Month: March 2021

  • Jewel Robbery (1932)

    Jewel Robbery (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) The reason why William Powell still has legions of fans even today is that his specific skills as an actor could be magic provided the right material — and Jewel Robbery is very close to being an ideal Powell vehicle. Playing that most cherished of old-school characters, the gentleman thief, Powell goes for his best suave persona: impossibly refined, smooth, irresistible to the ladies and very good at his chosen trade, he easily shines whenever he’s on-screen, although he gets a run for his money from frequent co-star Kay Francis. The theatrical origins of the film can best be seen in impeccable dialogue that takes advantage of the freedoms of its Pre-Code production — most notably in its “funny cigarettes” (ever wanted to see 1930s stoner comedy?), its adulterous heroine, but also having a criminal as a protagonist, and making sure he gets a happy ending. There’s a strong kinship between Jewel Robbery and contemporary Trouble in Paradise, but also with later generations of charming criminals equally successful in larceny and in love. It’s a shining example of the kinds of great movies that the Production Code took away for thirty years, and yet another showcase of Powell’s charm. This being said, Jewel Robbery stands up quite well on its own: it’s a slyly sexy, frequently funny, completely likable crime comedy romance, and it’ll make Powell fans of anyone who doesn’t already know him.

  • Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama aka The Imp (1988)

    Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama aka The Imp (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) Look at that tile. No, don’t just look at it. Take it in. Revel in its greatness. Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. Don’t dwell too much on how the film will never equal the promise of its title. Chuckle at how it’s also known as The Imp, which is one of the shortest titles on record. Yes, it’s possible to see a film based on a title alone. Alas, expectations quickly get tempered once the Full Moon production logo shows on-screen — this isn’t a company known for good movies, and even their so-bad-they-re-good titles aren’t a substitute for, you know, actually good movies. This being said, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama does deliver at least half of what its title suggests—it’s a silly horror comedy that does bring together much of what made 1980s horror films so interesting—dumb premise, college-aged protagonist, buxom nudity, rubbery special effects, unconvincing violence and nonsensical plot developments. The silliness has something to do with six young people breaking into a bowling alley and being held captive by a wish-granting imp, but if you expect everyone to walk away with their fondest desires made real, then you’re not paying attention to how this is a cheap horror film. It’s watchable — and while this sounds like faint praise, it’s actually much better than many of its humourless, overly grim contemporaries. On the other hand, I’m stopping well short of calling it something worthy of being a cult classic or a hidden gem. Director (and Full Moon stalwart) David DeCoteau moves through the motions. The film probably contributed quite a bit to the genesis of later Full Moon production Evil Bong, but doesn’t quite make the most of what it has at its disposal. Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is a disappointment only if you compare it to the genius of its title or any of the characteristics of a good film — but it does much better when put against other cheap 1980s horror films.

  • It Happened to Jane (1959)

    It Happened to Jane (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I’m almost certain that I will forget the title of It Happened to Jane tomorrow, but I won’t so quickly forget that the film co-stars Doris Day and Jack Lemmon, or that its plot revolves around lobsters and trains. As a romantic comedy, it gets going when a lobster processing plant owner (Day) sees her shipment ruined by the neglect of a railroad company — the fun starts when she gets a friendly lawyer (Lemmon) to successfully sue the railroad and earns as payment… a train. The respective charms of both actors are well used, as they each play within their screen persona. The flip-side of this degree of comfort is that the film itself quickly becomes unremarkable. This is a middle-of-the-road effort for both of them, and it’s hard to say whether the finished film would have been better if it had played more seriously or more absurdly. (The smile we get in seeing Lemmon shovel coal in a train is a strong hint, though.) It’s pleasant to watch but curiously insubstantial, which is a weird thing to say given its plot elements and the quality of its stars. It doesn’t help that Day (an actress I find mildly likable but saddled with a bland persona) pales in comparison to Lemmon’s frequently-frantic antics. The final result is perhaps most interesting for its bucolic northeastern setting and winks at the burgeoning TV landscape rather than for how well it executes a lacklustre plot. If you accept that It Happened to Jane is an average comedy of its time, you also have to acknowledge that late-1950s comedies were in an odd place — too late for the golden era of musicals, but too early for the reinvigoration that the permissiveness of the 1960s would bring to the genre.

