Month: May 2020

  • The Price of Everything (2018)

    The Price of Everything (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) You would think that having watched another feature-length documentary about the modern art world (Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World) two weeks earlier would have been an issue in appreciating the similarly-themed The Price of Everything to its full value. But no—it speaks to the insanity of the modern art market that there is more than enough space for two, three or even more fascinating documentaries about it. This one takes a gently confrontational approach in interviewing artists about what they think of the bull run on their artwork, then goes on to show what’s happening at auctions with art critics, curators and collectors. The field’s remarkable absurdity is highlighted by the contrast offered between the artists (most of them far humbler than you’d think) and the ludicrous amounts of money thrown at one auction after another. (In one of the film’s best moments, it gets a live aghast reaction from an artist being shown how her art was essentially “flipped” in speculation.) Director Nathaniel Kahn gets access to two opposite artistic heavy hitters—corporate Koons, unpolished Poons—and uses their work as a springboard to examine the question of expensive art, bought for millions and stored away from the public, only reappearing to be sold as investments at higher prices, safely out of reach of all museums. Other talking heads span the spectrum from collectors, salespeople (oops; “gallery representatives”), and commentators. There are some intriguing juxtapositions in the way The Price of Everything’s material is presented, perhaps none as hard-hitting as the end-credit sequence in which art is taken down from a gallery wall, driven to an off-Manhattan storage facility and unceremoniously stored in an anonymous high-security storage locker. Completely fascinating—I have a feeling I could line up a day’s worth of modern art documentaries, and they would all be great.

  • L’âge des ténèbres (2007)

    L’âge des ténèbres (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2020) There are movies that I probably should have seen earlier, and L’âge des ténèbres is one of them—a major French-Canadian movie, featuring a roster of circa-2007 working actors and with substantial science fiction plot elements tinged with dark comedy. It takes place in 2007’s near future with striking similarities to present-day 2020, what with technology-obsessed people and facemasks in schools and public transit. Its story revolves around a bureaucrat beset by middle-age ailments and escaping into reveries à la Walter Mitty. Denys Arcand is not subtle at all in presenting a non-stop carnival of modern problems and evidence of the fall of civilization—I normally wouldn’t be impressed by yet more suburban malaise, but there is something impressive and often hilarious in the completeness of Arcand’s vision. It gets funnier and funnier, as even the fantasies start turning against our protagonist. Lead actor Marc Labrèche is very good in the lead role, with a hangdog expression complementing an undeniable comic fluidity. Some of the background details are very good—although they may be lost on non-French-Canadian audiences, such as the dubious wisdom of setting up a government office in the Olympic stadium with its falling concrete beams (although this is alluded to). It’s fascinating that the protagonist would find an antithesis in incarnating fantasy to its fullest by going to a Renaissance Fair. Still, I’m not sure about the ending—I’d like to see at least once a film about midlife crisis that didn’t necessarily end with the protagonist quitting his job, trashing his car, leaving his marriage and ending up in a shack (admittedly one with a great view of the Saint Lawrence). Surely, there are ways to achieve a better synthesis of how to deal with modern ailments than to reject all of them. On a more serious note, L’âge des ténèbres is probably the movie that best represents (even with large discrepancies) the lowest point of my adult life around 40—fortunately, things are better now, and despite thinking that I should have seen it earlier, I’m actually happy that I’m seeing it today rather than a few years ago when I was in the thick of it.

  • Affairs of State (2018)

    Affairs of State (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) The duality of political thrillers is that they can be very cerebral affairs dealing with the abstract, even lofty ideals essential to the fabric of the state… or they can be trashy sordid affairs mixing petty transgressions and crime magnified by the whiff of power. Affairs of State reveals its true salacious colours early on with a sex scene featuring Mimi Rogers, and then the congressman having the affair goes on to also have sex with her daughter (but not at the same time, that would be too much). The rest of the film is this fantasy of American politics as being a mush of blackmail, affairs, hot sex, corruption, murder, coverups, people shouting at each other and more hot sex. (I listed hot sex twice because I like what I like.) Directed efficiently by Eric Bross, Affairs of State is at its best whenever Mimi Rogers is on-screen, or failing that whenever it’s wallowing in its own trashiness as if there was no tomorrow. Conversely, it’s at its weakest whenever it tries for loftier political statements, like a new conservative party somehow being viable. David Corenswet does well as the oversexed protagonist—but he’s not going to do well if he sticks to those low-budget potboilers. The ending, unfortunately, doesn’t quite cap off the wild ride to get there and feels as if Affairs of State ends on an anticlimactic letdown.

