Month: March 2020

I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)

I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2020) I’m not sure that I’m Gonna Git You Sucka is as distinctive today as it was when it came out. Black voices in cinema are significantly more numerous now, and you can now program at least a day’s worth of a blaxploitation spoof film festival. But there’s a semi-pioneering aspect to writer-director-star Keenen Ivory Wayans’s big-screen debut that should be highlighted along the film’s innate qualities. Not that I’m Gonna Git You Sucka is any less silly not knowing the context—although knowing more about Blaxploitation certainly helps, as the film finds roles (big and small) for stars of the earlier era of black-starring thrillers and rarely wastes an occasion to make specific references. It’s generally funny, although there’s some awkwardness to the way the film tries to be absurd and yet sustain a strong narrative—there are plenty of times where twenty-first-century viewers (perhaps trained on more modern takes on similar material) will wonder when the next joke is coming. To be fair, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka does find a surer footing in its later half as the gags become more visual, more self-assured and more focused. It even weaves in some stinging social commentary without overdoing it in the way that more modern takes have often done, so there’s plenty to dig into beyond just jokes. There’s a surprisingly good cast here, including Chris Rock’s debut in a small but showy role. The spoof comedy subgenre has certainly seen far worse—indeed, tracking the Wayan’s downward trajectory in matters of crudeness, it’s regrettable that the family didn’t follow in the tradition of I’m Gonna Git You Sucka rather than end up with White Chicks and digging downward.

Sgt. Bilko (1996)

Sgt. Bilko (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2020) One of the endearing things about the United States is their ability to be self-critical… at least once in a while. In-between the militarism of the national culture, you can find a surprisingly robust subculture of acid military comedy (Catch-22, Stripes, Buffalo Soldiers, Jarhead, etc.) taking potshots at the institution, its profligate waste and meaningless traditions. This is a lot of weight to place on a silly comedy like Sgt. Bilko (although, as the credits say, “The filmmakers gratefully acknowledge the total lack of cooperation from the United States Army.”), but I have a feeling that it wouldn’t have been a viable commercial project if it wasn’t for the veteran masses, who understand all too well what goes on within the US armed forces. Still, Sgt. Bilko wouldn’t be nearly as funny as it is without the match between Steve Martin and the titular character, a fast-talking smart-aleck trickster figure who happens to make US Army money flow in his direction. It’s quite a character, and it allows Martin to play up a good chunk of his physical comedy powers—in many ways, this plays closer to 1980s-era Martin than the syrupy family-friendly films he did increasingly often during the 1990s. (Not that Sgt. Bilko isn’t family-friendly—the film is rated PG despite its institutional anarchism.) In addition to the great cast (Dan Aykroyd, Phil Hartman, Glenne Headly and others), it’s a real pleasure to see Martin tear into the material—pratfalls, wisecracks, sure-footed self-confidence rampaging through anyone trying to trap him. But there we succumb once again to social analysis: Bilko is a symbol of what happens when unshackled self-interested capitalism makes its way inside the socialist enclave of military administration meant to provide benefits for all. Yes, Sgt. Bilko is a silly, fun, slightly dumb family comedy. But it also works as something more, and there’s where lies the interest of the film.

Sabrina (1995)

