Month: May 2021

  • Mary Reilly (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) I can’t count the variations on Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that I’ve seen so far, and it’s somewhat ironic that perhaps the biggest budgeted of them, Mary Reilly, would end up being one of the most forgettable. Explicitly setting out to be a feminist take, it tells the familiar story through the eyes of the housemaid in the Jekyll residence. It has a visibly high budget, a good director (Stephen Frears), big stars (none other than Julia Roberts and John Malkovich, among many other known actors in supporting roles) and was marketed as a prestige studio release back in 1996. Alas, the result isn’t much to talk about. Visually, it’s about what we expect from a Victorian tale. Narratively, it doesn’t do much to interrogate the original story or present it in what feels like a novel fashion. You’ll get far more psychological exploration or narrative variations from other takes on the material (Compared to Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde, for instance, Mary Reilly is very weak stuff). Perhaps worse than anything else is the film’s inability to justify its own existence: it falls flat, bores viewers, doesn’t do much with its female-centric perspective (such a film would be given to a female director these days, most likely to better results) and doesn’t leave much of an impression once it’s done being stultifying. It’s even more remarkable in that the source material is interesting and provocative — but this time, it’s as if everyone involved in the production agreed to minimize the strengths of the original, while boosting the least interesting aspects of it.

  • The Gazebo (1959)

    The Gazebo (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) As far as late-1950s comedies go, The Gazebo is markedly darker than you’d expect — especially as it begins with a murder plot to ensure that the protagonist’s wife isn’t embarrassed by the release of nude pictures. That’s right — the hero shoots down a bad guy and spends the rest of the film trying to prevent events from further getting out of control. Glenn Ford plays the harried husband killing to protect his wife’s honour (especially considering that she’s played by Debbie Reynolds), but the script is aligned in his favour, as all the people harmed during the course of the film definitely deserved it. Amusing without necessarily being all that funny, The Gazebo arguably plays better when viewed alongside more serious criminal fare of the era — Alfred Hitchcock gets name-checked (indeed, there are similarities here with his The Trouble with Harry, since playwright Alec Coppel contributed The Gazebo’s original story to and handled screenwriting duties on Vertigo) and you can see the film as a slight film noir parody (albeit in colour and in a small town, so not really all that much). It’s not mandatory viewing, but it’s certainly watchable and even more so if you’re familiar with 1950s thrillers. The Gazebo’s got a bit more bite than other movies of the era, as the dark comedy it features would become more prevalent later on. But keep your expectations in check.

  • J.C. (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) As far as irreverent New Hollywood-era premises go, you’ve got to hand over some kind of special award to J.C., which reimagines Jesus as an outlaw LSD-imbibing biker. But a wild premise doesn’t make for a good movie, because the execution is almost completely limp. Ill-served by a script that really can’t find any meaningful parallel between Jesus and a reincarnation as a biker, the film limps through uncharismatic acting, low-rent cinematography and unfocused directing not really enlivened by action sequences that briefly make the film come alive. There’s a frustratingly undeveloped kernel of an idea here, but writer-producer-star William F. McGaha stopped at an idea and never thoughts about what it would mean, or what it could represent. J.C. is a dud by another name — and further proof that you can’t judge a film by its premise.

  • The Green Slime (1968)

    The Green Slime (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) And now for something both terrible and entertaining: The Green Slime, an MGM production that went to Japan for the direction and production of an English-language film with non-Japanese actors. The surprisingly colourful cinematography takes us aboard a space station, where an expedition to divert an Earth-smashing asteroid instead brings aboard amoeba-like alien creatures intent on killing everyone. More “Trouble with Tribbles” than Alien, the rest of the story deals with the characters fighting the rapidly-multiplying creatures and escaping the station in order to blow it up. The links with the Italian “Gamma One” film series are not accidental — going beyond the idea of American studios financing colourful low-budget space SF in other countries, the films share the same screenwriter (Ivan Reiner) and was originally slated to be a fifth entry in the Gamma One series — there’s clearly some visual kinship in what made it to the screen. In purely science fiction or even dramatic terms, The Green Slime is unmitigated garbage… but the numerous special effects and visions of a space-based future are rather fun in their earnestness, though. As a result, the film is more entertaining than expected — it’s clearly lower-tier moviemaking, but it has a naïve quality to it that becomes almost endearing. I found it even more worthwhile as a coda to the Gamma One quartet, itself a bit of a footnote to 1960s filmed Science Fiction.