  • After Darkness (2014)

    After Darkness (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Before getting into the meat of this review, let’s clear up one thing: What some movie sites call After Darkness (2019) (sometimes 2018) is known as After Darkness (2014) on IMDB, so that’s what I’m going with—it’s not rare for disappointing low-budget movies to be widely released in the United States a while after production, but the five-year gap between its 2014 Singapore DVD release and 2019 US video release is significant enough to cause confusion. What’s even more unfortunate is that this release delay is by far the most interesting thing about After Darkness, an almost-theatrical dining table post-apocalyptic drama about a rich family cooped up in their mansion while waiting for rescue after the extinction of the sun. The mansion is well lit and temperatures seem to be holding up nicely considering the now-eternal night, but if you’re looking for scientific rigour here, you’re going to be disappointed when elementary plausibility itself seems to elude the filmmakers. While the impending apocalypse means a definitive ending to the film, this isn’t anywhere near von Trier’s similar Melancholia in terms of dramatic tension: as the script throws in the expected tropes (family tensions, last-minute relationship rifts, crazy mom, additional guests, home invasion, home birth, extinguished hope), it doesn’t feel intense as much as perfunctory. Sure, the overprotective father is a worse threat than the blown-out sun or armed intruders, but so what? Everyone’s going to die, and while After Darkness does some crazy tap-dancing to avoid showing the inevitability of the ending it’s pursuing, it’s still not particularly edifying nor enjoyable. It’s directed with a certain comfy elegance by Batán Silva, except when the matter turns nasty and unpleasant. Still, I go back to the conclusion as proof of After Darkness’s creative hollowness: if your point is to show how characters crack under the worst pressure imaginable (the inevitable end of everything), then go with them to the final moments—don’t chicken out with a narcotics-induced hallucination that makes everything falsely pretty. If I want existential depression, I’m going back for von Trier next time. At least he knows what he’s doing. And his movies don’t get shelved for years before being released.

  • Jue di tao wang [Skiptrace] (2016)

    Jue di tao wang [Skiptrace] (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) The weird pairing at the heart of Chinese action blockbuster Skiptrace—Jackie Chan plus Johnny Knoxville!—isn’t so weird once you realize that both have a comic daredevil persona, and that their differences (Chan as the affable one; Knoxville as the abrasive one) work pretty well as counterbalance. The film’s slight story has them embark on a travelling odyssey while pursued by the mob across Asia (especially Mongolia—when was the last time you saw a film set in Mongolia?), but the point is getting them into one action-comedy set-piece after another. Of course, there’s now a limit to how much bone-breaking behaviour both of them can engage now: They are both getting older and can no longer quite defy the insurance requirements of a major scripted film production. This means action-lite material for Chan (although he can still bring it—the collapsing river houses moment is fun), and largely an observer role for Knoxville, thankfully more subdued than you’d expect. (In another universe, Knoxville could have become an action-movie leading man, and this will show you how.) While the result isn’t one for the history books, Skiptrace nonetheless becomes and remains watchable—it’s amusing and pleasant, even if the climax doesn’t have much grandeur. Renny Harlin directs with professionalism in what’s getting to be the “international action director-for-hire” phase of his career. Of note to action movie fans is how the film deals with globalized mayhem, and relies on Russian mobsters for antagonist—is this going to become a fixture for Chinese movies from now on?