Sabrina (1995)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2020) Remaking a Bogart/Hepburn movie is a losing proposition, especially if the original film was written and directed by Billy Wilder. Having established this, this updated remake of Sabrina is not that much of an embarrassment, as long as you’re in an indulgent mood. At the top of the ticket, Harrison Ford is good (but not Bogart and uncomfortable in the part), while Julia Ormond is all right, but can’t come closer to Aubrey Hepburn than anyone else. Plot-wise, the filmmakers do what they can to update the 1950s material to the 1980s, even if the most notable difference between the two films is in the technical aspects—including a notable improvement to the Paris sequence, which is actually shot in Paris. Otherwise, well—the story is still about an awkward man romancing someone significantly younger than him, blending business and old-money surroundings and romance. This Sabrina works if you soft-pedal a lot of the film’s fairytale trappings, excuse Ford for not being ideally suited to the role, ignore the age and/or class difference between the two, and gloss over the pacing. Which is admittedly asking for a lot. Surprisingly, the one thing that has aged rather well is the 1990s setting, now almost as distant and exotic to viewers as the 1950s were to remake viewers. (Note: this does not mean I’m advocating for another remake.) Still, there’s still some charm to this remake—Ford in glasses and suits, Ormond’s curly hair and the soft-focus gloss of 1990s romantic comedies. It’s not quite enough to dislodge the first film as the better Sabrina, but it’s just enough to make this remake its own entity.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) In case you’re wondering: Yes, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is a real thing, and it’s repulsive. In case you’re wondering what it’s about, here’s a refresher: it’s a movie adaptation of a set of crudely humorous trading cards that satirized the syrupy-sweet Cabbage Patch Kids. I’m old enough to remember the furor around the cards when they were released in the mid-1980s, and while the negative reaction to the cards was overblown (there’s nothing in the cards that wasn’t done earlier by MAD Magazine, Edward Gorey or EC Comics), the aghast reaction to the movie adaptation is entirely justified. Literalizing the grotesque drawings and studied weirdness of the cards into live action leads us straight into the uncanny valley—using short-stature actors under plastic makeup to play the Kids is immediately heave-inducing, and the film doubles down repeatedly on its original sin through crude dumb jokes, amateurish filmmaking, perplexing staging, atrocious dialogue and whatever else can go wrong in a movie. As if that wasn’t enough, the film even has the audacity to push a message about beauty… that’s thoroughly muddled by everything the film does. The only question you’ll be asking is “whyyyyyy?“ While The Garbage Pail Kids Movie has acquired some notoriety as a cult movie in the past few decades, anyone even remotely tempted to watch it should be warned that it’s going to play as an endurance contest.

Bai she chuan shuo [The Sorcerer and the White Snake] (2011)

Bai she chuan shuo [The Sorcerer and the White Snake] (2011)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2020) Jet Li stars in action fantasy film The Sorcerer and the White Snake and that has become a bit of a strong selling point now that Li has almost retired from acting. (He was ill for much of the mid-2010s and noticeably older when he recovered, which is a notable factor for an action star persona.) The film itself is… fine. The story has something to do with forbidden love between humans and snake demons, meaning that there’s a lot (and I mean a lot) of CGI being used to execute the near-incessant fight scenes within this film’s 93 minutes. The CGI, alas, is very, very rough—about 10–15 years behind Western movies at that point. (Chinese films greatly improved their CGI throughout the 2010s, but it remains a bit of a dodgy area.) The romantic aspect adds a bit of heart, but most of The Sorcerer and the White Snake is one fight after another while CGI stuff is thrown on-screen, meaning that it overstays its welcome despite its short duration. I found it entertaining but nothing more: somewhat different from western fantasy epics, but not necessarily worth the watch considering that there’s much-better similar material being done at a steady pace. Although, admittedly, without Jet Li.

Born to Dance (1936)

Born to Dance (1936)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Eleanor Powell is always worth watching, but James Stewart singing in a song-and-dance musical? Now that’s definitely worth a watch. No, as Born to Dance shows, he’s not good at it: there’s a reason why, in a long career, Stewart didn’t do many musical comedies. But to see him try to hold a note while Powell tap-dances up a storm around him is something well worth experiencing. The plot is an old staple of movie musicals: sailors on leave getting up to all sorts of romantic and comic hijinks. Still, it works well as a receptacle in which to place the musical numbers. Perhaps the most impressive of those is the finale, in which Powell tap-dances on a stage meant to look like a battleship: the kind of lavish, expansive musical numbers that defined the 1930s movie musical. Since Powell didn’t star in that many movies in a ten-year career, this performance (like many of her other ones) is a gem—and adding a young premier like Steward merely sweetens the pot. The rest of Born to Dance? Watchable, amusing, not necessarily memorable but quite entertaining in its own way. Powell, though: unforgettable.

