Month: October 2019

Roar (1981)

Roar (1981)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, October 2019) Oh boy, what a movie. The story of the making of Roar is amazing in itself, but even if you see the movie absolutely cold you’ll be gobsmacked at what you will be seeing: a family of actors in their own rural home, interacting with a menagerie of wild cats running all around them. If you’ve grown up (like, well, everybody) with a healthy respect and primal fear of lions, tigers and panthers, that’s amazing enough. It’s hard not to be impressed by the way the actors and the animal share physical space with seemingly no barrier or protection: Far from the usual treatment of actors sharing the screen with dangerous animals, our protagonists make full physical contact with the beasts. It’s so captivating that it does take a while to realize that the story here hangs on only by the flimsiest of threads: It’s about a family joining their father in a big cat-infested house in Africa, and learning to like the animals. (Animal psychology is arguably more important in Roar than human psychology.) The scene-by-scene plotting is disjointed at best, with very little narrative cohesion from one shot to another. The editing is choppy. It feels improvised. These impressions are not accidental when you start reading about the amazing behind-the-scenes story of Roar and how it came to be. The quick version goes like this: While shooting a film in Africa, wife-and-husband Tippi Hedren and Noel Marshall came to like big cats and decided to illegally host as many of them as they could in their remote California residence. After altering the terrain to look like Africa and bringing together as many at 71 lions, 26 tigers, 10 cougars, 9 panthers and a host of other dangerous animals (including four Canadian geese potentially being the worst of them), they started shooting a movie with the noble goal of bolstering preservation efforts for big cats in Africa. Things, however, did not go as planned: The shooting took five years, not helped along by the animals’ lack of acting cooperation. There was a catastrophic flood, ruining sets, film, equipment and the producer/director/star’s own home. The finished film went unseen in North America. They went bankrupt. Animals died, either after escaping and being shot by authorities, or through illness. Roar’s five years of shooting extended to eleven years from pre-production to the final cut. Then there’s the fact that 70 people were injured on-set (some seriously, such as daughter Melanie Griffith and then-cinematographer Jan de Bont), because (as anyone knows) humans and big cats aren’t meant to live together. Imagine the crew turnover under these conditions. Hilariously enough, the film begins by the standard “No animals were harmed during the shooting of this movie”—when the film was re-released in 2005, the tagline added, “70 Cast and crewmembers were.”  The resulting footage is frankly amazing—By the time the characters share their beds with lions and tigers, it’s hard not to be scared and envious. (While nothing bad happens in the film, it was broadcast on a horror channel and my daughter flat-out refused to watch it, showing better self-preservation instincts than any character in the film.) But it does raise the question of whether this has been worth it—it’s easy to laugh in amazement at the kind of madness that led to the existence of the film, but only because nobody died along the way. Still, it exists, and its 2005 re-release did much to remind people of the fact: in the annals of moviemaking, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more amazing making-of than the story of how Roar came to be.

Saboteur (1942)

Saboteur (1942)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) I’m nearing the end of my essential Hitchcock viewing regimen (I’ve seen all his top tier, almost everything in his middle tier and am now focused on his 1930s production), and with that knowledge of his body of work it’s easy to recognize in 1942’s Saboteur a rough blueprint of plot elements he used during his entire career. Let’s see: a romantically antagonistic couple-on-the-run from The 39 Steps to North by Northwest. Musical Leitmotifs from The Lady Vanishes to The Man Who Knew Too Much. Climactic use of a national landmark, repeated in North by Northwest as well. The usual blend of small humorous touches and taut suspense sequences. The fuzzy nature of the antagonist’s overall allegiances à la not-to-be-confused-with Sabotage. Described as such, Saboteur does run the risk of being perceived as a collage of elements from other Hitchcock movies, but that’s ignoring the fact that it still works remarkably well: It may be a middle-tier work for him, but it’s still as enjoyable as it was in 1942—perhaps more so given the period feel and wartime paranoia so clearly described here. (Substitute “terrorist” for “saboteur” and you’d have a solid basis for a contemporary update.)  Hitchcock even at his most mediocre is still well worth watching, and Saboteur is a further proof of that.