  • The Domestics (2018)

    The Domestics (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) If you’re looking for a strong Science-Fictional reasoning behind The Domestics’ post-apocalyptic worldbuilding, hah, don’t bother: The opening visual of B-52s chem-bombing the United States is a great opener, but it’s explained more by the film’s cartoonish plot requirements than anything else. Years after a massive die-off, we’re to believe that American society has neatly divided itself in five violent gangs and the “domestics” trying to remain good Americans without the Mad Max cosplay. More of a horror road movie than anything else, The Domestics features a couple of ordinary Americans going from one thrill to another as they try to travel back to her parents’ place and reconcile through the mutual killing of enemies. Cannibalism, deadly games of Russian roulette and the likes are the film’s stock-in-trade, and while writer-director Mike P. Nelson’s execution is at least competent, it’s not a lot of fun, not likable, not uplifting, not pleasant to look at and not really interesting. Kate Bosworth looks out of central casing as the generic blonde lead and doesn’t bring much to the result. The Domestics hits its best moments whenever Lance Reddick is on-screen—otherwise it’s a lazy, cheap, tedious half-hearted attempt at post-apocalyptic fiction that will disappear without a trace.

  • Driven (2018)

    Driven (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Considering the outrageous nature of John DeLorean’s story in founding DMC at the beginning of the 1980s, it’s a wonder that a film about his life hasn’t been made earlier. But maybe some distance helped, as suggested by the darkly funny tone taken by Driven as it fictionalizes the incredible crime story that transformed DeLorean from a car maven entrepreneur to a convicted felon. Wisely, the film doesn’t focus on the grander-than-life DeLorean as much as one of the supporting characters in his story—the man who would eventually become an informant for the FBI and expose DeLorean’s drug deals to finance his company. It’s all very entertaining, but take everything with a grain of salt, of course—Driven isn’t interested in factual accuracy as much as its breezy, very seventies atmosphere and comic approach. A bunch of likable actors help make the film even better—Lee Pace as the very tall, white-haired DeLorean, Jason Sudeikis in the lead role, and notables such as Judy Greer and Corey Stoll in supporting turns. Despite the comic intent, the film does demonstrate the reasons why DeLorean turned to drug dealing for last-resort cash, and even finds some empathy for the doomed character stuck in ambitious schemes that could not come to a happy conclusion. While very watchable, Driven does come with a few warnings—there’s an undercurrent of sadness behind it all, the film isn’t too sure of how far it should push the comic tone, and it’s very distant from the true story of what happened. [July 2020: If you’re interested in the facts, take a look at the documentary Framing John DeLorean, which is even better than the fiction.]

  • Billy Bathgate (1991)

    Billy Bathgate (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) At first glance, Billy Bathgate looks like the kind of slam-dunk entertainment that 1990s Hollywood made so well—a mixture of coming-of-age drama set within a fascinating gangster context, with a little bit of romance to sweeten the whole thing. Throw in the 1930s period recreation, a bestselling source novel written by EL Doctorow, a strong cast of actors, plus story elements so familiar that they become comfortable, and Billy Bathgate looks like a ready-made audience pleaser and potential awards contender. Except that it didn’t turn out that way.  Production of the film was marred by endless rewrites, significant cost overruns and Doctorow distancing himself from the adaptation. Things didn’t get better upon the film’s release, as critics savaged it and audiences ran away. Now a largely forgotten relic of a decade now long past, Billy Bathgate has become a curiosity. It hasn’t improved with age—the blend of coming-of-age drama with gangster thrills is still awkward, and curious creative decisions keep haunting the film and making it duller than it should be. On the other hand, it does have some nice period detail, a fun episode set in a small upstate New York town, a rather amazing cast made of then-known names (Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Willis) and people who would later become far more prominent (Stanley Tucci, Steve Buscemi), as well as far more nudity from Kidman than you would expect from the nature of the film. For film reviewers, it’s not a bad idea to go back in time to see not only the classics, but also the failures like Billy Bathgate. Decades past the media pile-up that often happens in such cases, it can be instructive to look at the wreckage and wonder—well, what happened here?