  • I Care a Lot (2020)

    I Care a Lot (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, March 2021) Even the most cynical “OK Boomer” critics will have a hard time not getting incensed over I Care a Lot’s protagonist in the opening moments of the film, as it shows a hardened “caretaker” deliberately engineering the takeover of a retired woman’s life in order to lock her up in a retirement home with no communication privileges, and liquidate her assets for profit. All legal, all ethical, she maintains — but as the attempted assault that begins the film shows, it’s a reprehensible racket. Rosamund Pike, in full-blown ice queen mode, truly sells the character and, along the way, earns our complete enmity. If you’re still around after that infuriating opening, things get far more interesting when it becomes obvious that the charming old lady that was taken away from her own life is revealed to be the mother of a ruthless crime boss (Peter Dinklage, quite good), who stops at little in order to get his mom back and ruin the life of the protagonist. As the responses and counter-responses escalate, we’re left hoping that no one will be left standing by the end of the film — while the homicidal mob boss is a terrible human being, our retiree-exploiting protagonist feels even worse. Alas, I Care a Lot has its own ideas about who should be the hero of this story, and it doesn’t earn itself any favour by giving all the breaks to its sociopathic protagonist cloaking herself behind gendered rhetoric. I know, I know — anti-heroes are in at the core of black comedies, and it does build to an ironic comeuppance of sorts. Still, I’m left more annoyed and unsatisfied by the result — I’d have plenty to say about cinematic amorality and how it’s now frequently presented as a progressive triumph when it bolsters traditionally downtrodden demographic segments, but I’m going to keep poking at that thesis until I get something more useful than reactionary out of it. In the meantime, what else to say? I Care a Lot is competent filmmaking from writer-director J. Blakeson with a pair of great performances at its centre, but any film that builds itself up on pure hatred for its protagonist shouldn’t be surprised if it finds itself in the cold.

  • The Midnight Sky (2020)

    The Midnight Sky (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, March 2021) As someone with great affection for Science Fiction that plays by the established rules of physics, there’s a strange mixture of hard-science moments and cheap plotting tricks at play in The Midnight Sky, and if I can really like some of its scenes, I’m far cooler on the overall film. Maybe the source of the problem lies in the original book — but it’s not as if Hollywood hasn’t changed whatever it wanted when adapting existing works. Director-star George Clooney is better than the mess of a script, as his magnificent old-man beard commands attention whenever he’s on-screen. Set against a frustratingly vague global catastrophe, he’s apparently the last survivor on Earth, and he happens to have the right mixture of skills and equipment in his polar hideout to be able to communicate with the returning crew of a Jovian expedition — and warn them not to land. (As if they couldn’t see it for themselves?) At times, such as when the space ship crew goes outside to fix a communication problem, the film is about as hard-SF as it gets — bringing back fond memories of Gravity and other successful space adventures sticking to realism. At others, such as when it discusses a habitable (but hitherto unknown) Jovian moon, slides into Adam-and-Eve territory, concludes on coincidental parentage, or goes for the now-exasperating fictional-character trope, The Midnight Sky looks like a bunch of naïve clichés strung together, sorely testing the patience of those expecting more substantial material. It’s hard not to play the spot-the-inspiration game in cataloguing which films did all of this earlier and better. I’m marginally kinder to Clooney’s directorial skills — the film fluently uses terrific visual effects and strings together a number of intelligible action sequences, expanding Clooney’s technical range beyond his previous more intimate films. Still, The Midnight Sky is a film that goes for a narrative-heavy experience (although not a dialogue-heavy one: several sequences play out wordlessly) but creates an unpleasant mismatch between the credibility of its execution and the unbelievability of its plot. There are reasons why those clichés are done or on their way out — while the film goes for an “uplifting rebirth of the human race” conclusion, more realistic viewers will recognize that humanity is doomed even if it wasn’t heading back to a terrifyingly dangerous outer planet. It does betray a film that really hasn’t thought through the consequences of its narrative choices, and it’s hard to trust the result after that.