The Land Before Time (1988)

The Land Before Time (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) I find myself curiously laconic in describing The Land Before Time. What you need to know is that it’s an animated film from Don Bluth, which was trying at the time to compete with Walt Disney as a purveyor of animated family films. It’s set in prehistoric times, with a young dinosaur trying to find a place to live after the death of his mom (oops, there’s the Disney touch right there) and making friends along the way. Despite the film’s claim to fame as having spawned no less than thirteen direct-to-video follow-ups to date, it’s also as bland as it’s possible to be. Aimed at kids and not badly made in any sense of the word, it’s a by-the-number exercise in family movies. Dinosaur fans will appreciate, even though the film inevitably doesn’t reflect the dramatic accumulation of knowledge in the field in the past 30 years. The film is almost exactly what you think it will be from looking at a plot summary or the box cover: a kid’s friend dinosaur adventure. Nothing more, nothing less.

Blood, Sweat and Terrors (2018)

Blood, Sweat and Terrors (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) Anthology films often get some deserved flack—by design, they’re a collection of smaller, lower-budgeted efforts often executed without narrative or even tonal consistency. Blood, Sweat and Terrors is more prone to these criticisms than most other similar movies in that it’s an authentic collection of shorter movies often made and distributed before being collected here. Unlike other anthologies, the movies were not all specifically commissioned for the project, and aren’t wrapped up in a larger frame. That last element can have an influence on audience reactions to the first few segments, as it becomes clear that the first one wasn’t meant to be a framing device for the others à la VHS. Unlike many other anthologies in which the theme is horror-based, Blood, Sweat and Terrors focuses on thrills and action, although not necessarily on a realistic register: some do end up in fantastic territory and many more take a rather heightened approach to filmmaking. Opinions will vary on the results. Opening segment “Empire of Dust” gets from a shootout to a demonic explanation, but it sets a tone that the rest of the film can’t quite follow. “Awesome Runaway” is, conceptually, more interesting but it stumbles in its execution: As a fever dream of someone idealizing an escape with over-the-top heroics, it’s not executed finely enough to fully realize its ambitions. “Jacob’s Wrath” is more ponderous in the ways it mixes reality with imagination, but I was pleasantly surprised to recognize Ottawa’s own Shaw Centre as a shooting location, and realize that filmmaker Alexandre Carrière is local. The best segment in the film is “Express Delivery,” which mixes some savvy action filmmaking, funny one-liners and enough plot to make it interesting: writer-director/star Beau Fowler has often used the film as a calling card and it’s easy to see why. The other noteworthy entry here (opinions will vary) is the closing “Fetch,” which packages a bit of neo-noir into a short but amusing package. The Canadian representation here is high considering that it’s packaged by Toronto-area production companies. Despite the international pedigree of maybe half the entries, Blood, Sweat and Terrors qualifies as CanCon for broadcasting purposes—meaning that it’s going to be a fixture of at least one cable channel for years to come. It’s not a bad choice if you’re an action/suspense fan looking for a few quick bits to watch: The quality is uneven, but the next one is usually better.

All the Right Moves (1983)

