Month: February 2021

  • Palm Springs (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, February 2021) By now, I must have seen nearly a dozen time-loop science fiction movies. Groundhog Day remains the best of them all, but I’ve come to appreciate their many alternate takes on similar material — after all, it’s the kind of science-fiction device that has nearly everyone pondering what they’d do in similar situations, and screenwriters finding unusual variations on the basic concept. So let us dispense with easy comparisons when it comes to Palm Springs and take it for what it has to offer. As a profane romantic comedy, Palm Springs starts years into the male lead’s life in a time loop. Stuck in a Palm Springs hotel for the wedding of a distant friend of his girlfriend, he has burnt out his suicidal tendencies, gone over his attempts to improve himself or the lives of others and settled for a life of effortless hedonism, lounging by the pool and putting in the minimum effort to make it to the next day. But things change once he accidentally brings in someone else in the loop and starts developing a meaningful relationship day after day. There’s a rich thematic parallel here with the idea of a developing/decaying relationship here, especially as the two leads come to be the only “real” people in their lives. But don’t fret: Director Max Barbakow (working from a story he co-wrote with Andy Siara) ensures that his film’s rich philosophical material doesn’t take over its silly comedy and vulgar language. Andy Samberg proves to be uncommonly good here as the primary looper, even though Cristin Milioti is the revelation here as the always-compelling female lead brought into the time loop and not settling for a pat resignation. (J. K. Simmons also gets a few great sequences, but I won’t spoil them.)  The mixture of science-fiction justifications, irreverent comedy, honest romance and comic nihilism ends up creating a very compelling result, and one that has enough to distinguish itself on its own terms.

  • Sky Murder (1940)

    Sky Murder (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) My not-so-secret reason to watch Sky Murder was to get a glimpse of Virginia O’Brien’s screen debut, and I got exactly that: she shows up as part of a group of models and doesn’t get any discernible dialogue other than group screaming, but she’s there all right for the first half of the film. Of course, Virginia O’Brien is not the point of the film — Sky Murder is the third and final film in a series of mysteries featuring Walter Pidgeon as the then-popular literary hero Nick Carter. The plot has to do with subversive villains plotting attacks within the United States, and showing their hands too early by murdering someone aboard a charter plane in which Carter (and the models) are also present. After much screaming and another murder attempt, Carter gets on the case in a narrative that would feel familiar to any action movie fan: Chases, explosions, spies, high-stake gambits and villain unmasking are all part of the routine for Carter, and Pidgeon does carry the role with authority. It’s relatively easy to deduce that this is a film in the series by the way the protagonist moves around the screen, fully established and self-confident that audiences are watching. For a 72-minute film, Sky Murder features a steady series of sensational episodes, comic relief, romantic interests, perfidious antagonists (all of them caught by the police) and steadfast allies. It’s fun to watch, even though it won’t fool anyone into thinking that this was a high-class production. I’m now curious enough to seek out the other Carter movies — with any luck, TCM will run a marathon sometime soon.

  • What a Blonde (1945)

    What a Blonde (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I watched What a Blonde solely for the fact that Leon Errol played the lead character, and wasn’t disappointed… even though the film doesn’t have that much more to offer. Errol, a noted vaudevillian, was in the middle of a successful motion-picture late career by the time he starred in What a Blonde, sometime between the end of the Mexican Spitfire series and the beginning of the Joe Palooka films. His twitchy rubber-faced antics are a great addition to the screwball comedy of What a Blonde — what with a line of chorus girls moving into a lingerie tycoon’s mansion and creating plenty of comic havoc. The film does hinge on the real rationing efforts underway toward the end of WW2 in America: much of the plot engine runs on the notion that even a millionaire couldn’t get enough gas to get around. Cue the dancing girls, brought in the mansion to secure enough gas coupons and incidentally create as many wacky incidents until the film barely inches its way past feature-film length. It’s not refined comedy, and Errol was not the most subtle of comedians. But it’s funny enough, and if you’re an Errol fan, it’s exactly what you think you’ll get from a film of his.

  • Onward (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, February 2021) After nearly a decade in the trenches of one sequel after another, Pixar’s current slate of films seems to be on an upswing. Now that the latest Toy Story is out of the door, the next few films are a return to original concepts, and with the Soul/Onward combo for 2020, it looks as if the studio is once again free of its corporate obligations. Now, Onward is not the strongest of the two: Rather than deal with grand concepts of life and personalities as Soul did, this film is a suburban fantasy (or rather: a suburban story set in a modernized fantasy world) featuring two brothers coming to grips with their long-departed father. Thanks to a bit of magic, the metaphorical becomes literal, as the two teenagers go on a quest to restore the body of their father for a single day. This being a world in which magic had been displaced by technology, our elf-heroes drive a minivan painted with a unicorn and defy bike-riding fairies on their quest to retrieve a magical gem. There’s a manticore involved. As usual for Pixar, the visual polish of the result is up to the very detailed invention of its world: nearly every frame crams a joke or an interesting detail, made even more credible with Pixar’s style of combining a hyperreal setting with stylized characters. The emotional core of the film is strong, helping it breeze past the finishing line without too much trouble. By itself, Onward is decent enough, although it doesn’t quite match the brilliance of other Pixar films. Still, that’s an honourable result: Even a middle-of-the-pack Pixar outclasses other films, and it’s good to see them go back to original stories rather than churn out another line of toys for their Disney overlords.

  • Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) As far as old-school Hollywood romantic fantasies go, Her Highness and the Bellboy is both typical and innocuous, as it embraces the very American notion of class mobility in the core of its narrative. It features a princess falling for a bellboy already pining for a bedridden invalid, but don’t worry given that everything is going to turn out all right for everyone. The casting is perhaps more interesting than the premise, as the role is the Highness is held by none other than Hedy Lamarr (in a relatively rare comic role), while the Bellboy is played by a very likable Robert Walker — while June Allyson transforms the role of a crippled ex-dancer into more than just clichés. (Don’t worry — there’s eventually another man to round up this love triangle.)  Production values for the film are fine without being spectacular — after all, this is mostly a studio-set film featuring a small number of characters: no need to go all-out on the Manhattan location shooting. It gives Her Highness and the Bellboy perhaps more of a sitcom feeling than it should, but that’s the nature of the story: a straightforward narrative, enough time for comic subplots and a big romantic finale upholding anti-monarchic ideals. It’s pretty much exactly what anyone would expect, and that’s its biggest strength.

  • The Thrill of It All (1963)

    The Thrill of It All (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) The life of a cinephile can be unpredictable: A few weeks ago, I was surprised to learn that no less serious filmmaker as director Norman Jewison had, early in his career, directed a romantic comedy like Send Me No Flowers. But it wasn’t the only Jewison romcom! Now here we are, taking in its immediate predecessor, the Doris Day/James Garner romantic comedy The Thrill of It All. Curiously enough, it’s a film with some clear social relevance today, as the satirical script (by Carl Reiner) is focused on a housewife who comes to be offered a lucrative contract lending her authenticity to a series of advertisements for a national brand… much to the dismay of her husband. There’s only one small step from there to the influencer lifestyle of today, with tensions within couples where the influencer suddenly becomes more famous than the other partner. While Day and Garner are terrific and often very funny in their roles, the film’s worst moments have to do with the male character demonstrating a mile-wide raw streak of fragile masculinity in the face of a more successful partner, intentionally putting her down in a twisted-logic kind of attention-seeking. This behaviour does make the third quarter of the film more difficult to get through than expected — if you want to skip from the car plunging into the pool to another car getting stuck in traffic, that may be best to avoid the whole unpleasantness. Still, it’s hard to resist Garner’s early-1960s squared-jawed charm, and Day is, as usual, the leading partner when it comes to comic timing. The film’s best satirical material is in wrestling with the nature of television advertisements, while Day proves game to do just about any indignity asked of her. For Jewison, The Thrill of It all is yet another example of his incredible variety as a director in a career that spanned five decades. The result is not entirely likable, but it’s well worth a look.

  • Bachelor in Paradise (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) If you believe the movies, Americans woke up in the 1960s and starting to notice all sorts of new phenomena around them. What is that sex thing? ask the movies of the time. The truth is somewhat less revelatory — it’s the movies that unshackled themselves from a prudish reflection of American society, and it had to be done in a very gradual way, as so not to shock the masses. A first step along the way were the cute sex comedies of the early 1960s, in which the films barely hinted at naughtiness — which, to be fair, was a step up from the previous decade. It’s in the vein that Bachelor in Paradise features Bob Hope as a salacious best-selling playboy author who infiltrates a suburban community in the hopes of researching a new book. While over there, he’s confronted by the prejudices of neighbourhood gossip queens, especially when he, a single eligible bachelor, finds himself surrounded by lovelorn housewives. As usual for films of the time, Bachelor in Paradise is as interesting for its unspoken presumptions and period detail than for the elements of its narrative. The sequence set inside a grocery store is a fascinating throwback to how people shopped at the time, while the various social taboos being broken are often more revelatory of 1961 American than the filmmakers would care to admit. Bob Hope does make for a funny protagonist — and seeing Lana Turner as his romantic foil doesn’t hurt, even though I find Turner more generic than many other commentators. (I rather would have liked Paula Prentiss in the role, but that would have broken her expected on-screen pairing with Jim Hutton.)  While Bachelor in Paradise remains quaintly sexist, is not built for social commentary and pales in comparison of more groundbreaking films later in the decade, it’s intriguing, cute, charming, and quite a bit of fun to watch even today.

