-year-old original, meanwhile, hasn’t aged nearly as much. Still, you do have the option to look away from the screen and still enjoy the music, so at least the Fantasia 2000 has that going for it. I still enjoyed it quite a bit—as a way to experience some great music, it’s worth at least a listen.

Summer Stock (1950)

Summer Stock (1950)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2019) In the context of Judy Garland’s career, Summer Stock is often best known as her final MGM film and the one in which she inaugurated the tuxedo/fedora/nylons outfit that she would use as a trademark in her later years. But for those (such as myself) who don’t particularly like Garland, Summer Stock is best seen as solid MGM musical from the early 1950s, using the studio’s expertise to transform something fairly ordinary into a few remarkable set-pieces. Gene Kelly is the bigger draw here, as he plays a theatrical director who arrives with his troupe on a farm where he convinces the owner (Garland) that they will compensate for the imposition by doing chores while rehearsing their next show. Having found an excuse to blend the Broadway musical with a rural setting, Summer Stock quickly gets going in combining the two: One number has a red tractor as a centrepiece, while an anthology-worth piece has Gene Kelly dancing around with a newspaper and creaky boards. “Get Happy” would turn out to be Garland’s late-career standard number, but the film is bigger than her: The atmosphere is upbeat, the dance numbers are colourful and while the film is overshadowed by much-better musicals at around the same time (Singin’ in the Rain on one side, Easter Weekend on the other), it’s still a fun watch for any musical fan. This is Kelly and Garland doing what they do best, and their on-screen smiles are contagious.

Der letzte Mann [The Last Laugh] (1924)

Der letzte Mann [The Last Laugh] (1924)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, September 2019) At this point, having seen most of the best-known movies of the 1920s, I’ll cheerfully recognize that almost all the movies I’m seeing from the decade are an obligation born out of a sense of historical duty. While I still have a few Buster Keaton movies to look forward to, most of the non-comic, non-fantastical films of the 1920s are simply unpleasant to watch. Overlong, overacted, technically primitive and usually of dodgy picture quality, they exasperate more than their enlighten or entertain. I’ve seen the best, I’m in no real hurry to see the rest—although I’ll forever defend Man with a Movie Camera as an essential. In other words, I was dreading The Last Laugh. While it’s refreshingly short at 90 minutes compared to many of its contemporaries, it’s also intimate and low-key, focusing on what happens to an ordinary man after he gets fired from his prestigious job. F. W. Murnau directs, which explain why I sought it out—and you can clearly see how, on a technical and storytelling level, the result is significantly better than most other movies of its time. The camera movements alone are audacious, clearly ahead of its time. There is a great metafiction twist in the film’s sole title card announcing an intentional departure from reality, the screenwriter intruding to provide a happy ending. All of this certainly helps make the film better than expected … without quite overturning my current reluctance toward silent cinema. But if this was among the most audacious of what was attempted then and it only raises mild interest, I’m not looking forward to the rest.

Bel Canto (2018)

Bel Canto (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2019) Stockholm syndrome is a terrible thing, especially if you’re not a part of it. In Bel Canto, an American opera soprano is asked to perform at an opulent private residence in South America. But just as she’s performing, a terrorist group swoops onto the estate and take the dignitaries hostage. What follows is a standoff during which captors and their prisoners begin to understand each other. Nice idea, bolstered by capable actors: With Julianne Moore as the singer, Ken Watanabe as a rich industrialist and Christopher Lambert as an ambassador, the film is clearly going for more than a suspense thriller—music is everywhere in the film, and having the singer teach a hostage taker about her craft is meant to show shared humanity between the two groups. Clearly, the point here is to show the growing empathy even as we know that it can’t end well. It’s a laudable goal … and it utterly fails. By the time the brutish government enforcers swooped on the ground of the estate to kill as many terrorists as possible, I was cheering every death, with the added satisfaction that it meant that the film would soon end. Even at a bit more than 90 minutes, Bel Canto feels too slow—obviously, it’s less than a thriller and more of a drama. In the experienced hands of director Paul Weitz, it’s meant to be a prestige production … but that doesn’t save it from ennui, and when it can’t manage to convince its viewers of empathy toward the terrorists, then everything is lost.