All the Right Moves (1983)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, October 2019) If you want your movie to accumulate some unearned posterity, there is no better way than having the lead actors become one of Hollywood’s superstars. In other words, I don’t think we’d remember All the Right Moves so fondly if it didn’t star Tom Cruise in the lead role. In many ways, it’s entirely forgettable teen movie. A bit grittier than most, it follows a crucial moment in the life of our protagonist, a high-school senior who wants to become an engineer, but whose only ticket out of town may be a football scholarship. As a product of the early 1980s that owes a lot to the New Hollywood of the previous decade, it’s often aiming to be a slice of blue-collar Americana, with The Mill looming large as the town’s biggest employer and the desperation to escape a small-town life being central to the character’s motivation. The drama comes in after a crucial football loss, with events leading our protagonist to antagonize the football coach and perhaps his only way out. But, of course, our protagonist is a likable guy stuck between various loyalties, and the way these Horatio Algeresque fables resolve themselves usually comes by having him rewarded for his virtues. All the Right Moves is not a complicated film: Even if the ending appears to pop out of nowhere, it’s meant to be a bit of a sop to conventional moral values. The draw here was and remains a freshly faced Tom Cruise, in one of his early roles before Risky Business put him on the map. As a film, it’s a bit of an unremarkable high school drama. As a look at early Cruise, though, it does still have its merits.

Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)

Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) So there’s a boarding school and then monsters attack the boarding school and that’s all you really need to know about Slaughterhouse Rulez, isn’t it? Sure, you can add complications and plot justifications such as fracking causing the monsters to rise to the surface and attack a school where misfit protagonists are bullied by upper-crust antagonists, but we all know where it’s going to end: With most of our heroes alive, all the bullies dead, and the school spectacularly blown up. I’m really not spoiling anything here, so closely does the film follow the usual arc of just about any comparable B-movie. Of course, the devil is in the detail and this is where Slaughterhouse Rulez does a bit better: small character touches and the presence of three capable adult actors (Michael Sheen as a tyrannical headmaster, but also Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in likable supporting roles) round out a young cast. The stereotypes are rampant (of course, the head bully is a rich blond guy) and the sequences are familiar, but it’s part of the charm of the film to go through the expected paces at a predictable speed. Of course, this means that there’s little left to discover once you’ve figured out where it’s going. Whether this is good or bad for Slaughterhouse Rulez will depend on your mood at the time: there’s a time and place even for a lighthearted monster movie that does everything by the numbers, and that may be this evening. I’ve seen much worse … but then again, I’ve seen much better as well.

The Hoard (2018)

The Hoard (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) As someone whose deadpan style of humour is often mistaken for sincerity, I feel particularly uneasy at criticizing The Hoard for being far too restrained in its comedy. A low-budget Canadian mockumentary depicting a reality show going horribly wrong, it’s inanely successful at replicating the overdramatic aesthetics of cable reality TV. Mashing together three kinds of shows, The Hoard posits a fictional “Extremely Haunted Hoarders” show that features paranormal investigators, hoarding counselling experts and a good old home renovation crew. They all come to a small Midwestern town recognized as the hoarding capital of the United States in order to clean out three houses belonging to a man with an affinity for buying stuff at estate sales. The muddled TV Show premise somehow blends that with paranormal mysteries and “renovate or demolish” decisions, but the point here is to blend subgenres to provide enough plot for 90 minutes. It does take a long time for The Hoard to get anywhere close to cruising altitude and feel as if it’s finally paying off for viewers: The first half feels like a bizarre half-committed pastiche of cable TV shows without much in terms of laughs or horror. The premise doesn’t make sense, the spooky patter is overdone and even being familiar with the way reality TV is constructed and shown (pretty much a prerequisite for watching this film) doesn’t quite make it more approachable. The third quarter of the film does get unexpectedly funnier, though, as the three plot strands of the film go off flying in increasingly stupid directions, the implied horror of the first quarter finally shifting into territory where the horrific is explained into comedy. But The Hoard remains sold as a horror film, and perhaps unfortunately the last fifteen minutes finally rush to provide the blood, gore and senseless deaths that justify the label but don’t exactly improve the results. Having gone from conceptual satire to humour to horror, The Hoard ends with a lot of messy, unrealized potential. There are plenty of paths either not taken or not left alone, with a few intriguing ideas mentioned but not used effectively. There’s even an entire facet of reality TV show left unexplored: the production, with cameramen curiously sticking around from multiple angles even when there’s a murderous psycho swinging an axe around. The Hoard isn’t a complete waste of time (writer-director Jesse Thomas Cook is clearly improving upon his previous Monster Brawl) but it’s a disappointment nonetheless. Even the deadpan humour often proves to be, well, not funny.