  • Crossing Delancey (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Practically forgotten but certainly charming, Crossing Delaney takes us in Manhattan’s Jewish community to tell us about the romantic troubles of its heroine, a thirtysomething bookseller who gets pressured by her family to find a husband to the point of dealing with a marriage broker. Headlined by the rather adorable Amy Irving, Crossing Delancey is a refreshingly low-key romantic comedy taking place in hesitations and self-doubts, community expectations and a willingness to improve one’s lot. There are no flashy gestures, no clear antagonist and no overly evil character: the conclusion rests on which character is better than the others and willing to take a chance. The atmosphere of Jewish intellectual Manhattan is credibly portrayed, and the film does a lot with what feels like a limited budget. Crossing Delancey is not a flashy film, but it’s heartwarming and cute enough to be worth a look wherever you can find it.

  • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, February 2021) Ho boy, here we go again. I really wasn’t a fan of the first Borat, and its sequel Borat Subsequent Moviefilm often simply repeats the humiliation comedy of its predecessor. There isn’t anything all that funny seeing ordinary people squirm and try to be polite in the face of provocative shock humour from Sacha Baron Cohen — if comedy is at its best when it’s punching up, this seems like hitting down at ordinary people who don’t deserve the aggravation. (I don’t entirely buy the argument that people are exposed as racist or idiots by his antics — I can too easily imagine anyone smiling and nodding in the face of obvious lunacy until the weirdness goes away.)  Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is at its weakest when Cohen and his sidekick Maria Bakalova go around freaking the mundanes. Fortunately, there’s more to it. There’s a narrative, for instance, and some of the best laughs of the film are to be found in the framing device that brilliantly makes Borat patient zero of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The film simply gets more laughs when it sticks to a plot (even when the plot is obviously retrofitted around the documentary footage). But there’s another factor at play too: Far more politically engaged than its predecessor, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm fearlessly goes after worthy targets. I may not be fond of Cohen making fun of ordinary Americans but when he mocks the entire CPAC? Every single one of those people deserves it. Qanon morons? Worth it. Rudy Giuliani? You can argue that Cohen is merely broadcasting Giuliani’s buffoonish public persona. There’s also an admirable daredevilish streak to Cohen’s method here — putting himself in a situation that no one else would envy in order to get a laugh, and trying to make a sequel to one of the most instantly recognizable comic characters of the past twenty years. I’m still not all that happy with the overall result, but Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is not about comfort: it’s meant to be irritating by design, and there’s some inherent panache in that.

  • Wish Upon a Unicorn (2020)

    Wish Upon a Unicorn (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It feels unfair to bring full-bore critical depth to cute kid movies like Wish Upon a Unicorn. It’s a family film aimed at the pre-teen set with unchallenging narrative mechanics, cutesy scenes and straightforward style. To its credit, it does get an honest laugh early on, as the dad character complains about a “fat cow” blocking the way… only for the film to establish that its rural-bound characters are, in fact, talking about a literal cow blocking the road. After that, it’s up for the first act of the film to set up the premise of a transplanted urban family settling into their new surroundings, and discovering that their new farm residence has many more wonders than expected — including a magical unicorn invisible to most people. Cue the fun and games, especially when the unicorn proves to be an uncommonly good spelling bee helper and works overtime on raising the youngest daughter’s self-esteem. The third act gets less fun, as a unicorn hunter gets brought in, the likable grandma goes to the hospital and the plot gets revved up all of a sudden. Still, applying adult logic to the film is missing the point: Writer-director Steve Bencich’s film is for the pre-teen rainbows-and-unicorn set, and perhaps the best thing we adult film critics can do when faced with such a creature (the film, not the actual unicorns), is to step out of the way and let the kids have their fun. Even if, ahem, there are better picks that Wish Upon a Unicorn out there.

  • Treasure Island (1934)

    Treasure Island (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) The original Robert Louis Stevenson novel is one of those classic tales of adventure that feels timeless, and such is the case with 1934’s version of Treasure Island, which manages to overcome the technical limitations of mid-1930s filmmaking to deliver a still-admirable period take on the piece. The story is familiar to the point of being irrelevant compared to the execution: here’s our orphan hero, here’s Long John Silver, here’s the nautical trip, here’s the island, here’s the treasure. It’s in execution that the film distinguishes itself and stays distinctive. Having Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper in the two lead roles is historically significant considering the popularity of the pair at the time. While there have been more imaginative or more technically polished takes on the story, this 1934 Treasure Island shows you what big-budget studio filmmaking could do with that premise at the time, and that’s interesting enough.