Welcome to Marwen (2018)

Welcome to Marwen (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2019) At a time when we expect nearly everything coming out of Hollywood to be clinically designed, focus-tested and meticulously engineered for mass appeal, there’s something almost refreshing in seeing as expensive a misfire as Welcome to Marwen. Based on a true story presented in the documentary Marwencol, it fictionalizes how the survivor of an assault (Mark Hogancamp, played by Steve Carell) handles his own mental therapy by taking pictures of dolls set in an invented WW2 village, playing out his obsessions in fictional scenarios. That, in itself, would be a rich premise and at times director Robert Zemeckis really gives it everything he’s got—the best moments in the film are those in which we nearly-seamlessly switch from reality to fantasy, from the bland real life of the protagonist to the colourful fantasy he has imagined for himself. It’s in those moments that we sense Zemeckis having a lot of fun and understand why he took on such a technically demanding edge-of-the-envelope project. Unfortunately, there’s the rest of the movie to consider: A movie in which the protagonist indulges in deeply creepy behaviour toward the women in his life and isn’t called on it. Even allowing for the limitations of adapting a true and painful story on-screen, Welcome to Marwen is remarkably mawkish, depressing and uneasy at times—the film may be too exuberant in its fantasy sequences that it drags down its more putatively realistic moments. The result feels like a bit misguided expensive mess—admirable when it does show us something we haven’t seen in a movie before, but unpleasant when it spends too much time with its own protagonist’s life. There’s also a weird anti-medication message toward the end that I’m not entirely comfortable with. While I do have a fondness for big-budget bombs (which Welcome to Marwen most assuredly was, even threatening Zemeckis’ career at the moment) and don’t regret having watched this even in less-than-ideal circumstances (a bad night’s sleep leading to dawn movie-watching, if you must know), there is definitely something off in this ambitious project, and I really wish it could have been fixed at the script stage rather than being compounded throughout the entire production.

The Hummingbird Project (2018)

The Hummingbird Project (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2019) It’s amazing how many highly specialized spheres of our modern world end up being featured in mass-market entertainment. It may be even more amazing to see how French-Canadian writer-director Kim Nguyen has gone from elliptical fantasy debut Le Marais to Hollywood-grade techno-thriller The Hummingbird Project. Here, Nguyen tackles the business of laying cables from one financial power centre to the other to facilitate High-Frequency Trading, a business in which millions or billions can ride on fractions of a second. Any conceivable way to shaving a fraction of a millisecond in between transactions can be a massive market advantage, and so the film focuses on a pair of entrepreneurs (Alexander Skarsgård playing someone on the autistic spectrum, and Jesse Eisenberg in his familiar alpha-nerd persona), leaving behind their previous company to build a fibre-optic line. Hollywood used to make grandiose movies about building railroads, and The Hummingbird Project could have headed in that direction … alas, this being the enlightened no-fun 2010s, Nguyen isn’t about to let us have any civilization-building fun: The film takes great pain not only to point out that this fibre line is going to be used for rainforest-killing lucrative purposes, but goes out of its way to punish its characters through various ailments and ultimately make their efforts redundant. That’s really too bad, because for a while The Hummingbird Project does create a powerful illusion of an upbeat big-infrastructure project. Nguyen effectively uses his budget to give us a glimpse of what it takes to create the modern infrastructure upon which the Internet rests, and the scope of the film feels vertiginous at times as our characters negotiate with homeowners for property rights, head into swamps to lay down the fibre despite natural obstacles, and overcomes many difficult odds along their way. That’s the kind of triumph I would have liked to see along the lines of railway-building epics, but that’s not what the film is interested in. I still had a decently good time along the way. While I think that Skarsgård’s character is overexposed, I’m comfortable with the kind of fast-talking smart guy played by Eisenberg, and Michael Mando is a bit of a revelation as the level-headed one in the lead cable-layer trio. (French-Canadian actress Ayisha Issa also shows up in a small but striking role—I hope this turn promises more from her.)  This being said, I can’t deny that much of The Hummingbird Project’s appeal rests with a vengeful character magnificently played by Salma Hayek in a white-haired bespectacled performance oscillating between sexiness and pure evil—no matter her age, she’s still got it. Still, Hayek can’t be in all of the film’s scenes and so I’m left with a disappointment—a film that has about three-quarter of what it takes to deliver something exceptional, but seem content to retreat in anti-technological platitudes about slowing down.