  • Twice Dead (1988)

    Twice Dead (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) While I’m usually sympathetic to movies that attempt to blend various subgenres together, I still insist on a minimal level of competence in the execution of the result, and Twice Dead doesn’t even get there. At first glance, it tries to blend together three or four big horror tropes in one single mix: A haunted-house story, a ghost story, a reincarnated lover story and a home invasion story. It’s an ambitious intention, but the results are less substantial than you’d expect. A 1930s introduction in which a Hollywood actor hangs himself after heartbreak sets things up for a late-1980s haunted house story, as an ordinary nuclear family moves into a dilapidated Hollywood house with a squatter problem. Before long, the plucky teenage heroes discover the sordid past of the house, are attacked by a bunch of ne’er-do-wells and get some help from the house’s ghost eager to protect the apparent resurrection of his old flame. It’s hard to see how any screenwriter could mess up this mixture. But writer-director Bert L. Dragin didn’t have nearly as much talent, and the film simply lumbers from one thing to the other, missing obvious opportunities to create depth and far too often retreating in botched horror tropes. Even the 1930s subplot is limply handled, and the reincarnation stuff falls short of what could have been. By the time there’s a sex scene that climaxes with electrocution (featuring a cowgirl with the worst peripheral vision in history), the film is not ridiculous as much as it’s unredeemable. Clearly outmatched by the potential of its premise, Twice Dead can be worth a watch if you want to study a narrative engine that’s clearly more powerful than the people handling it — but otherwise, it’s just another disappointing cheap 1980s horror film.

  • I Am Evel Knievel (2014)

    I Am Evel Knievel (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) As with most Canadians with a Cable TV subscription, I have seen an almost-endless series of “I am [Dead person’s name]” movies scroll in the program guide, but never watched one before I Am Evel Knievel. I may have let an interesting series pass me by — As a documentary, I Am Evel Knievel is a very entertaining look at a multi-decade life with a clearly defined arc. Knievel started out as nothing much more than a hoodlum, accumulating an extensive criminal record before discovering a talent for motorcycle stunts and self-promotion. Jumping over increasing distances with a stock motorcycle, Knievel grew to national fame thanks to some fruitful relationship with good promoters and producers, and by the early 1970s was commanding large audiences, TV shows, substantial merchandizing profits (much of it spent on frivolous pursuits) and even a movie featuring “him.”  (Viva Knievel! is, frankly, what rekindled my interest in I Am Evel Knievel — you can’t watch it in all of its unabashed awfulness and not want to know more about the character.)  This all came crashing down in the mid-1970s thanks to a combination of bad crashes and the ill-advised physical assault against a promoter who wrote an unauthorized book about him. Later years in Knievel’s life were spent becoming a better person, rediscovering faith and being focused on others. This is all told through an effective blend of documentary footage and interviews with acquaintances and friends blending together in a kind of oral history. The film is rarely as entertaining as when it blends snippets of interviews to give a richer account of specific events in Knievel’s life, such as when he was assaulted by a Hells Angel at the end of a show and several people came to his rescue. Knievel was a grander-than-life character and the film does lean into this mythology. It’s important to note that the drawback to a friends-and-family oral history is that you don’t get much of a critical perspective—while Knievel’s faults are acknowledged, I Am Evel Knievel presents them with a wink and a nod—he was a former felon, a womanizer, a spendthrift, and an alcoholic but (wink-nod) that’s what made him great, right? Alas, this means that he often gets a pass on things that should not be forgiven — the baseball bat physical assault that drove his victim to the hospital with broken bones and precipitated the end of Knievel’s lucrative sponsorship deals is actually defended by many interviewees in the film’s lowest point. Knievel’s naïve conservative worldview is hailed as admirable (reinforced by trite quotations shown on-screen) and there’s an anachronistic “here’s a real man, the likes of which we’ll never see again” atmosphere to the entire thing. Celebrities interviewed for the film include Matthew McConaughey, Kid Rock, Michelle Rodriguez and Guy Fieri. The film is on much stronger grounds when professional motorcycle stuntmen explain the immense risks Knievel took in jumping with a stock motorcycle, not bothering with the risk-reducing techniques and equipment that modern daredevils use to protect themselves. Furthermore, I am Evel Knievel does manage to cram enough information on-screen to allow viewers to make up their own minds — even if it’s a mildly critical line or two that is not seriously followed-up in the hagiographic whole of the film. Even if you’re not quite seduced by the character, it is a biography that does justice to a fascinating life.

