Month: November 2019

Kakushi-toride no san-akunin [The Hidden Fortress] (1958)

Kakushi-toride no san-akunin [The Hidden Fortress] (1958)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Noteworthy for inspiring good chunks of Star Wars, The Hidden Fortress once again finds writer-director Akira Kurosawa in feudal Japan, this time following two lowly peasants as they find themselves embroiled in serious matters of war and dynastic succession. You can clearly see R2D2 and C3P0 here, but the film is more episodic in how it constantly sends its viewpoint characters (not necessarily protagonists) from one difficult situation to another. There’s an undercurrent of dark humour running through it, and there’s a clear intention to entertain audiences through various set-pieces. While the film often gets short thrift compared to Kurosawa’s better-known and more serious samurai films, The Hidden Fortress does hold up well, and may represent a surprise for those more used to Kurosawa’s other better-known films.

Les diaboliques (1955)

Les diaboliques (1955)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Mid-1950s French cinema isn’t exactly high on my list of favourite viewing attractions, but Les diaboliques is one big exception. Even after decades of imitators, ever-stronger thrills and jaded audiences, that pure thriller still has the power to shock and surprise. Much of the plot revolves around two women plotting to murder a man and what happens afterwards. But the plot is best kept under wraps, because there’s That Scene where the impossible happens, you jump in your seat and think that the supernatural has invaded the film. It hasn’t, and the film eventually delivers a Hitchcock-grade explanation for everything. It’s quite a shocker, and writer-director Henri-Georges Clouzot, working from a suspense novel by Boileau-Narcejac, here delivers one of his best movies. Simone Signoret is also remarkable in one of the main roles—as is the crisp black-and-white cinematography. I won’t say more—good movies speak for themselves, and Les diaboliques explicitly told me not to spoil it.

101 Dalmatians (1996)

101 Dalmatians (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on-Demand, November 2019) Long before the recent spate of Disney live-action remakes, there was 101 Dalmatians, reprising the animation film with actors such as Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels and Hugh Laurie. While Disney will argue to this day that the box-office receipts justified the film, us non-shareholders will instead point to Close’s performance as one of the few reasons to watch it. She is deliciously evil playing the cruel Cruella, and some of the special effect work is rather amusing now that the state of the art has evolved far beyond what’s in the film. The rest of the film skews heavily to young audiences, with much of the shenanigans being handled by bumbling associates of Cruella. The remake simply doesn’t bring enough to the original to displace it, although we can count our blessings that it’s better that the sequel 102 Dalmatians. It’s rather amusing to read 1990s reviewers complain about the pointlessness of the remake—they clearly hadn’t seen what was yet to come.

Tôkyô monogatari [Tokyo Story] (1953)

Tôkyô monogatari [Tokyo Story] (1953)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Everyone is free to come up with their own personal top-100 films. Mine is filled with less-than-respectable spectacles, thrills, jokes, and musical numbers. But it’s important to check out the canon of accepted “greatest movies” to see what the fuss is about—and maybe see something different along the way. Many will call Tokyo Story one of the best movies of all time. I notice it doesn’t show up on top-100s, but does pop up on top-250s, 500s and 1000s. You would probably have to expand that to 10,000 if it was to figure on my own top lists, but that’s fine—this is something very different from the usual movie in themes or presentation. For one thing, it’s an early-1950s Japanese film that’s firmly set at that specific time and place, poking at the lasting impact of World War II and the social dislocation in a society transitioning to the western model. If you’re familiar with writer-director Yasujirō Ozu’s body of work, you won’t be surprised to find out that the film is incredibly slow paced, observant, meditative and character-based. The plot isn’t much more than an elderly couple travelling to Tokyo to visit their kids. That would be a safe premise for most filmmakers. But here, Ozu goes for something that is still, seventy years later, not often depicted in film—the very common experience of children rebuffing their parents, not being overly enthusiastic about their presence, and being solely focused on their own lives. It gets worse, because if you’re expecting a heartwarming moment of reconciliation, you’re going to outlast the end credit sequence: one of the leads dies, the kids still don’t care, and the survivor must continue living alone. This isn’t exactly the cheeriest of topics, nor a dramatic arc that makes viewers happy.  What’s more, the execution of the film—all static shots and languid editing—won’t make new converts either. But Tokyo Story is an important film and an unusual one. I don’t particularly like it, but I can respect it.

