Month: August 2020

Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)

Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, August 2020) I really wasn’t expecting much from Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis, but I was at least hoping for some continuity from the Return of the Living Dead series, which was (at least at first) markedly funnier than the Romero films. Alas… well, I clearly hadn’t been paying attention at the evolution of the series — which didn’t keep the comic tone starting with the third entry, and kept getting smaller and smaller production budgets. Necropolis ends up being about as good as a made-for TV film, with bland characters, formula-based plotting and muddy cinematography. There aren’t many bright moments to it all, and once you start counting, “The heroine looks cute in pigtails and glasses” as one of the highlights, you know there isn’t much left to discuss. (Although, it’s true: Aimee-Lynn Chadwick does look cute in pigtails and glasses.) Simplifying the series formula down to teenage antics (with an inexplicable side order of motorcycle racing) is not a good way to go anything worth praising, and Necropolis ends up being that most pitiable of creations: a dull zombie movie like so many others, not even worth a look unless you’re some kind of crazy completist with a strong tolerance to boredom.

The Big Country (1958)

The Big Country (1958)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, August 2020) In theory, there’s a lot that I should like about The Big Country – big expansive colour vistas of the American wild west, an undercurrent of how civilization tames the excesses at the frontier, a legendary feud between two grander-than-life characters, the unusual sight of Charlton Heston reduced to a supporting role, and a wealth of subplots to choose from. Alas, in practice The Big Country is often excruciatingly dull – the wealth of subplots turns out to be an issue when the film can’t effectively pick which one to develop, and still ends up at an excessive 166 minutes in length. I’m not saying it’s bad – The film noticeably perks up whenever Burl Ives makes an appearance, the last half-hour finally gets going with some action, leading to a few scenes that I really don’t mind. But it’s a lot of work to get there, and a better filmmaker would have found a better way. Certainly, a more economical one… although considering the mood of the time (during which Hollywood wanted to bring audiences back from the TV screen through widescreen colour epics worth the trip to the theatre), I’m not sure that this twenty-first century criticism of The Big Country would even have been a possibility during the film’s production.

Gun Crazy (1950)

Gun Crazy (1950)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) The history of a crazy couple on the run is longer than I first thought – never mind Natural Born Killers or Bonnie and Clyde when you can go all the way back to Gun Crazy to see more of the same (and I’m sure there are earlier examples). The first few minutes set an unpredictable tone, as an unusually gun-obsessed young man comes back from military service to find kinship in a carnival performer who is as good a sharpshooter as he is, but significantly crazier. As such couples are wont to do, they go on a criminal rampage, first robbing stores only to graduate to killing people when the heat closes in on them. The ending isn’t for those hoping for a happy ending, although it’s strikingly appropriate to the noir era. Peggy Cummins and John Dall are quite good in their roles, but in many ways it’s Dalton Trumbo’s script that hooks us in early with clever touches and never lets go until the end of their rampage. Director Joseph H. Lewis does justice to his narrative blueprint by keeping things moving at a quick pace, and adding just enough visual details to reinforce the rapid pace. Gun Crazy is, in short, a great example of a short and snappy classic crime film – not even 90 minutes, and over before you even get tired of its fast pace.

High Sierra (1941)

High Sierra (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) According to many film historians, High Sierra is the film that put Humphrey Bogart on the map: He was already a steadily working, well-regarded actor for Warner Brothers, and his fame would be consecrated within the next year with The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, but High Sierra is the film that made people stand up and take notice of him as a star. Watching it, it also strikes me as a strong early noir film, what with the dark forces of fatality stopping even a well-meaning character from a happy ending. Bogart here plays a character recently released from prison, but already planning a big heist. The film describes his own dramatic arc along the way from prison to recidivism, made more interesting by the character being tempted by the righteous path. This being an early noir, you can expect that it’s not going to end well… but it’s the journey that counts, and seeing Bogart ruminate on the choices his character is making. This may be the transition point between Warner’s 1930s gangster films and true honest noir as we’d know it later on – you can point to The Public Enemy one way, and Detour the other. It’s also quite entertaining to watch – Bogart looks terrific with a very severe haircut, torn between Ida Lupino as a fantastic bad girl, and Joan Leslie as the flip side of his morality. The result is impressive even today, and not merely as a precursor to Casablanca-era Bogart.