  • Maybe it’s Love aka Eleven Men and a Girl (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) In the pantheon of largely forgotten comic actors, I have an unaccountable fondness for Joe E. Brown, he of the impossibly wide mouth, expressive face and gentle-giant demeanour. He gives Maybe it’s Love a significant head-start that the rest of the film doesn’t deserve. A dull college football comedy, it focuses on the underhanded means through which an underdog college builds a strong football team to take on their perennial opponents — namely, sending a lovely girl to entice great football players into enrolling. Brown plays an older player, while Joan Bennett plays the seductress. (Meanwhile, real football players play the recruits, and they are clearly not actors.)  At 73 minutes, Maybe it’s Love flies by, although it’s not always swift to deliver the laughs. The slightly risqué implications of the premise clearly hail from a freer Pre-Code era, while the portrayal of college football circa 1930 is good for a light anthropology lesson (or maybe another instance of something that hasn’t changed in American society — speaking of which, the heroine is a bookish girl who becomes instantly attractive by taking off her glasses). Brown is all right but not used to his full potential, and that pretty much goes for the rest of the film as well. The inherent naughtiness of the premise is really underplayed, and many comic opportunities are reduced to their barest (bearest?) essentials. I can think of many worse movies, but even by the standards of 1930, Maybe it’s Love isn’t all that good.

  • Dementia 13 (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) If you’re into that whole “first film by famous filmmakers” thing, then Dementia 13 should be on your must-see list: it’s the directorial debut of writer-director Francis Ford Coppola, and it already shows his cinematic flair. The story itself isn’t anything special — a psychological thriller avowedly made by producer Roger Corman to cash in on the success of Psycho: There’s murder, gothic intrigue, gaslighting and a psycho killer. Where Dementia 13 does rather well, however, is in the execution: Director Coppola is markedly more ambitious than writer Coppola, and far more than producer Corman: Accordingly, his 70-minute potboiler thriller is elevated by atmospheric direction that almost takes the film into classic-horror territory rather than exploitation chiller. There’s no real way around the fact that Dementia 13 remains a cheap horror film, executed on a threadbare budget by someone with more ambition than means. But it’s that ambition that keeps the film intriguing today — you can trace a line from this to the atmosphere of Coppola’s 1992 take on Dracula without hesitation.

  • I criminali della galassia [The Wild Wild Planet] (1966)

    I criminali della galassia [The Wild Wild Planet] (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) If you’re interested in smart, solid Science Fiction cinema, there’s not a lot to recommend in The Wild Wild Planet — it’s a futuristic equivalent to the C-grade sword-and-sandal peplum tripe that the Italian film industry was churning out in the 1960s. If you’re willing to place it in the history of the SF film genre as a whole, though, it’s a fascinating footnote. What happened was that, over a two-year period in the mid-1960s, director Antonio Margheriti (“Anthony Dawson”) worked with American SF writer Ivan Reiner to develop the “Gamma One” series of four (some say six) related movies that would be shot more or less at the same time, reusing not only actors and sets, but sharing a coherent future background and characters. The Wild Wild Planet is the second of the four. Being from mid-1960s Italy, the result is far more colourful than expected, with shoddy special effects, ramshackle plots and rampant sexism actually helping the entertainment factor. There’s some effort made in terms of worldbuilding, audacious art direction, mildly intriguing premises (with the fourth film of the series, The Snow Devils, even poking at intentional climate change) stereotypically square-jawed heroes and lovely damsels in distress. The Wild Wild Planet is representative of the entire quartet — rough, offensive, ramshackle and yet bizarrely entertaining. I can’t quite recommend it without a long list of reservations, but if you’re looking for interesting Science Fiction films of the 1960s, the entire Gamma One series is a bit of a bright spot.

  • Evidence (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) It would be very, very tempting to call Evidence a bit of psycho-killer found-footage trash. Coming at the end of the big found-footage boom of the late 2000s/early 2010s, it exasperated reviewers and viewers alike with its blend of various footage sources, a twisty script enamoured of its killers, and aggressively unpleasant shakycam low-budget style. On paper, it sounds like the kind of film I specifically hate to watch. But, in a shocking but inane twist worthy of the film itself, you can’t always predict how things will play out, and I found myself kind of amused by the central gimmick of the film, in which a variety of unprofessional video sources are used to piece together a mystery. Now, let’s be careful — I don’t particularly like Evidence, but I was pleasantly surprised at how it introduced some structural fillips into the usually stale style of found-footage horror movies. There’s some dumb stuff here, but also some clever touches that could have been harnessed into something more interesting. Director Olatunde Osunsanmi and writer John Swetnam had the kernel of something better in their hands, and while it’s disappointing that they let it get away from them, Evidence isn’t quite ready to be dismissed as quickly as many other similar films.