Glass (2019)

Glass (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) Movie reviewers have been saying for decades that you can never know what to expect from writer/direct M. Night Shyamalan, but that statement circa-2019 means something very different than what it did back in the early-2000s. It was about plot twists back then, but it’s about overall film quality right now: While Shyamalan’s work is now generally better than his 2002–2014 nosedive, his last few movies have been sharply uneven even within themselves, with his clever direction often fighting against his own exasperating writing. Glass is the latest case study—a disappointing third entry in a trilogy that should have been left as two disconnected first instalments. Here the main characters of Unbreakable and Split are brought together by shadowy operatives trying to prove that they’re mistaken about thinking of themselves as super-powered. The good news, I suppose, is that Shyamalan’s direction is usually effective, that Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and James McAvoy deliver good performances, and that the first hour of the film has its moments even if it appears to be wasting everyone’s time by trying to prove that a superhero film isn’t about superheroes. By trying to ground itself in psychological thrills, Glass almost becomes a bore until it gets down to business. Then the last third of the film starts and viewers must buckle down for a climax that throws away three films’ worth of built-up credibility. Not only does Shyamalan make sure to double underline every belated clever idea he may have had about comic books (perhaps he hasn’t noticed that, in the meantime, nearly everyone in the entire moviegoing universe has become a comic-book expert), he squanders away a lot of goodwill (for instance by killing a major character by drowning him in a puddle) and concludes on a self-satisfied note that will feel jejune to many viewers. Glass does have a few good ideas, but the way it gets at them is either wasteful or ineffective. Sarah Paulson holds her own against the established actors of the series, but the biggest problem here is once again Shyamalan-the-writer undermining anything that Shyamalan-the-director can do. Frankly, Glass isn’t nearly as innovative as it thinks in bringing back superheroes in the real world through psychobabble, skepticism, and dull colours: there are several handfuls of other movies having attempted the same since Unbreakable, and often in a way that doesn’t have viewers feeling as if they’re the chumps.

Trick or Treat (1986)

Trick or Treat (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, October 2019) I first saw bits and pieces of Trick or Treat in the mid-eighties at a party at a friend’s house, but I say “bits and pieces” because I was a young teenager at the time, and I had no tolerance for horror movies at all — the entire thing felt too horrifying to watch (I peeked in between other things and remember the shop class scene fakeout to this day) except for the part where the girl gets undressed by the demonic music which was like the best thing ever for a twelve-year-old. Middle-aged me remembered exactly two things about the film (the shop class and the girl), which is not too bad over three decades. Of course, middle-aged me is incredibly jaded toward the horror genre, and my main takeaway from Trick or Treat now is that it’s not funny enough. Let me explain: Made following the rock music moral panic of the 1980s, it’s a film that sort-of-tried to lampoon the cultural obsession of the time (as the bullied protagonist gathers the help of a dead rock star through playing his last album backwards) but at the same time fully going all-in on the idea of a rock star being brought back to life to commit murderous mayhem. (And also, not to forget the finer things, to undress girls.) It feels a bit uncommitted in between the humour and the horror, eventually deciding to invest more in the horror. Which, being jaded, I’ve seen countless times. It doesn’t help that Trick or Treat has very few rules to follow for itself, bouncing around from one weird thing to another. Gene Simmons has a small role (so does Ozzy Osborne, apparently, but not in the French-language version I watched) in between many unknowns. Still, the film is at its best when it gives us a glimpse into the high school experience of eighties metalheads, often bullied and misunderstood by people around them. It does remain a very 1980s movie for better or for worse, although the musical aspect does make it a bit more memorable than other movies of the time. As I can testify.