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) It may be a few decades in the past, but the working relationship between director Joseph von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich remains a model of successful artistic collaboration. He knew how to build a film around her persona; she knew how to give him exactly what he wanted. They both launched their own careers in Germany with 1929’s The Blue Angel, then went on to make six great Hollywood films at the dawn of the sound age, of which The Scarlett Empress was the fifth. Compared to many other films of the time, this is a film worth digging into, as Garbo portrays the transformation of Russian Catherine the Great from innocent debutante to hedonistic empress. Taking advantage of the rapidly closing Pre-Code era, the film suggests plenty of salacious material with barely repressed glee. Visually, it’s absolutely sumptuous, with a high density of delicately crafted sets, lavish costumes and elaborate camera movements. You can see allegories for early-sound filmmaking, Sternberg’s career, female empowerment and social critique –the demonstration of which has already been completed by scholars far smarter than I am. It does make The Scarlet Empress quite a viewing experience, although the trade-off may be that the film is more interesting than enjoyable – that it’s more fun to discuss than to watch. That’s already not too bad – many films of that time can’t even pretend being worth a look today.

Destry Rides Again (1939)

Destry Rides Again (1939)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) It can take a lot for a western film to grab me these days –it doesn’t help that there’s a seemingly infinite number of them in the Classic Hollywood catalogue. Also, perhaps more importantly, I don’t have any basic affection for the genre as I do for musicals or film noir – as a result, I tend to watch westerns and forget them almost immediately. But Destry Rides Again is slightly different. For one thing, it features none other than screen legends James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich in the lead roles – for another, it’s a somewhat less trigger-happy take on cleaning up a rowdy frontier town, with a baby-faced Stewart playing a deputy sheriff with an aversion to carrying or using a gun. (This being said, the film makes it crystal-clear that he’s an expert marksman when he wants to, which is a trope that frequently turns up in American “pacifist” fiction.) Meanwhile, Dietrich plays the femme fatale of the local drinking establishment, a powerful influence who could make or break the deputy sheriff’s efforts to get rid of the local lead hoodlum. The absolute highlight of the film comes when the two get involved in a saloon fight – or more specifically when she starts throwing objects at him and he’s bound not to answer in kind. Otherwise, Destry Rides Again does follow a generally satisfying narrative that promotes non-violence in the service of a taming-the-wild-west story. Or rather up to a certain point: true to form for American cinema, there’s a point where guns have to be used and bad people have to die. Still, the result is more memorable than many other westerns from the era.

Show Girl in Hollywood (1930)

Show Girl in Hollywood (1930)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) There are two reasons to watch Show Girl in Hollywood, and both of them are historical. The first is a demonstration of how some classic stories have deeper roots than we can imagine. Even in 1930, here was a story about a young girl trying to make it in the movies, beating the first version of A Star is Born by a good seven years. Considering that it was such an early example, it’s no surprise if the plot beats are rough and obvious – saying that it’s cliché from beginning to end is evaluating the film against its countless imitators. (Digging into the film’s history, I see that it was preceded by an even earlier example of the form – 1928’s Show Girl.) Still, and this brings us to the second reason to watch Show Girl in Hollywood, there’s some charm in looking at how 1930s Hollywood looked, or portrayed itself as looking – The film being from Warner Brothers, it now travels ninety years in the future to reach us and show us a “vitaphone” premiere at the dawn of the sound era. Still, there isn’t much more than historical interest for modern viewers of this almost-forgotten film: there isn’t much humour or wit, the characters are featureless and the story has been done several times since then. But at least this is a ninety-year-old film that still talks about the evergreen pursuit of fame.

Mysterious Island (1961)

Mysterious Island (1961)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) I first read Jules Verne’s L’Ile Mysterieuse as a kid and was thrilled at the result. It was, I think, the first real robinsonade that I encountered, and I kept marvelling at the way our desperate characters could manage to recreate civilization while stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific. It was also the first novel that drove the point home of an imagined universe, as it eventually featured Captain Nemo of another Jules Verne novel. I much older and jaded now, but I was still disappointed at the 1961 adaptation of Mysterious Island. If I hadn’t read the novel, I probably would have been satisfied with the big-screen result. But having such vivid memories of the original worked against the movie – where were the details of their survival against all odds? What are giant stop-motion creatures doing in that story? Why is there a woman in the cast of characters? The answer to all of these questions, obviously, as found in Hollywood’s need to make movies thrilling, exciting and have at least one female role. In doing so, it transformed Mysterious Island from a novel of survival to a Ray Harryhausen special effects spectacle, simplifying as much of the plot as they could in order to squeeze in more special effects sequences. I’m complaining on behalf of my younger self, but I can understand the impulse – and I note that nearly every single Classic Hollywoodian Vernes novel adaptation has committed the same sins, sometimes ending with gold (20,000 Leagues Under the Seas) and sometimes with dreck (From the Earth to the Moon) and sometimes with something in-between (Journey to the Center of the Earth). Mysterious Island is somewhere in the middle – the addition of Harrysausen’s stop-motion special effects is almost always something wonderful to watch, and it does compensate for many of the shortcuts taken in order to fit a leisurely detail-packed novel into a film’s running time. I still think that the third act could have been improved, and the character of Nemo given a better send-off. But it’s been seventy years since the film’s release and it’s not healthy to obsess over the choices two generations removed. As mentioned, this ranks somewhere near the theoretical middle of Verne adaptations – generally faithful at first, then increasingly Hollywoodized. Audiences went to see it, and that’s what mattered then.