Marwencol (2010)

Marwencol (2010)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) A lot of people initially went from documentary Marwencol to the better-known dramatization Welcome to Marwen, but as time goes by, I expect that most viewers will go in the opposite direction. Both films are about Mark Hogancamp, a man who recovered from serious trauma by building a miniature city and developing an elaborate mythology about it, taking pictures of the evolving installation. While Robert Zemeckis’ fictional take on the story sanded off many of the edges and added eye-popping special effects to reinforce a Hollywoodized narrative, Marwencol is, from the title onward, a far more difficult work. It has reality on its side, which works to further astonishment, but also makes it more difficult to watch as well, stripped from the arms-length nature of fictionalization. There aren’t feel-good romantic arcs here, no strong therapy-completed-now-on-to-brighter-thing going on either. Hogancamp has created something remarkable out of pain, but the pain is never too far away. It limits Marwencol’s appeal, but doesn’t minimize the remarkable achievement chronicled here, or the remarkable resilience of human creativity. Interesting, but not necessarily comforting viewing.

Roma città aperta [Rome Open City] (1945)

Roma città aperta [Rome Open City] (1945)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) My objection to Italian neorealism (or neorealism of all stripes) is how unremarkable it feels—what if I don’t want to be confronted with mundane reality of ordinary people leaving ordinary lives? But that’s presuming boring lives—and there were times where (unfortunately for those who went through it) reality wasn’t boring and faithfully presenting it took us to the edges of genre films. Case in point: Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City, which leaps up my rankings of Italian neorealist films by the sole virtue of being about exciting times—resistance to the Nazis in occupied Rome during World War II. In execution, it’s about as down-to-earth as other films of its subgenre: accidental cinematography, naturalistic dialogue, non-professional actors, found locations. But where the film becomes interesting, even if you don’t know about its production history, is in inhabiting a period that would soon pass in history. It’s immediate, unromanticised, almost documentary in its approach and knowing about the film’s production confirms it: the film was shot as World War II was winding down, seven months after the Nazis left town and were replaced by the Allies. The film was released nine months later, barely after the armistice. Rome Open City thus represents a quasi-documentary capture of Rome as it blinked in the sunlight after years of totalitarianism, a plot (inspired by real events) being almost inconsequential to the portrayal of life as it was, in circumstances that we would find extraordinary. I can’t say that I had a load of fun watching the result, but considering what I usually think of Italian neorealism, my muted reaction to Rome Open City is praise enough.

Vredens dag [Day of Wrath] (1943)

Vredens dag [Day of Wrath] (1943)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) There are movies out there—many movies out there—that are critically acclaimed to the stratosphere, acclaimed as some of the greatest movies ever made, oft mentioned on extended best-of lists and basically untouchable if you want to keep showing up unharmed at movie reviewers’ secret conferences. (I kid—If there were such conferences, no two critics could agree on what to order for lunch, let along drafting a film canon.)  But when shown to any ordinary person, the film will produce a very different response: a muted sigh out of a duty completed, a checkmark on a list, a resigned sigh of satisfaction that we can go back to more entertaining fare, and the satisfaction that the film will never need to be revisited. So it is with writer-director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath, a slow-paced witchcraft romance that plays as an allegory of life under totalitarianism at a time when Dreyer was working in a Nazi-occupied country. It’s clearly made with high ambitions and high competence—but you have the time to fall asleep three times before the credits roll. Pacing is not the sole issue here—monotonous pacing with humourless writing add to the heavy atmosphere of a historical drama in oppressive times. Amusingly, the initial reaction to the film was a lot like mine—accusations of a slow boring film. Later appreciations were far more positive. But I’m sticking to my guns on this one—saw it once, don’t need to see it again.

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Post-war British film studio Ealing produced some solid hits, and the best of them usually managed a delicate balance between crime and comedy, executed in a debonair manner that made it all feel even more amusing. A near-exemplary illustration of this is The Lavender Hill Mob, a suitably funny take on a heist film in which a shipment of gold bullion is stolen, transformed, smuggled, pursued, and chased again. Alec Guinness stars with a bunch of other capable actors with none other than Audrey Hepburn making her (very short) movie debut in the framing device. It’s handled with what could be called a British flair for ridiculousness, complications and deadpan humour. Despite a bit of a mid-movie lull, The Lavender Hill Mob is 78 minutes of great fun—worth watching if you’re mining the Ealing comedies vein of cinema.