  • The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)

    The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a classic of Canadian literature (widely acclaimed, often cited on best-of lists, taught in schools, etc.), and its reading is almost mandatory if you want to claim that you know anything about CanLit. The film adaptation is along the same lines for Canadian film, perhaps even more so given that it was one of the first commercially and critically successful films that blended regional themes and settings to produce a film that was unquestionably Canadian. For modern viewers, there’s some added attraction in seeing a very young Richard Dreyfus in the leading role, Dennis Quaid in a supporting role and (for French-Canadian film fans) a young and surprisingly attractive Micheline Lanctot. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz takes us, as did the novel, into Montréal’s anglophone Jewish community. It’s uneven, and almost frustrating by design (it is, after all, blatantly about a young man’s coming of age and these things don’t always go smoothly) but it does have a few high points—including a comic set-piece about an exceptionally pretentious bar mitzvah video documentary. The French-Canadian dub has a weird mixture of formal and informal French, which makes sense given the setting (and how Micheline Lanctot dubs her own lines in her very distinctive voice) but still rings a bit weird to viewers used to a more consistent level of language.

  • The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

    The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, May 2020) There is something both familiar and comfortable in the very enjoyable film noir heist movie The Asphalt Jungle. It was a bit of a sensation at the time—a film that stripped away the glamour of Hollywood to approach cinema-vérité and spent more of its running time with the criminals planning a heist than the policemen hunting for them after the crime. Those are now standard features of crime movies, of course—and this may mask some of the impact of the film as it was perceived back then. Fortunately, John Huston’s direction here is masterful and has aged very well. While The Asphalt Jungle can’t escape a certain scattered effect in the midway section, it tightens up in time for the conclusion. The mid-century Midwest atmosphere is very convincingly rendered, and it’s supplemented by the corrupt characters and unescapable fatalism so beloved of the film noir genre. Sterling Hayden turns in one likable lead performance in an otherwise fairly grim cast—although there’s an early turn by Marilyn Monroe to make things even more interesting. The Asphalt Jungle makes for compelling viewing even with the familiarity of its narrative—when something works, it works well enough decades later.

  • Banshun [Late Spring] (1949)

    Banshun [Late Spring] (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, May 2020) Give me the choice, and I’d rather watch a middling genre movie than a great dramatic one, but even I will admit that there’s something quietly soothing in writer-director Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring. It shows ordinary people living ordinary lives, does not feature a villain, and simply follows along a personal-scale story. It helps a lot that the characters are so sympathetic, especially the father/daughter pair that drives the plot. The heroine is immensely likable, especially as played by Ozu stalwart Setsuko Hara. Late Spring is a down-to-Earth look at postwar Japan (reading about the script censorship by American authorities makes for fascinating cross-cultural shock). There’s nothing flashy in Ozu’s direction, but that allows the actors to do what they do best. I suppose there’s something poignant for me here about a father letting go of his daughter for her own good. Don’t obsess about the plot, just let the film flow by.

  • A Perfect World (1993)

    A Perfect World (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2020) An interesting pairing of manly icons of different generations; a problematic situation that is not made worse by flashes of humour; a result on autopilot in many ways. Those are the main ingredients of A Perfect World, a Clint Eastwood film featuring Eastwood and Kevin Costner in a pairing that promises much more than it delivers. The action starts as Costner’s character escapes from prison and takes a young boy as a hostage, with Eastwood’s law enforcement officer hot on the trail. Road movie, coming-of-age drama, crime thriller and meditation on fatherhood—A Perfect World tries to round up the bases and dresses it all up in a nostalgic 1950s period setting. The bit about the convict slowly becoming a father figure to the hostage is a bit of cinema hooey that acts as the foundation for much of the film’s last act—some viewers will be convinced and others not. Still, it’s hard to avoid thinking that, despite Eastwood’s usual by-the-numbers direction, the film does score a few interesting moments along the way. The ending does get more tragic as it advances, which may strike some as a very appropriate conclusion.