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) There are Oscar-nominated movies that age so poorly that it’s a wonder why they were ever nominated, and then there are those where it’s still obvious, decades later, why they were. Anne of the Thousand Days belongs to the second category, give how lavishly it portrays one of the high points of any High School history curriculum. Here we are, once again, in King Henry VIII’s court as he throws a hissy fit about his right to divorce whoever he wants. This being said, Richard Burton ably plays him, and he gets to face off with a very young and fiery Genevieve Bujold as the titular Anne (Elizabeth I’s mom, if you’re keeping track). It’s not just a costume drama: it’s one of the ultimate examples of the form. The colours and cinematography still impress fifty years later, with more camera movements than we could expect from a film of that period. Alas, my interest for such subject matter is near an all-time low (I blame High School), and I found myself more bored than intrigued by the result even if I can recognize that it’s a superior example of such. Even I ended up appreciating some of the touches of high drama, humour or romance in the middle of a very well-known story. It liked it quite a bit better than A Man for All Seasons, for instance. But at least I can now take it out of my list of Oscar nominees I still hadn’t seen.

Gong fu yu jia [Kung Fu Yoga] (2017)

Gong fu yu jia [Kung Fu Yoga] (2017)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) I chose to watch Kung Fu Yoga based on its rather silly title, but an equally effective way to get me to watch would have been to describe it as Jackie Chan meets Bollywood, because this is as close to a fusion of two beloved genres as I’ve seen so far. The premise isn’t that complicated, with a Chinese archeologist (Jackie Chan, older but still as willing to get into action scenes) teaming up with an Indian heiress (Disha Patani, superb) to find a thousand-year-old treasure. This is an excuse for a lighthearted globetrotting action/adventure film, taking us from glaciers to ancient temples as various treasures are pursued. As an excuse to string actions sequences along a plot threat it’s not bad, but not all segments are equal: There is a lot of CGI here and it’s rarely invisible. While this allows the filmmakers to go as wild as they can (the best sequence is a car chase through Dubai with a mixture of supercars and oversized SUVs, with Jackie Chan hijacking one of the later to find that it has a lion in the back seat), it also gives an unrealistic feel to much of Kung Fu Yoga. (Even as standard-definition broadcast on regular TV, it often looked like a blurry mess.)  The script itself isn’t quite as polished as it could be: While the ending features a classic-style Chan fight sequence followed by nothing else than a classic Bollywood dance number featuring the main cast, what’s in-between is a disappointing anticlimax in which the fighters simply agree to stop as a colourful religious group walks in. Some segments are duller than others when measured against the highlights (such as the Indian Festival sequence featuring Indian rope trick, cobras, and a levitating fakir). The direction feels limited, while the inclusion of subplots featuring younger assistants distracts from Chan’s own character arc—a bit of focus would have helped, even in a film barely more than an hour and a half. Then there’s the quasi-mystical nature of Yoga in this film’s universe, which I’m not going to get into. But even Kung Fu Yoga’s imperfections can’t quite erase the sheer fascinating nature of a Chinese/Indian collaboration with its own geopolitical overtones. (This may be the first silly adventure film to explicitly mention the Chinese government’s grandiose “One Way One Road” policy.) As for me, I’ve always been a Jackie Chan fan and I have an interest in Indian cinema, so Kung Fu Yoga hits two right spots at once.

Bikini Beach (1964)

Bikini Beach (1964)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) Considering that Bikini Beach is the third of the Beach Party series films that I’ve seen, it’s fair to say that I’ve developed not only a slight fascination for these films, but also a better sense of what they share (Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, beach parties, surfing, dancing, teenage antics, and the least threatening biker in film history) and what they don’t. In Bikini Beach, we have a millionaire aiming to close the beach, a British rock star that could have been played by Mike Myers, some drag racing and a chimpanzee who’s not as smart as the teenagers as much as the teenagers are as dumb as it is. As with other films in the series, it’s meant to be dumb fun rather than high art and it succeeds reasonably well at giving us a taste of this very particular variation of the 1960s atmosphere. There are a few decent set-pieces here and there despite (or sometimes because) of the low budget and straightforward style. Avalon has fun portraying the British pop star (the influence of The Beatles isn’t subtle), drag racing is actually kind of interesting, and Harvey Lembeck once again gets a few smiles as Eric Von Zipper (a character that actually grew on me throughout the series). Bikini Beach isn’t the finest film of the series nor a particularly enlightened choice by itself, but it’s amusing enough in a time-capsule kind of way to be worth a look if that’s your kind of thing.