La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] (1937)

La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] (1937)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) As one of the proclaimed great films of all time, there is a lot to like in La grande illusion, but one of the most striking aspects of its success is how it blends surface thrills with much deeper concerns in a package that’s certainly not seamless, but has plenty of material for everyone no matter their level of film or historical literacy. Not only that, but the film delivers everything in ample style—writer-director Jean Renoir being one of the great figures of the French poetic realism movement. At face value, it’s a story about French prisoners of war in a WW1 detention camp, and their escape and flight to neutral territory. So far so good—there’s a compelling narrative to follow right there for those uninterested in deeper material (although the pacing of the film makes it clear that it’s not just a war escape story). But there is plenty of deeper material as well, starting with the kinship between upper-class French and German officers, and an examination of characters in the confined environment of a prisoner-of-war camp. This is where the film scores some of its best moments, some of them shamelessly quoted in later films (such as escape mechanics in The Great Escape, and a defiant rendition of La Marseillaise in Casablanca). Deeper still, however, we get into Renoir’s central themes about the crumbling European upper clauses, and the necessity of humanism even in time of war. It’s not a mean-spirited war movie, nor does it glorify it as an adventure. It does make for an impressive even today—firing on all cylinders, delivering a very controlled film. La grande illusion remains essential for students of cinema. But if you want a real story, dig into the amazing journey of the original film negative during and after World War II—especially since everyone presumed it had been lost.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, November 2019) As much as it won’t please its fans, silent cinema is often an ordeal to watch: if you’re not interested in the history of cinema, there’s not a lot in there to like other than a few comedies. So it is that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a struggle to watch. Let’s not deny its importance: It was a box-office hit in 1923, it was a large-scale production that clearly warranted much of Universal Studio’s confidence, it featured Lon Chaney and it’s considered by some as the start of the Universal Horror line-up. But if you’re looking for straight-up entertainment, well, there’s the 1939 version with sound and Charles Laughton to watch. Even then, the silent version is not that unbearable—as mentioned, a lot of effort has been made in bringing this version to the screen (recreating Paris in Los Angeles with thousands of extras), and you can at least appreciate that kind of craftsmanship. It’s historically important, at least, and you can chart the evolution of the Victor Hugo novel into its later, much streamlined adaptations by using this as an early data point. If you can get into the mindset of silent movies, this one is significantly more interesting than average by virtue of production means and horror-adjacent moments. But this should not be anyone’s introduction to silent film—so keep The Hunchback of Notre Dame in reserve for after you’ve built up your tolerance to the slow pacing and title cards.

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006)

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, November 2019) I wasn’t expecting much of Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny largely because I have long grown cold on Jack Black’s brand of in-your-face crude comedy. Yes, School of Rock was cute and his supporting performances in larger casts are often a highlight, but most of those don’t present Black’s favoured persona to its fullest. You can’t say the same about The Pick of Destiny, considering that it’s fronted by his own rock duo Tenacious D, and seems to present Black turned up to 11. While I like rock, I’m far from being the kind of full-time metalhead that the film is aimed for. Taking the frequent pre-fame band narrative and infusing it with fantastical elements such as a demonic guitar pick, the film grabs every excuse to hail the power of rock, indulge in drug culture, cram as many cameos as possible (Satan as played by Dave Grohl? Well, why not?) and swear copiously. It’s all immensely immature … and it works. I mean: it’s reasonably funny, plotted with some competence beyond episodic sequences, and the climax feels like a culmination. It’s clearly meant to be a cult movie (making the box-office disappointment of the film a forgone conclusion) and with that must come a large dose of indulgence as Black and partner Kyle Gass clearly have the times of their lives headlining their own film. It may be a case of exceeding expectations rather than a successful film, but I found The Pick of Destiny amusing enough to warrant a good review, and that’s not something I considered likely when I started watching the film.

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, November 2019) I really like engineering fiction, and The Flight of the Phoenix is clearly a landmark of the genre. The setup is a classic, as a plane goes down in the desert and the survivors must rebuild a second plane out of the wreckage of the first to fly back to civilization. The sequences in which the crashed plane is taken apart and rebuilt in a different are delicious, and even having seen the 2004 remake doesn’t quite take away the fun of the original.   But if you take a closer look, little of the plot’s middle section has to do with engineering, though: humans are their own worst enemies, and the film’s second act eventually becomes a lot of bickering between those who think the plan will work and those who don’t. Happily, the last act tightens around the effort to rebuild the plane, and the results of those efforts. While a bit too early to be considered a disaster movie, The Flight of the Phoenix’s director Robert Aldrich does anticipate one thing: the use of an ensemble cast in portraying responses to a life-threatening event. Here, the cast is better than most in having James Stewart (as a pilot, naturally) but also notables such as Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Dan Duryea and George Kennedy. The desert cinematography will make you thirsty, but the reconstruction of the second plane is credibly portrayed. The film wasn’t without difficulties, though: ace aviator (and legendary stuntman pioneer) Paul Mantz died while filming, ironically because he was replacing his flying partner in shooting the scene. The result, however, is a film that pays good tribute to those aviation pioneers and daredevils of flying—and a captivating thriller to boot.

Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo (2019)

Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2019) Few people need convincing that Danny Trejo is quite a character, but Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo will do the job anyway. Trejo, a distinctive presence that has somehow amassed over three hundred acting credits, did not follow the traditional path to fame. Born in poor circumstances, he quickly became a drug addict and petty criminal, ending up incarcerated for much of the 1960s. By the time the decade ended, he found faith, got clean, renounced the criminal life and started working odd jobs. His first screen credit dates from 1985, but it took decades of inglorious third-string roles (as the titular “Inmate #1”) before getting more prestigious assignments, culminating in leading-man roles by 2000 and then, increasingly, prestige cameos to capitalize on his notoriety. Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo is a tour of this storied life, interspaced by a look at the intervention and motivating work he somehow manages to do in-between acting jobs, and a look at a man who’s far more approachable than most of his tough-guy roles. It’s an inspiring story, and one of the most unlikely road-to-fame narratives that Hollywood has ever produced. For Trejo fans, the film is confirmation—for everyone else, it will be a revelation.

Down and out in Beverly Hills (1986)

Down and out in Beverly Hills (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) There’s something quite provincial in Hollywood making a movie about class differences in Beverly Hills—I can’t figure out whether Down and out in Beverly Hills is hypocritical or self-flagellating, although with writer-director Paul Mazursky at the helm, it’s closer to a gentle critique than outright satire. The plot gets moving once a bum nearly drowns in a rich family’s house, and they welcome him out of a sense of guilt. But the bum (as is tradition) sees clearer and thinks farther than his new dysfunctional family and before long sorts out all kinds of big and small problems. The plot schematics are obvious, but the film does a little bit better on moment-to-moment viewing thanks to a capable cast. In between Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Richard Dreyfuss and a young Elizabeth Peña (plus Little Richard as a neighbour), the film does have its charms, and recognizably aims for more than just the laughs. Thematically, I’m bothered by how the film doesn’t seem to have the courage of its convictions—I’m not sure that the dysfunctional family won’t be back to dysfunction within the week. This may be a consequence of Mazursky not quite going for comedy and not quite going for drama—Down and Out in Beverly Hills ends up being a less-than-satisfying hybrid, watchable but not admirable.

Us (2019)

Us (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2019) As an outspoken fan of writer-director Jordan Peele’s Get Out, my hopes were high for his follow-up Us … and they were dashed. There are a few things I like here: Lupita Nyong’o’s performance, a clever framing of mysterious underground places, a character inversion that, on paper, sounds good, and a provocative metaphor about (among other things) class revolution. The problems, however, start from what I seem is a fundamental mishandling of genre fiction. To put it simply (and you can look elsewhere on this site for the analysis of genre devices), the advantage that genres such as Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror have over other kinds of fiction is in literalizing the metaphor: You can take tough-to-portray concepts and make them into a monster and it works both at the literal level (the monster is chasing them!) and the metaphorical level (they are being chased by their anxieties!)  But the fundamental requirement of that approach is that it must work on the basic level before the metaphor comes into play. If it doesn’t, the best-case scenario is that the haughty neighbourhood nitpicker (like me!) will tear the story apart without figuring out the metaphor; the worst-case scenario is that even base viewers will squint their eyes and sense the disconnect, often saying, “Wait, that doesn’t make sense.”  Disbelief not being suspended, the film fails. This is exactly what happens with Us, in which an underground conspiracy that has surface appeal as a metaphor for wider social issues falls apart on examination of the most basic justification. The amount of “No, wait, that doesn’t make sense” is so obvious and frequent that it obscures whatever Peele was trying to say here—a fatal failing in trying for ambitious commentary. Get Out had that perfect union of literal and thematic—but Us (or rather, maybe, U.S.) loses its way and never makes it back. By the time the final scene rolls, it does so in pure incomprehension of what it hasn’t earned. What a disappointment. I’m sure Pelle will rebound.