  • Project Power (2020)

    Project Power (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, March 2021) I’m not at all happy with the contamination of current science fiction films with comic-book thinking. Yes, there is a difference: The platonic ideal of Science Fiction starts with an imaginative premise, and then exploring it in depth with rigour. Comic book thinking, on the other hand, is usually far more superficial and focuses on surface-level action at the expense of ideas. (Yes, there are exceptions; yes, those exceptions are the comic book movies I like best.)  So it is that Project Power does have an idea at its core. Unfortunately, it’s a dumb idea — a drug that gives you five minutes’ worth of physics-breaking superpowers. Always the same superpower, but you don’t know which one until you take the drug for the first time, at which point you do risk death if you get a “bad” superpower. It’s an idea that makes no logical sense — and it gets even more nonsensical when the film sputters some kind of justification having to do with evolving animal powers, as if animals could burst into flame like the superhumans here do. Naaah — this is a comic-book movie with comic-book inspired plot devices and surface-level comic-book narrative qualities. This isn’t to say that Project Power can’t be intermittently enjoyable on its own terms: there are plenty of decent action sequences once the superpowers take effect, there’s some pleasure in seeing Jamie Foxx go up against Joseph Gordon-Levitt (with an impressive supporting turn from Dominique Fishback), and some sequences do tickle at the thematic potential of its premise. Alas, whatever Project Power does mildly well only underscores the gap between what it is and what it could have been. Perhaps the biggest gap is its tantalizing parallels between superpowers and real social power — there’s a socially conscious cry for justice here that is merely suggested (and badly suggested at that, with characters dismissing the traditional path to success and social change in favour of luck-based stardom) and then forgotten as we move toward the fights-and-explosions part of the film. A real science fiction film (or a superior comic-book film) would have dug down deeper into those parallels, found interesting thematic resonance and provided some better material to make us believe in the film’s premise. As it is, Project Power runs on surface impact and its lead actors’ screen persona — it’s not terrible, but it falls short of what it could have done with its innate… power.

  • Sinbad, the Sailor (1947)

    Sinbad, the Sailor (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Presented as part of TCM’s lineups of “Reframed: Classic Films in the Rear-view Mirror’” of March 2021 (i.e.: Popular films from the Hollywood golden age that, when seen from a contemporary perspective, contain problematic elements that would not pass without criticism today), Sinbad, the Sailor clearly belongs to that category for its stereotypical depiction of Arabic characters and culture. Not only do you have Caucasian Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. playing Sinbad in dark makeup, you also have a festival of clichés in its Arabian setting, lines that would be considered blasphemous to Muslim viewers, fake-Arabic dialogue and cultural misappropriation galore. It’s a lot to take in, but little of it actually distracts from the swashbuckling effectiveness of the film. Shot in lush Technicolor to take advantage of the colourful sets and costumes, it’s an adventure film with lavish production values and a scope to match. Telling us about Sinbad’s “eighth voyage,” it’s a trip featuring villains (Anthony Quinn!), damsels in distress (Maureen O’Hara!), sword-fighting and deliciously florid dialogue delivered with gusto. In other words — yes, it’s dated, but dated in interesting ways… and I’m not the right audience to ask about whether I should be offended by a work of pure fantasy. This is, to be fair, really not Hollywood’s worst offender when it comes to Arabic culture: Have a look at The Thief of Baghdad or any of the versions of A Thousand and One Nights to realize that Hollywood used Middle Eastern settings as a fantasy playground throughout much of its early history. Meanwhile, Sinbad, the Sailor is mildly enjoyable — not a swashbuckler of the highest order, but something reasonably entertaining, with a spirited performance by Fairbanks and plenty of visual delights. Even though it’s not possible to exonerate it, I can think of some far more problematic films.