Journey Into Fear (1943)

Journey Into Fear (1943)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) There’s something slightly insane about those WW2 thrillers shot and released as the war was going on—trying to comment on topical events despite the long length of film production (which was admittedly shorter then than now) and the possibility that real-world events would overtake them. And that’s not even mentioning the biggest uncertainty of all: not knowing how the war would end. Usually, screenwriters went around this problem by focusing on personal adventures, slightly blurring the background, cranking up the propaganda and hoping for the best. Journey into Fear is one of those instant-WW2 thrillers, but making life even harder on itself by adapting a 1940 novel. (Famously, the film’s protagonist has to escape to another country than in the book because France had been overrun by the Nazis in-between.) The result is a claustrophobic thriller about escaping the Nazis in one of the less overexposed fronts of WW2: Turkey. Journey into Fear is short (68 minutes!) and to the point, with a rather good action climax after a film that largely takes place aboard a passenger ship filled with tension. Orson Welles shows up on-screen and seems to have fun as a Turkish general, but the film’s messy production history holds that Welles was also involved as screenwriter, director and producer—effectively making this an unofficial early-Welles picture. Joseph Cotten and the beautiful Dolores Del Río also co-star to good effect. While not a great movie, Journey into Fear remains an effective thriller, and to think it was produced as the war went or, with no less a mercurial presence as Welles, is almost mind-boggling.

Nine Months (1995)

Nine Months (1995)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2020) Writer-director Chris Columbus’ assignment on Nine Months was simple: turn in a slightly hysterical portrayal of a commitment-phobe young man in the process of becoming a father. Whether he succeeded is debatable. There are certainly good arguments in favour: Hugh Grant is in full befuddled floppy-raised butterfly-blinking mode here, almost sending up his own early-career persona. If you care about cutie redheads, there’s a young and soft Julianne Moore, plus Joan Cusack as an unexpected bonus. A strong supporting cast includes Tom Arnold, Jeff Goldblum and Robin Williams doing an Eastern-European shtick. Nine Months is luminously shot in beautiful San Francisco, and has a few amusing comic moments. Alas, it’s not all good, and what’s not good arguably overwhelms the rest. Columbus has significant problems striking an even tone between the universality of its premise and the wild comic extremes of some sequences. Much of the character drama that should emerge organically instead seems contrived through characters who make dumb choices because the script requires it to prolong the tension. Even for comic effects, the protagonist seems remarkably clueless. Suspension of disbelief snaps a few times, whether it’s from perplexing character actions, or even simple physics. (No, you can’t be suddenly hit in the face by a swing you’re casually pushing.) Nine Months tries hard, and probably too hard: it tries to take two directions at once and ends up confused about what it was trying to do.

Hud (1963)

Hud (1963)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) The mark of a great actor can be to make you cheer, even reluctantly, for a terrible character. This, thanks to Paul Newman, is the key to Hud: He plays a strikingly unpleasant person, but somehow transforms it into a compelling performance through sheer charisma. Perhaps aware that such a character is best watched from afar, the film doesn’t give Hud the viewpoint character—that goes to a younger man who’s initially smitten with Hud’s personality, but grows progressively disillusioned as the film goes by and nearly everyone walks away from Hud after seeing who he truly is. While comfortably set in 1960s rural western America, Hud is not a traditional western: in various ways, it undermines and destroys the myth of the morally superior self-reliant rancher. By the end of the film, Hud finds himself alone, on a farm with nearly nothing left of his father’s efforts. Some moments are hard to watch, either because of basic empathy (the cattle slaughter) or because of psychological devastation (as Hud becomes isolated). This makes Newman’s anchor performance even more important in drawing viewers even as everything goes wrong. A great supporting cast wraps it up. I would suggest a double-bill with the somewhat similar The Last Picture Show (they both share roots in a Larry McMurty novel), but only if you can stand nearly four hours of unalloyed rural Texas misery.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Considering Quentin Tarantino’s fascination for older movies, it was almost inevitable that he’d end up recreating Hollywood history sooner or later. With Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, he gets to recreate 1969 Los Angeles in his own idiosyncratic fashion, playing up the iconography but avoiding many clichés along the way. In some ways, it’s a less overly experimental film than many of his previous ones: the direction remains grounded most of the time, and the film doesn’t overuse splashy effects. On the other hand, it’s still Tarantino and that means it’s quite unlike most other movies at the multiplex: it eventually becomes an alternate-reality drama, it has fun with narration, it plays off its actors’ career and it makes copious use of very long sequences that play almost in real-time. At times, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is less of a story and more of an immersion in a reality fifty years distant, taking in the mundane sights and sounds of a specific time and place. It’s quite a bit of fun even when it multiplies the obscure references of its day-in-the-life style, and the actors look as if they’re having fun. Brad Pitt has a terrific role as the guy who’s usually smarter than anyone else in the room and Margot Robbie is luminous as a Sharon Tate saved from her real-world fate (a justifiable historical inaccuracy) but the real winners here are the viewers for a quick trip through a time machine.