Indecent Proposal (1993)

Indecent Proposal (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) I thought I would enjoy Indecent Proposal. The subject matter is off-putting by design, but who could imagine that a film with Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Robert Redford could go wrong? To its credit, the film tells you almost from its first thirty seconds that it’s not going to be fun, as a couple reflects on what they had together. One flashback later and we’re quickly off to the celebrated premise of the film as our young couple struggles with money problems and Redford steps in as a billionaire playboy so smitten with her that he offers them a million dollars for a night with her. (In the mid-nineties, this became a popular party question.)  But for such a saucy premise, Indecent Proposal soon sinks in preposterousness and boredom. Directed without much energy nor precision by Adrian Lyne (from a script that reportedly toned down much of the novel’s ambiguity), it’s a film that quickly becomes a feat of endurance as we move from one obvious set-piece to another, the resolution never in doubt even despite the misleading prologue. The longer it goes on after delivering on its premise, Indecent Proposal multiplies the double standards, attempts to make heroes out of obnoxious characters and showcases retrograde ideas about, well, just about everything linked to sex and women. Harrelson is miscast as an intellectual, Moore’s beauty isn’t equalled by an equivalent acting talent, and Redford himself can’t use his charisma to hide the smarminess of his character. It’s all a bit sad, and most fatally, interminable. It took me only a few minutes to lower my expectations, and they stayed there for the rest of the film.

The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954)

The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) British film history is rife with movies with a very peculiar sense of humour, turning dramatic subjects in excuses for unusual comedy and oddball characters. The first iteration of The Belles of St. Trinian’s wasn’t an original movie concept (it was based on a series of comic drawings), but it certainly embraces the counter-intuitive appeal of the concept: A finishing school for girls where, in the series’ most defining quote, “At most schools, girls are sent out quite unprepared for a merciless world but, when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared.”  Our mildly delinquent fourth-form girls here have to fight against the overly delinquent sixth-form girls as their actions threaten the school. Horse kidnapping, nitroglycerin-making and overall mischief are involved. It’s all delightfully amoral, testing the boundaries of conventional boarding school movies and leaving plenty of space for solid British deadpan comedy. While the formula is a bit unformed (later St. Trinian’s movies would pit the school against outside opponents), it’s a good one and there’s little wonder why the film series was rebooted in 2004.

Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)

Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) There are movies that you must see merely because of their titles, and Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! certainly qualifies. Can anything measure up to the promises of the title? Well, maybe. In this case, we get Bob Hope as a middle-aged married man who accidentally gets his phone call connected (back in the time of operators who could mess up the cabling) to a runaway Hollywood bombshell desperate to stay away from the limelight. Many hijinks ensue, all the way to the police thinking he murdered the woman. It’s all complicated by the meddling of his maid, played as performance art by the irrepressible exploded-haired Phillis Diller. Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is not what we’d call a refined or subtle comedy: The reactions are all exaggerated as if this was an extended sitcom episode, and the film barely makes an attempt to smooth in Hope’s usual one-liners or Diller’s over-the-top antics. Both of them easily outshine Elke Sommer, playing the bombshell and filmed as provocatively (in a bubble bath) as a 1960s film could get away with. The plotting is elementary, but the film strikes a chuckle every few minutes, and it’s amiable enough to be charming in its own way. (I’ve seen the film mentioned a few times as the “worst” of this-or-that category and that seems an exaggeration—perhaps the title was too imposing for those reviewers.)  All in all, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is a happy discovery—and it does live up to its magnificently silly title.