  • On with the Show! (1929)

    On with the Show! (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I may be overdosing on Broadway backstage musicals at the moment, but that won’t stop me from acknowledging On with the Show’s place as one of the earliest full-fledged examples of the form, executed almost as easily as it was possible to do so with that newfangled talkie technology. The story will be familiar to generations of moviegoers, as a Broadway show struggles to get back on track after various problems (compounded by a robbery) prevent everyone from getting paid. There are several complications, as the actors clash and people struggle to use the show for their own advancement. But this is really one of the earliest examples of the first wave of movie musicals, taking inspiration from Broadway to take advantage of sound technology but before Hollywood affranchised itself from the theatrical musical tradition. Apparently shot in colour (in 1929!), only a black-and-white version survives today — not that it makes much of a difference. The film itself is merely acceptable when compared to later examples of the form: the mixture of genres doesn’t completely work, the pacing is off, the musical numbers are fine without being spectacular and everyone on set is still trying to find their footing in the universe of sound. Vaudeville legend Joe E. Brown makes an appearance as a competitive comedian. On with the Show remains primarily of interest to movie musical fans, although it’s fun enough to be interesting to others, even despite the roughness of the production.

  • The Houston Story (1956)

    The Houston Story (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Taken at face value, The Houston Story is a mildly interesting crime thriller set against the then-unusual backdrop of mid-1950s Texas, playing up a mixture of crime tropes with slight noir elements. The plot has something to do with stealing oil, so at least that’s covered. The performances are fine, the story is fine and while the film tends toward dull mediocrity, it does work as an evening’s entertainment away from the usual urban landscapes of 1950s Hollywood. But the film gets more interesting once you start digging into its production. For one thing, it originally starred Lee J. Cobb — except that the oppressively hot and humid shooting conditions led Cobb to a heart attack that led to him being recast by Gene Barry! For another, more interesting element, the film is directed by William Castle — yes, that William Castle, but a few years before his claim to fame as a consummate horror film promotional showman famous for gimmicks such as The Tingler. He delivers a far more restrained film here, suitably moody with its shadows but otherwise really not as lurid as his later titles. If you’re protesting that the most interesting elements of The Houston Story are the elements that aren’t in the film, you’re right — and let that be your guide as to whether this is worth a detour.

  • 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997)

    8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2021) As I’ve written elsewhere, many of the late-1990s criminal comedies made in the wake of Pulp Fiction’s success have aged more gracefully than you may have expected from their reviews at the time. Reviewers on the theatrical beat at the time quickly overdosed on those movies, and their reaction was harsher than modern viewers may have now that the fad has died. A fresher not-so-jaded perspective may help appreciate those films to their best value, and 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag is one of those films. While admittedly an awkward mixture of silly comedy and hitman crime, this is a film that, as can be gathered from its very title, plays loose and fast with severed heads as a comic device. The story has to do with a spectacularly irritating assassin getting mixed-up in a family vacation in Mexico, with the titular duffel bag getting picked up by strangers, not to mention the narrative trajectory of the seven heads. Joe Pesci plays the assassin and never misses an occasion to advertise how truly detestable his character is, even from the opening moments aboard a plane where he displays behaviour that would get him kicked out these days. It continues in that vein for the entire film, with the heads going from one character to the other, Pesci torturing other characters in amusing fashion (such as banging together two stethoscopes), the protagonist’s mother (the very attractive Dyann Cannon) shrieking on a near-continuous basis and a rather happy ending at the end of it. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag is still not, to be clear, a great movie even with more than twenty years’ worth of insight: It’s inconsistently amusing, doesn’t give much to do to its protagonist, doesn’t give a comeuppance to its antagonist and often struggles in keeping things going at the same rate. But it’s entertaining enough to be worth a nostalgic look — not quite the bomb that contemporary reviews suggested, but somewhere closer to the average for the post-Pulp Fiction imitators.