Bumblebee (2018)

Bumblebee (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, September 2019) I have a vivid imagination, but even I wouldn’t have predicted that the sixth entry in the modern Transformers franchise would be a teen-oriented back-to-basics “a girl and her robot” period piece that is a marked step upward for the franchise. Having finally acknowledged the inherent awfulness of the franchise and managed to sedate Michael Bay long enough to put Travis Knight in the director’s chair, the series producers surprisingly shifted gears to a smaller-scale story and Bumblebee is better than its predecessors. I wouldn’t exactly call it a good movie, but it fits together better than the other entries and doesn’t quite insult the audience in the process. Taking place in 1980s northwestern America, Bumblebee details how robots land on Earth and one of them is deactivated long enough for a teenage girl to discover him in car mode and get to work in getting it to work. Much to her surprise, she discovers the robot and you can write the rest of the film yourself as both the eeeevil Decepticons and human military forces take an interest in her yellow robot friend. Liberally borrowing from many 1980s coming-of-age movies, Bumblebee does manage to understand and portray a broader emotional range than the rest of the series, and to create some attachment to the film as more than a series of grandiose blurry impressionistic action sequences. Knight slows down the pace, lengthens the average shot and ends up showing more than random colours and movement for five minutes. It’s not quite satisfying—what with its dropped subplots, inconclusive relationship with the rest of the series, and overly precious moments, but I enjoyed it a bit more than the increasingly punitive series so far. Even the visual design of the robots has undercome a much-needed streamlining, bringing them closer to my own formative G1 ideal of what they should look like. Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena are quite sympathetic in generic roles, but generic is far better than cliché. While I’m more reserved about the result than many other reviewers (I do love Bay-made explosions), the result is encouraging in showing the way the inevitable future instalments should be headed. I’m still not a fan, but I’m open to further developments.

Our Hospitality (1923)

Our Hospitality (1923)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, September 2019) I generally like Buster Keaton’s film, but even I have to admit that many of his movies are slow burns to great finales. Our Hospitality is a bit different in that it does have a few highlights to offer along the way to its big finish, perhaps the most fascinating being a mostly accurate rendition of the earliest railways. Even to those with only the mildest interest in railway technical development, this sequence seems almost impossibly folkloric, with open-air carriage wagons being used as railcars, and a track that can be moved at will. (We shouldn’t see this section as a documentary, but Keaton was a confirmed rail enthusiast and portions of what was built for the movie ended up in a museum.)  Otherwise, Our Hospitality does have a solid story, as the survivor of a murderous family feud comes back to town to discover that he has fallen in love with the daughter of the rival clan. There’s drama enough to power the plot (there’s a seriously violent death and escape in the first few minutes of the film, setting up the rest), but the comic conceit comes from the other clan refusing to kill him while he’s in their house, leading to increasingly absurd situations. It all leads to some spectacular stunts later in the film, but at a more sustained pace than many other Keaton features. As a result, Our Hospitality remains one of his most steadily enjoyable movies, and a nice change of pace from some of his more urban-centred features.

Little Big Man (1970)