  • Gemini (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) Much about Gemini should work better than it does. Suggest a neo-noir thriller at the age of the social media panopticon and my ears will perk up; play up themes of the power dynamics between a star, a fan and an assistant and I will be intrigued; state that Zoe Kravitz will play a burnt-out young star and you will definitely get my attention. But upon viewing, Gemini is far limper than expected. Writer-director Aaron Katz doesn’t really seem interested in delivering a pure genre piece — his stylized direction is elliptical and scattered, while his script doesn’t commit to the ethos of genre mysteries or noir itself. By the time a central tenet of the film’s premise is nullified in the conclusion, many viewers will be tempted to cry foul — and not just from the basic implausibility of the twist. There is no narrative rhythm here — the scenes fall flat, the dialogue is banal, there’s little buildup of suspense, and as the conclusion suggests, Gemini isn’t even really interested in conventional storytelling. If you find yourself watching it, I suggest not getting overly involved —the film itself will keep you at a distance. It would be tempting to chalk this disappointment up to different expectations, but Gemini misses so many opportunities that it crosses over from a disappointment to being an honestly underwhelming film.

  • The Players Club (1998)

    The Players Club (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) Sure, you say, we’ve got plenty of movie male fantasies of belonging to organized crime, living large, sleeping around, managing the best local strip club and always staying one step ahead of the law — but what about the female viewpoint on that fantasy? And by that, I don’t mean the easy crutch of gender-swapping protagonist so that there are gangster girls with guns — I mean what if you had a female look at that bling-bling fantasy? Now, before going any further, let’s acknowledge the obvious limits of The Players Club in representing the female viewpoint: this is a film written and directed by Ice Cube. It’s not going to be particularly authentic nor all that credible. But still — for late-1990s black cinema, The Players Club still earns some distinction, and it’s amusingly stuck at a crossroad between being socially conscious, yet giving viewers the glitz they’re expecting. Much of the story revolves around a young woman who gets seduced into a seedier, more lucrative life — except that she’s asked to strip rather than deal drugs. Much of the film’s structure will be instantly familiar — the appeal of fast money, the grander-than-life figures at the periphery of the protagonist and the progressive descent of the characters into darker material until they reach a point where they either retreat or die. This protagonist ultimately makes the smart choice (well, helped along by the strip club burning to the ground) but otherwise The Players Club is determined to present a distaff perspective on familiar material. That’s what still makes it distinctive twenty-five years later — but let’s say that a true female perspective on the same story elements would be a very different film. But Ice Cube doesn’t do all that badly — some material still packs a punch, and for a film apparently modelled heavily on Showgirls, The Players Club hits most of its intended marks. The cast isn’t to be missed either — Sure, LisaRaye and Monica Calhoun look terrific, but then there’s Bernie Mac, Ice Cube and smaller blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles for Jamie Foxx, Terrence Howard, Faizon Love and Michael Clarke Duncan. It has aged rather well, all things considered, even in an era not quite so enamoured of the gangster lifestyle or its equivalents.

  • Pick a Star (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) I have a big soft spot for the Hollywood-insider movies of the 1930s, selling a fantasy version of “Hollywood behind the scenes” that usually featured a young woman arriving in Los Angeles with big dreams, and various people helping her out to stardom. Pick a Star is made slightly more notable by two sequences—comic sketches, essentially—with none other than Laurel and Hardy, either breaking bottles over each other’s heads or playing abdominal harmonica. There’s the requisite (and reliably enjoyable) glimpse “behind the camera,” a few cameos of celebrities long forgotten, a mostly innocuous heroine (Rosina Lawrence, who exited Hollywood two years later and, I’m amazed to discover, was born in Ottawa!), an implausibly-motivated heroic male (Jack Haley) and an amiable atmosphere despite the constant threat of not making it in Hollywood and having to return home for a good solid life away from the cameras. Pick a Star definitely belongs to a specific Hollywood subgenre, but it rises to the standards of the form and it’s hard to ask for much more than that.