  • The Mouse on the Moon (1963)

    The Mouse on the Moon (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Little-known follow-up to The Mouse That Roared, sequel The Mouse on the Moon takes the first entry’s inspired lunacy (which sees a tiny European country start a war with the United States in order to lose and get financial reparations, but ends up accidentally winning thanks to an improbable series of accidents) and re-applies it to the race to the moon. As with the original, the film is an adaptation of Leonard Wibberley’s novel — although this time around, the absence of an egomaniac actor like Peter Sellers seems to have let the filmmakers stay truer to the original text. The satire takes off early, as the fictional country of Grand Fenwick once again finds itself in a perilous financial situation: its wine bottles are exploding, so the Duchy asks the United States for a loan. Alas, things escalate and so Grand Fenwick soon finds itself in possession of a Soviet rocket and the intention of making it look as if they’re going for a moon shot of their own. Thanks to a resident genius scientist (naturalized after the events of the first film), the Duchy eventually beats both the Americans and the Soviets to the moon, to the merriment of all. The atmosphere of Cold War politics and Moon Race technology makes for entertaining period entertainment, as ridiculously contrived as the comic devices can be. While it’s not that funny nor that polished, Mouse on the Moon has moments of wit and the entire thing plays like a farce — keep in mind the production date in evaluating it against what really happened afterwards in the Race to the Moon.

  • Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

    Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Just so that everyone is clear on where I’m coming from, I still think that the idea of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (i.e.: giving the director an estimated 70 million dollars to finish a film he had to abandon midway through) is one of the dumbest — rather than waiting for a new superhero movie that wasn’t built on such shaky grounds, fans deluded themselves into demanding a director’s cut, and the brand management geniuses at Warner Brothers thought it was a good idea to spend that much money to prop up the corpse of a middling film now four years old. So here we are now with a strange object, patched up through deleted scenes and special effects and reshoots to result in a staggering four-hour-long film that is unexplainably presented in dull TV aspect ratio betraying the point of a superhero epic. (Yes, I know about the IMAX argument — no, I don’t think it makes sense.)  My memories of the original aren’t particularly vivid (that’s what happens with a middling film), but this expanded version of Justice League does bring more to the table. Sometimes ridiculously so: Each character is introduced at least twice, and the editing of the film never attempts to be snappy when there’s slow motion to be used or generous pauses between each angle or line of dialogue. Still, there’s new content to feast upon. Rather a lot of content, including entire special-effects action sequences, such as The Flash’s second introduction. There are more character moments as well, including a far more developed arc for characters such as Cyborg and The Flash. Some story beats make more sense, and while we lose the overly humorous “magic lasso” truth-telling scene, the result is not quite as grim as the rest of the DCU up to Justice League. To answer the crucial question: yes, it’s a better movie. But is it $70M’s worth of a better movie? Is the punishing length of the result worth the added effort? No amount of patching can hide the ill-conceived structure that attempts to introduce new characters in a film meant to pay off audience involvement — as the running time demonstrates. No amount of “original artistic vision” can erase the ponderous pacing of the result and the overstuffed plotting. All that effort to earn, at best, half an additional star on an average film seems like self-indulgence writ large enough to be confused for fan service. I do like many aspects of this Justice League: The actors all do well: Ben Affleck is particularly good in this expanded version of Batman, and actors in small roles seem to have more to do. Snyder remains a great visual technician despite his bad storytelling instincts, and the special effects show what a team of highly paid professionals can do with additional time and compensation. Still, the final object is often more dumbfounding than satisfying. It makes plenty of effort (still) to set up later instalments that now have practically no chance of ever existing, considering the changes made in the DCU since then. At some point, why bother? I’m not naïve enough to think that the $70M spent on this Justice League could have been allocated as-is to a fantastic new original film project, but this endless rehashing of past failures for marginal improvements is not a good thing for the future of film.

  • Down by Law (1986)

    Down by Law (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, March 2021) Jim Jarmusch has a checkered track record as far as I’m concerned — some of his movies I like, many I don’t, but they nearly all have something unusual and distinctive about them. Down by Law is no exception, and it may even qualify as one of the ones I like. Shot in black-and-white, it follows three men (Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni) as they are arrested by New Orleans police, brought together in a cell and eventually escape. It’s not a prison film — most of it is a series of dialogues between the three men as they try to find a way to live together in their special circumstances. We do get some evocative shots of New Orleans and the bayou along the way. It’s interesting to see a younger Waits at work here, although Lurie is sometimes just a bit more impressive, and Benigni is far more spectacular with his exuberantly broken English. The film is not as relentlessly downbeat as other Jarmusch movies, and there’s more flow to the narrative as well. While my affection for Down by Law is limited, it’s still somewhat higher than a good chunk of his filmography. Wary expectations may clearly be paying off.