  • Bulletproof 2 (2020)

    Bulletproof 2 (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) I don’t hold the original Bulletproof in any particular regard, so the idea of a direct-to-video sequel wasn’t much of a draw. Still, I gave it a shot and don’t really regret the experience—Bulletproof 2 is not a good movie, but it’s on the enjoyable end of the low-budget cash-in spectrum of action spinoffs. There is some wittiness in the script, especially how it positions itself vis-à-vis the twenty-five-year distant original: Here, the first movie exists as a fictionalized adaptation of an article on a real-life pair of buddies. They even comment on the choice of actors to play “themselves.” Those amusing links aside, much of this sequel is fairly standard action/comedy, with enough of a budget to be convincing and throw in a few decent action sequences. The plotting quickly gets forgotten in the mixture of comedy and action that are the film’s most memorable aspects. The action is generally reliable, with a club shootout and a desert car chase sequence clearly giving a pulse to the film. There are some intriguing characters in-between the stock material (more notably a matriarch antagonist), but the script’s best moments are best attempted in dialogue, and that’s where the comedy becomes hit and miss—while Bulletproof 2 does have some raunchy funny dialogue, a lot of it is pseudo-macho bantering between the two leads that turns into homophobic vulgarity. I liked the romantic banter better than the buddy-bonding chatter—and Kirk Fox should probably stick to his own style of comedy rather than to try to imitate Adam Sandler. (The attempts to milk some laughs out of “I’m a fan of six/seven” get tiresome on the second repetition, let alone the fifth.) Faizon Love fares a bit better as the other protagonist but frankly, I was just happy to see Cassie Clare and Pearl Thusi having some fun in substantial roles. Bulletproof 2 is good enough, but I do wish that someone else could have had a go at the script to fix some of its most glaring problems.

  • Les enfants du paradis [The Children of Paradise] (1945)

    Les enfants du paradis [The Children of Paradise] (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, May 2020) I’m certainly aware of Les Enfants du paradis’s reputation as one of the finest French movies ever made, and I can almost see why it would earn such acclaim. But at a very lengthy three hours and ten minutes, it’s an ordeal more than a simple viewing. There’s a lot to like in the film’s recreation of the 1830s Parisian showbiz scene, what with its actors, producers, mimes and others interacting around a theatre dedicated to popular entertainment. But it takes a lot of patience (patience that I don’t have these days) to make it through the repetitive romantic entanglement of the plot (what with our heroine being pursued by no less than four ill-suited suitors.), the free-floating digressions and the very stylized presentation. The film does have a thick atmosphere, but it’s an atmosphere in which we’re stuck, and the fact that it’s being told everything without economy doesn’t help. I did start liking Les enfants du paradis better as it went on, although by the ending I was once again back to exasperation.

  • Dead in Tombstone (2013)

    Dead in Tombstone (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2020) No one will ever mistake Dead in Tombstone for what it’s not. After all, it’s a low-budget direct-to-Video supernatural western featuring Danny Trejo and directed by Roel Reiné—all hallmarks of cheap unambitious genre movies made for an evening’s entertainment more than lasting artistic statements. This being said, Dead in Tombstone is better than average within the confines of its chosen lane. Trejo doesn’t just do a fly-by cameo: he’s got the lead role, plenty of dialogue and some action scenes to anchor. Meanwhile, director Reiné is known for maximizing even low budgets, and so the film is packed with slick images and strong visuals. Unfortunately, the film’s choppy editing frequently undermines the visual aspect of the film—for shame. What’s also a shame: that the plotting doesn’t quite equal the strong premise of the protagonist being resurrected for the explicit purpose of taking revenge on those who killed him. I’m also not that fond of Mickey Rourke, even if he’s cast as Lucifer here. Those little slights do damage what the film had to play with. What remains in Dead in Tombstone is not a great movie, but it more than fulfills the modest conditions for its greenlight: it’s reasonably fun, better directed than usual in its class and is a great showcase for Trejo. There can be worse ways to spend an evening.