  • Apur Sansar [The World of Apu] (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Considering Satyajit Ray’s reputation as a foremost figure of Indian cinema and the very high esteem enjoyed by his Apu Trilogy as a whole, being less-than-impressed by The World of Apu is tantamount to heresy. So, I’ll be a heretic—but a self-professed one: I have a hard time getting into classic Indian cinema. The only Ray film I half-enjoyed was The Big City, and I still can’t explain why it interested me. This being said, The World of Apu is more interesting than most of his films — featuring a young man going through incredible hardship, it has effective dramatic hooks and a likable protagonist. You can easily watch it without having had much of an interest in the previous two instalments of The Apu Trilogy — The World of Apu works well as a standalone film, and builds to an effective climax. I’m sure that this half-hearted recommendation will be a disappointment to many, but at this point of my exploration of Ray’s filmography, that’s a lot better than I was expecting.

  • Odd Man Rush (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) As a Canadian, I’m more or less morally obligated to watch hockey movies. Odd Man Rush is a bit of a weird one in that it takes place almost entirely outside Canada, but was co-produced in Canada and deals with topics that are of passing familiarity with many Canadians — the grind of the minor-league players who enjoy the sport, who are relatively good at it, and yet will never make it to the big leagues. They only have so many years before reality catches up to them, and Odd Man Rush, in describing how an American finds himself in Europe playing in lower-tier leagues, tackles that moment of realization that, beyond the thrill of playing on the ice, everything eventually ends. Based on a book telling minor-league player Bill Keenan’s autobiography about playing hockey in Europe (adapted to the screen by the author himself), the film lets go of sports tropes to focus on the sometimes-dramatic, sometimes-comic, sometimes-romantic aspect of living life far away from the spotlights. The film has the qualities and vices of its virtues — it’s a heartfelt kind of movie, but one that doesn’t deal in big drama either. It ends on a whimper, and its low-budget production from a first-time screenwriter means that you won’t find much in terms of soaring dialogue or transcendent directing: it’s very much a by-the-numbers affair, a down-tempo escapade from more triumphant fare. That’s not necessarily bad, but viewers may be forewarned about the gear shift if they’re expecting Odd Man Rush to be more in-line with hockey movie expectations.

  • Traffik (2018)

    Traffik (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) It would be an exaggeration to put Traffik in the “when bad movies happen to good actors” category — I like Paula Patton a lot, but I have seen some less-than-stellar performances from her. Nor would she be the only one to slum in this bad movie: Considering that Traffik sports an intriguing cast that includes such notable character actors as Omar Epps, Roselyn Sánchez, Luke Goss, Missi Pyle and William Fichtner, there are plenty of resumés skipping over their involvement in Traffik these days. A more appropriate category for the film would be “exploitative garbage that attaches itself to a Serious Issue in an unconvincing bid for respectability,” because while it tries to be about human trafficking, it’s nothing more than a cheap sensationalist thriller/horror film. Ignore the meaningless “based on a true story” and the equally meaningless inflated statistics that close the film — Traffik is really about that old Hollywood chestnut: the woman in danger from cartoonishly evil antagonists. The set dressing may be contemporary (Patton plays a journalist who gets embroiled in a sexual trafficking ring led by—what else?—racist bikers) but the plot beats are as old as exploitation itself. The point here is cheap horror-movie scares, not particularly well executed by writer-director Deon Taylor. This is exceptionally familiar stuff if you’re used to the bottom tier of the horror genre: the only thing of note is the better-than-average cast. Which, yes, does bring us back to “when bad movies happen to good actors” as a shorthand for Traffik — maybe not Oscar-calibre actors, but ones that definitely deserve better. The added lesson here is that if you’re going to wrap your film in hot-button issues, you better bring something more to the table than exploiting those issues for thrills.

  • Just Cause (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) Often, you don’t realize what you would miss until it’s gone. In retrospect, the 1990s were a golden age for glossy crime thrillers: They were a regular part of the Hollywood release schedule, offered decent roles to big stars, benefited from great production values and featured acceptable plotting (usually adapted from best-selling novels). This is no longer the case — the frequency of releases has dropped in favour of special effects spectacles, production values have dropped and the results have grown more forgettable. A good middle-of-the-road example of what was regularly available in the mid-1990s can be seen in Just Cause: An adaptation of a John Katzenbach novel, featuring a decent cast headlined by Sean Connery (who did a lot of those thrillers during that decade), Laurence Fishburne, Kate Capsha, Ruby Dee and Ed Harris (plus a child role for Scarlett Johansson). It takes place in Florida and doesn’t skimp on the location shooting or the atmosphere, goes for broke on second-half plot twists and director Arne Glimcher keeps it looking gorgeous at all times. Yes, you can criticize the film’s descent from atmospheric character study in the first half to an often-incredible accumulation of plot twists in the second half — but frankly, that’s one of the most endearing aspects of those 1990s twisty thrillers. And I miss it.