  • The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

    The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, February 2021) The events surrounding the National Democratic Convention of 1968 are still amazing enough that I kept being surprised no one had made a movie about them. But the wait is now over, because Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 is here to tell us how it all went down, albeit with a typically skewed-enough-to-be-interesting perspective. Largely taking place months after the Convention, this film is built around the courtroom drama of how organizers of the protests during the convention were tried for various crimes. The approach allows us to see effect before cause, or rather to keep exploring the core events after their sometimes-tendentious description. With Sorkin at the pen, it’s no surprise if the film proves amazingly full of great lines, clever scenes and substantial roles for the actors to dive into — although one notes that the dialogue feels a bit less self-consciously flamboyant than in previous Sorkin films, and appropriately so. This does shift much of the praise about the film to the exceptional cast assembled for the occasion — too many to mention in a capsule review, although Sacha Baron Cohen deservedly gets much attention as Abbie Hoffman, a great case of a larger-than-life actor playing a larger-than-life historical figure. As usual for Sorkin, there’s a lot to like in the way it ferociously engages in political material, this time poking at history in order to make a point about current concerns. This intention, combined with above-average execution of material that could have ben unbearably dry in lesser hands, makes The Trial of the Chicago 7 a great engrossing film, and one with additional relevance right now.

  • Kuai can che [Wheels on Meals] (1984)

    Kuai can che [Wheels on Meals] (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2021) Jackie Chan made so many films in his heyday that I’m still discovering new ones despite having been a Chan fan since the mid-1990s. Wheels on Meals is a good example of Chan’s fully formed action/comedy persona, working with his buddies Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao to deliver a silly but action-packed film. Unusually set in Barcelona (reportedly because Chan’s growing fame made it impossible to film in Hong Kong), the plot has to do with the heir of a sizable fortune being pursued by multiple parties, including our likable heroes. Of course, much of the plot is spent going from one action showcase to another — a good car chase concludes the first half of the film, while the rest of it builds to a three-ring action circus featuring each character. The action is a bit rough around the edges, but that’s more in keeping with the technical qualities of the film in general than any specific fault with the action performers — as others have pointed out, this is the film that has Benny “the Jet” Urquidez performing a spinning kick so quickly that the draft actually blows out candles on-screen. Wheels on Meals is silly fun in the way most early Chan films were, with enough comedy to make the action immensely approachable even to those who don’t particularly like martial arts movies.

  • The Big Doll House (1971)

    The Big Doll House (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) if there’s a women-in-prison exploitation cliché that The Big Doll House doesn’t use, it’s going to take someone very familiar with the subgenre to point it out. Some have made the argument that this is the film that codified these tropes, which explain both why it almost feels like a comedy today, and also why you need a good healthy dose of male gaze tolerance to make it to the end. The plot isn’t as much a sustained narrative as a collection of incidents and clichés loosely arranged in succession. There’s lesbianism, abusive guards, escape attempts, a sadistic warden, girl-on-girl fighting, shower nudity, weak attempts at criticism of the patriarchy, and plenty of violence when the jailbreak inevitably occurs. If you’re not watching for historical purposes, probably the only real reason why The Big Doll House is still worth a look is for the debut performance of Pam Grier, who proves to be, even at this early juncture, as ferocious and striking as her exploitation persona suggests. She’s by far the film’s highlight, because otherwise you may be bored by the way it earnestly runs through the catalogue of clichés. Otherwise, I suppose there’s always the ironic potential of watching a bad film.

  • Enter Laughing (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) The little-seen Enter Laughing (“never released on DVD or Blu-ray,” notes Wikipedia) is notable primarily for being writer-director Carl Reiner’s big-screen debut as a filmmaker. Adapted (indirectly) from Reiner’s own material, it features a delivery boy’s shaky entrance in theatrical show-business, as his lacklustre acting skills are no match for the attraction he creates in his leading lady and her influence over her father/producer. An early example of a comedy of humiliation, much of Enter Laughing’s jokes run at the expense of its lead character (played with wide-eyed innocence by Reni Santoni), who’s really not that bright nor gifted in the thespian arts. While a fine comic premise, there’s a sense that the joke is not just overdone, but wrung dry over the course of the film’s first two acts. It’s only at the very end, as all of the meticulously assembled setup finally pays off, that Enter Laughing becomes marginally funnier. The ending sequence makes good use of Mel Ferrer’s adeptness at portraying exasperation, and adopts a more slapstick approach relying equally on physical as verbal comedy. Enter Laughing is clearly best suited to audiences with theatrical experience — there’s an insider’s touch to the process of auditioning, dodgy off-Broadway troupes and horrifyingly unfortunate premieres that speaks to Reiner’s experience in the Manhattan comedy world. I eventually liked the result, but Enter Laughing took much longer to deliver the jokes than I expected. Fortunately, when it comes to making an impact, it’s far better to have audiences exit laughing.