Way Out West (1930)

Way Out West (1930)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) In many ways, there isn’t much to gnaw upon in Way Out West—it’s a comedy western made at a very rough stage of American filmmaking, with sound technology not meshing particularly well with the on-location shooting and a not-so-great image quality. The story, about a city slicker huckster being forced to pay back his debts on a tough-guys ranch, is amusing but not particularly revolutionary. But the one exception to this autopilot comedy western is not a small one—dating from the wilder and woollier Pre-Code era, Way Out West was freer to be quite suggestive. Lead actor William Haines was one of the few acknowledged homosexual leading men in Hollywood at the time, and if you know where to look, the film is crammed with saucy allusions about him being in a big macho camp. (As per the film’s most noticeable double entendre goes: “I’m the wildest pansy you ever picked.”) It’s not a consistent queer reading of the film, as a romance is forced into the plot and the dialogue loses its sassiness in its last act, but it does add a lot to a film that was effectively banned through the Production Code years and could have been forgotten along the way. Nowadays, well, Way Out West becomes one of the most interesting westerns of the early 1930s because it’s so off-colour.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Part of the fun of watching Hollywood history is seeing talented performers getting paired up even when the match isn’t quite harmonious. Frank Sinatra—brilliant singer. Gene Kelly—terrific dancer. Both of them together? Well, you have to see Take Me Out to the Ball Game how they play together… and having Esther Williams as the female lead doesn’t hurt either. A prestige song-and-dance show from MGM (in Technicolour!), it blends its leads’ skills with America’s sport and the usual trappings of musical comedies. The highlight is the theme song, but there are a few good moments elsewhere too: Esther Williams inevitably dips into a pool at some point, and while director Busby Berkeley’s imprint on the film is faint (he only shot a small portion of it, and the rest was reportedly completed by Kelly and Stanley Donen), there are still traces of it in the finished product. On the other hand, there’s some weird stuff as well: the references to suicide and pedophilia in the middle of an upbeat wolf-whistling song are a bit off-putting to say the least. Also not quite as controlled for twenty-first century viewers: double standards in how a determined woman is portrayed compared to the equally persistent male characters. Ah well—this is from the late 1940s, after all. Still, a muddled average and no high peaks means that Take Me Out to the Ball Game suffers in comparison to other Sinatra/Kelly vehicles like On the Town and Anchors Aweigh. They can’t all be perfect. In this case, it still means we get Sinatra singing and Kelly dancing.

One Fine Day (1996)

One Fine Day (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, March 2020) Twenty-some years later, it’s amusing to see that a romantic comedy like One Fine Day has only appreciated in the interim. As an old-fashioned star vehicle, it runs on pure charm and that’s OK—Michelle Pfeiffer was already famous when the film came out (and has remained in the spotlight since then), but this was one of the films that first cemented George Clooney’s status as a movie star. His continued success since 1996 seems inevitable considering the swagger he shows here, even as a junior actor to his co-star. The film is a conscious throwback to 1930s screwball comedies with apt 1990s touches, as two single parents try to navigate a busy schedule with kids in tow… and each other’s cell phones.  This is all very predictable stuff, but director Michael Hoffman playfully handles the execution with a zippy peppy style, whether it’s shooting in numerous rainy Manhattan locations or letting the crackling dialogue take centre stage. The pacing drags slightly in the evening of the single day in which everything takes place, but thankfully keeps a strong spatiotemporal unity. A few additional touches are endearing: Clooney with dark hair; use of split screen; likable father-daughter relationship; use of bulky cell phones; a journalism subplot; and a strongly structured script. One Fine Day is such a likable film that it’s no surprise for it to be fondly remembered to this day—and not just because two famous actors happen to star in it.