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) The Douglas Sirk formula that felt so daring back in the 1950s has been completely absorbed by today’s movie mainstream – to the point of seeing even more daring movies on daytime TV. I’m sure that All That Heaven Allows must have felt slightly scandalous back in 1955 – after all, it’s about a wealthy widow who gets romantically involved with a blue-collar landscaper working at her house, with a full coop of hen tut-tutting the relationship as hard as they could in the confines of a small northeastern town. There are complications and a break-up, but since there’s at least half an hour left in the movie, we know it’s not going to remain that way. Tonally, All That Heaven Allows is very much a melodrama: musical cues and near-parodic acting clearly highlight what you were supposed to feel, which actually acts as a handy guide for modern audiences. Jane Wyman stars as the widow, but Rock Hudson earns most of the attention as the landscaper, an essentially perfect man solely held back by her peers’ opinion of people like him. Much of the film has aged ridiculously – this stuff would be the premise of a Hallmark channel romantic comedy these days, not an overwrought drama. (It doesn’t help that I still have vivid memories of Far from Heaven, obviously inspired by this.) But one thing has aged truly well, and that’s the super-saturated colour cinematography of the film. From the first moment of the movie, as the camera pans over a bright, colourful, lovely autumn landscape, this is a film that makes a strong and deliberate use of colour as emotional highlighting. It’s quite impressive even if you don’t care much about the plot, and that may actually be one of the best ways to see All That Haven Allows even today.

Le notti del terrore [Burial Ground] (1981)

Le notti del terrore [Burial Ground] (1981)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) I’m seeing far too many early-1980s Italian grindhouse horror movies in too little time and they’re all blending together in my mind. It doesn’t help that they’re remarkably similar to one another in theme, tone, budget and plot. Burial Ground doesn’t strike too far away from its contemporaries: a haunted mansion, decaying undead, over-the-top gore effects and a narrative structure regrettably focused on “the kills” is pretty much what you need to know about the film and whether you want to see it or not. The plot goes all over the place, not particularly concerned with choosing between being a haunted house story or a zombie film. Perhaps the film’s most distinctive aspect is also its most stomach-churning, what with a boy with incestuous feelings with his mother soon turning to cannibalism. What can I say – Burial Ground is that kind of movie. It’s not quite as bleakly sadistic as some entries in the genre, and the emphasis on the zombies means that it’s a bit easier to take than some of the other movies focused on cannibalism, but we’re really slicing thin in terms of distinctions and degrees here: it takes a jaded audience indeed to start arguing about which kind of cannibalism is most unpleasant, and I fear that with every horror movie I watch I stray further and further away from the light. Well, all right, then.

Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)

Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) The only amazing feat ever pulled off by movies produced by The Asylum is how they manage to suck all possible enjoyment out of loopy premises. Their modus operandi of producing mockbuster in support of a business model predicated on audience confusion wasn’t enough – they also went for wacky premises as well, except with their usual abysmal standards. In Nazis at the Center of the Earth, well, you have the premise in the title itself. It leads all the way to a robot Hitler. But don’t get your hopes up: a mixture of incompetent horror schlock and incomprehensible low-budget trash, this is a film made to hook viewers with a premise or a trailer, but it doesn’t manage to fulfill those expectations by anything feeling like an acceptable movie. The plot is unimportant, but if you really insist, Nazis at the Center of the Earth has something to do with students discovering a portal to the centre of the Earth and, well, Nazis. There’s some serious gruesome and dark material in the minutes that follow, but little of it is effective: detached from reality and clearly made over-the-top to earn attention, even the worst stuff falls flat. The excessive violence and gore make the bad movie even worse (especially when they kill the cutest characters first) and the exceptional lack of imagination of a script seemingly accumulated from cheap jokes doesn’t help things. By the time robot Hitler shows up, it’s too little too late – the film doesn’t even have a perceptible sense of humour about itself, and whatever bad-movie self-awareness it may have is drowned in far too dark material to be enjoyable. If tortured, I may allow that as far as The Asylum movies go, Nazis at the Center of the Earth is probably one of the least awful ones. But we’re grading on a scale of zero-to-one stars here, so this doesn’t mean much. Just avoid, as I should have the moment I saw “Produced by The Asylum” on-screen.

Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) You really can’t go wrong with a combination of Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, especially not in Once Upon a Honeymoon, a propaganda romantic comedy film (!) in which Grant (as a journalist) helps Rogers (playing a burlesque performer passing as a high-society woman) unmask her fiancé as a Nazi. Travelling through Germany, her fiancé seems curiously involved in every country that falls to the invading German forces, eventually forcing her to work for the American government in unmasking him. Once Upon a Honeymoon was clearly meant as propaganda considering how, despite its jolly tone, Rogers’ character ends up murdering her Nazi fiancé at the climax for the picture (he had it coming – it was self-defence) and everyone laughs it up as the only good Nazi being a dead Nazi. (They’re right, but it’s still a bit jarring considering how Grant makes funny faces in the middle of it all.) That ending sequence is the cap on what is indeed a bit of an uneven film, shifting between serious thriller and fluffy romantic comedy at the drop of a hat and then over again. It’s a certainly a curio in that Grant tries to play his character both as a romantic lead and a thriller hero. I’m not sure there were that many romantic comedies taking aim at Nazis, and I’ll always welcome one more. I’ll probably have another look at Once Upon a Honeymoon eventually, knowing what to expect.

Shakes the Clown (1991)

Shakes the Clown (1991)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) Perhaps the best thing anyone has even said about Shakes the Clown is how Martin Scorsese defended the film, saying that it’s “the Citizen Kane of Alcoholic Clown Movies.” That should give you an idea of the themes, plot and very specific atmosphere that writer-director-star Bobcat Goldthwait was going for in this intentional cult movie. Clearly aiming to dismantle any kind of romantic illusions about the lifestyle of a professional clown while at the same time creating a bizarre portrayal of secret entertainer sub-societies, Shakes the Clown fully indulges in its own reality. The comedy here is more conceptual than gag-based, especially as the film builds its universe in which performers spend their entire lives in clown outfits and makeup, where there are vicious rivalries between types of street entertainers, and where a murder naturally leads to a clown going undercover in another gang to find the truth. A surprising cast anchors the picture, from one of Adam Sandler’s earliest turns to Robin Williams (as “Marty Fromage”) in a very funny role as a mime instructor. Shakes the Clown’s most reliable asset is that it never tries to be all things to everyone: it plays in a very specific vein of humour and lets its public self-select out. As a result, it’s a bit obscure these days, and often brought up for laughs than any sincere admiration. But it goes to the end of its specific preoccupations, and it’s almost admirable for that. This being said, it’s still not for everyone.

Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) The only question anyone can have about Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is not “Is it as good as Anaconda?” (Because, clearly, that’s impossible) as much as it’s “Well, is it fun to watch?” Clearly, we’re not in arthouse territory when a film reassembles all of the elements of the 1997 snakesploitation film (young attractive people; a jungle; gigantic snakes) and gives it another bigger go. The special effects are more digital than they were in the first film; there are more snakes, the “prize” hunted by the protagonist is a longevity elixir, and the cast is clearly pulled from the minor leagues. But, if you’re in the mood for a bog-standard monster feature, Anacondas should do the trick. KaDee Strickland is no J-Lo, Morris Chestnut isn’t Ice Cube and the almost-accidental cheesiness of the first film isn’t quite duplicated here, but the film delivers the kills, the snake, the adventures and the sweaty jungle that we could expect from a follow-up. That still doesn’t make it good compared to the countless other movies you could be watching instead, but if you’re dead set on “snake thriller,” then I guess no one can stop you from watching Anacondas.

Richard Jewell (2019)

Richard Jewell (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2020) I find it fascinating that Clint Eastwood, once an unwitting icon of police vigilantism through his role in Dirty Harry, and later a conservative blowhard invited to the RNC, would choose as a late-career project something like Richard Jewell, which ends up being a scathing criticism of shoddy policing. Going back to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, it dredges up the real-life story of the security guard who, after finding an explosive device and initiating an evacuation that saved many lives, was then accused by the FBI and media of placing the bomb in the first place. A years-long investigation eventually established his innocence (the real bomber was eventually arrested in 2003), but the media circus and popular portrayal of Jewell never quite got rehabilitated. Which is reason enough for Richard Jewell to exist, even with fanciful adaptations (such as portraying a journalist offering to exchange sex for story tips from the FBI) and shortcuts. A relatively unknown Paul Walter Hauser does very well in the title role, with such known actors as Jon Hamm, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates and Olivia Wilde to play supporting roles. Shot in Eastwood’s typically straightforward style, the film presents its case without too many stylistic flourishes, although taking some delight in vilifying the press along with the FBI officers convinced of Jewell’s guilt. It’s surprisingly cynical about the idea of cooperating with law enforcement when law enforcement is dead-set on completing the investigation quickly and calling it another case closed. Politically, you can see this film as all over the place: Critical of police, sure, but also critical of the media to an almost vituperative degree. Hardly perfect, but still interesting, Richard Jewell is going to make many film scholars very happy in how it either confirms and/or invalidates their entire thesis son Eastwood’s late-career filmography. For everyone else, it’s just an interesting film.