Little Big Man (1970)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2019) One of the problems for modern viewers in delving too deep in the classical Hollywood western catalogue is the depiction of Natives in the subgenre. At best they’re ignored or acknowledged as sympathetic but secondary figures with valid viewpoints. At worse (and oh boy does it get worse), they’re mindless killing hordes to be destroyed in order to secure white colonialism and manifest destiny. It took, as with so many other things, the New Hollywood to start shifting things, even if in a matter of degrees. In portraying the picaresque life of a white man equally at ease in the white and Native worlds, Little Big Man is not, today, the most exemplary of films: The hero definitely remains a white man, the native characters are sympathetic but not developed to the extent that Custer, even as an antagonist, is characterized. But for a 1970 movie, it’s a welcome change of pace compared to film made even ten years earlier. The result, partially motivated by the growing affirmation of native populations that found a receptive ear in the late 1960s, does spend a lot of time depicting the late-1800s native lifestyle sympathetically. Our protagonist is adopted in a tribe after tragedy, then sent back to the white world thanks to massacres, and spends the rest of his life going back and forth between the two universes, often motivated to shift due to while people massacring native populations and revenge for those massacres. Custer featuring increasingly often in the story, and not in a sympathetic light. Dustin Hoffman stars as a then-unusual kind of protagonist. The tone, despite the seemingly endless slaughter, is often unusually funny, all the way to a final sequence meant to lead to an elegiac moment that, finally, doesn’t happen. Little Big Man is not always very fast-paced, the framing device is disappointing and the constant back-and-forth of the protagonist can be heartbreaking. Still, it has survived far better than one would expect, and much of this lasting good impression is based on a core of compassion that is entirely missing from earlier westerns.

Fantasia (1940)

Fantasia (1940)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2019) It’s easy, while watching Fantasia, to imagine an alternative reality in which Disney Animation Studios would have gone in a very, very different direction. Disney historians will be happy to tell you how WW2 nearly put the studio out of business: not only was the Disney business affected by the United States’ entrance in the war (taking away employees, cutting attendance, focusing popular entertainment toward propaganda which included some Disney films), but their own office spaces were used as barracks for military personnel. It took years for the studio to come back from this near-death experience, and it quickly focused on children-focused entertainment as a way back. (There’s an eight-year gap between feature-length Bambi and Cinderella, and that gap was filled by compilations of short films.) We know the rest: Disney’s post-war production was clearly aimed at kids, but that’s not so obvious in pre-war Fantasia, which is a conscious attempt to vulgarize and make accessible the high art of classical music. Integrating live-action footage of orchestra conductors and musicians, Fantasia spells out how general audiences can enjoy orchestral music, starting with visual accompaniment that can be either playful or eerie depending on the music. Everyone knows “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” of course, but there’s a lot more to the film. Segments range from abstract art to quasi-narrative pieces, with varying but generally high levels of quality. “The Pastoral Symphony” is an interesting take on mythology, with a bit more nudity than expected. “Night on Bald Mountain / Ave Maria” ends the film on a high note, with nightmarish imagery as harsh as seen in a Disney film leading to a gloriously upbeat finale. Fantasia does remain—and I don’t say this about many films, let alone Disney films—a primarily sensorial experience, designed to wash over viewers rather than being scrutinized throughout. Ironically enough, it may have been designed to bring orchestras to movie theatres, but it’s now ideally suited in the streaming era to be played on a loop as background atmosphere. It remains a very different experience (even its semi-sequel Fantasia 2000 feels far more conventional and dated twenty years later) than other Disney movies, and any cinephile can’t help but wonder what would have happened to the studio had the Fantasia experiment had more traction in the years immediately following its release.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2019) I come to the 1977 version of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh a bit late, having seen and enjoyed the 2011 Winnie the Pooh much earlier. As it happens, both movies share the same kind of gentle fun, strong characterization, meta-fictional devices, and fix-up nature. The 1977 film is more obvious as to its nature as a collection: All three segments had appeared separately as short films before being bundled together as a feature-length movie. Still, the tone is very consistent from one to the other, and the whole thing does feel of a piece. Of course, some familiarity and liking of A.A. Milne’s universe helps—it’s easy and darkly amusing to describe the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood in derogatory terms (a bear with a serious substance addiction, a tiger without personal boundaries, a donkey with clinical depression) but that’s missing the point by a hundred kilometres: it’s a charming family movie, gentle and fun and clever at the same time. As an adult, I’m perhaps more interested by the film’s metafictional tricks as the characters and narrator know that they’re in a book and sometimes take advantage of the fact. Still, the kids are likely to like the result without fuss: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is as likable as children’s stories come, and the film faithfully adapt its literary inspiration.