After Truth: Disinformation and the cost of Fake News (2019)

After Truth: Disinformation and the cost of Fake News (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) At an age of tribal epistemology, having to even discuss the nature of truth is infuriating… but there we are, hostage to a presidential madman whose narcissism is so strong that he has to distort reality in order to live in the world. That would be bad enough by itself, but it’s made worse by a menagerie of enablers rushing to create a universe of parallel falsehoods, and a mass of people credulous enough (or manipulated enough, if you’re feeling charitable) to believe all of it, sometimes for pure entertainment. So is the world in which After Truth: Disinformation and the cost of Fake News arrives, an HBO documentary meticulously charting how a substantial chunk of America became ready to believe in baseless lies. It goes from Jade Helms to Pizzagate to Seth Rich, giving a fair shake to everyone interviewed and letting fake news apologists present themselves as morons or disingenuous hucksters… which explains a lot. Director Andrew Rossi’s approach is fair enough to dig into a left-wing effort to create fake news during the 2018 Alabama senate race narrowly won by democrats. Still, it’s the right wing that looks worse—behind-the-scenes footage of the infamous November 2018 Jacob Wohl news conference makes the whole thing even more ramshackle than it seemed in the media at the time (plus, good footage of Claude Taylor’s inflatable Trump rat!) Notable interviewees include Yochai Benkler (deconstructing the right-wing disinformation pipeline) and Kara Swisher (talking as a professional journalist dismayed at what passes for news in some quarters). The entire film is framed by an interview with the owner of the Comet Ping Pong restaurant that saw a gunman show up, convinced the establishment has a basement dungeon holding kids while, in reality, the building had no basement. While it’s hard to finish a film with such a topic on a positive note, Comet Ping Pong has a happy ending of sorts to offer—that after the violent incident, the restaurant re-opened and found continued popularity with its regular crowd, which put no stock in outlandish conspiracy theories. It’s not much, but, at this time, we’ll take even a smidgen of good news. Especially considering that it’s true.

The Kitchen (2019)

The Kitchen (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Performative female empowerment, 1970s cosplay and antiheroic rhetoric smash into each other in The Kitchen, a crime thriller taking us back to 1978 NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood to show how three mob wives turn to crime in order to make ends meet while their husbands are in prison. It’s no accident if the film happens to showcase three of the most notable actresses of the moments in a search for serious drama credentials: Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss, all thoroughly deglammed and relishing their tough-girl roles. Haddish arguably gets the most out of it: Moss’s dramatic credentials are solid and McCarthy’s been pretty good in off-persona dramatic roles, but Haddish’s career has been almost entirely comic to date, so there’s something new for her to do here. In bits and pieces, The Kitchen is fun: while the narrative is often ham-fisted in how to get from Point A to Point B, seeing our heroines discover some self-resourcefulness as underdogs is an engrossing crowd-pleasing arc. Writer-director Andrea Berloff has fun with her material, Margo Martindale has a good supporting turn and Trump gets a not-so-subtle slam in passing. Highlights include a romantic meet-cute in which a supporting hero (Domhnall Gleeson) meets one of the heroines by shooting her would-be rapist dead, then teaching her how to dismember the body and dump it in the river. (Dismemberment becomes such a recurring motif in this film that it becomes almost comic in its predictability—whelp, someone’s getting dismembered at the end of this scene!) Alas, this leads us to The Kitchen’s more vexing aspect, which is to say its problematic use of violence as empowerment. While the film does lead us closer to a realization that the real antagonists are male-dominated power structures, the underdog status of the heroines turns into hubris. With an ending that’s not as retributive as one could hope for, the film doesn’t even approach an argument that violence is not necessarily more acceptable when it’s perpetrated by women—hypocrisy becomes real in the film’s last-act ballet of revenge when the husbands are released from prison and the action goes all over the place. (Unlike other movies, The Kitchen is weakly-built enough that it does not earn its use of violence.) A few twists punctuate the end of the film, leaving an impression that there’s a better movie somewhere in The Kitchen that is not fully realized—and, in fact, may not be fully realizable at the moment where violence is portrayed as being good as long as it’s committed by the good people on the bad people.