Month: August 2021

  • Discarnate (2018)

    Discarnate (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) All right, all together now: if you think you’ve found a way to bring people back from the dead… just don’t. Say no. Walk away. Forget about it. If more than a hundred years’ worth of accumulated evidence (in the form of horror movies) is to be believed, only terrible things will start happening if you try bringing back loved ones. Those fools in Discarnate were only the latest not to listen to reason and, well, a horror movie largely copied from Flatliners ensues. Director Mario Sorrenti has higher visual ambitions than many other working horror directors, but he clearly still has much to learn in terms of telling a story. The blocks of text thrown on-screen a few minutes into the film are bad enough, but the way Discarnate misses the mark with familiar elements is much worse. A good creature design really isn’t enough to make us forget about the silliness of the herbal tea premise or the slap-dash way the film moves forward, almost as if it was bored with itself. The result may get a few points from minor intriguing ideas that could have been developed more thoroughly (such as an overseer from the money people) but just falls flat as yet another undistinguishable low-budget horror film.

  • Blood Dolls (1999)

    Blood Dolls (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) The more I watch entries in low-budget genre producer-writer-director Charles Band’s filmography, the more I’m gradually beaten into submission by appreciating what he’s trying to do. Blood Dolls, for instance, is not a good movie. It’s clunky, dubiously “funny,” nonsensical even at the best of times, and considerably less accomplished than what it intended. Consider that the film has to do with an evil billionaire (or rather ex-billionaire) who transforms enemies in often horribly racist dolls that do his bidding, which is to kill his opponents. This is not high-ambition material, but there’s something almost charming in the way the zany elements are put together. More to the point, I found that the film eventually set up an interesting relationship between its anti-hero and an equally bad antagonist, filled with romantic rivalry and murderous intentions. (Debra Mayer spends most of her screen time in a dominatrix outfit — Band has faults, but he got that one right.)  Clearly, the dialogue and direction and, well, everything else can’t quite catch up to the potential outlined here. But the film does have its distinctions in a crowded horror filed that often has far less to offer. And that, despite low production values and often-moronic intention, is something I’m noticing across the Band filmography — it sets itself apart with a few things that you won’t find anywhere else, and that’s practically a rarity in low-budget horror filmmaking. I may not like the result all that much, but I respect the intention, and the more I watch his films, the more I’m willing to appreciate the results.

  • Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)

    Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) One of the sure-fire ways to build an effective comedy is to get the characters to behave in ways that would be entirely contrary to expectations or common sense. So it is that by the time writer-director Billy Wilder gets cracking on the premise of Kiss Me, Stupid, he has a man doing everything he can to ensure that his wife has sex with a famous singer. Of course, she’s not really his wife and there’s a significant reward for him if he gets in the singer’s good graces, but that’s not the point — the point is seeing Ray Walston (as the man) setting up Dean Martin (obviously the singer) with Kim Novak (the “wife”) in flagrant contravention of all moral good sense. Getting there is half the fun, and getting out of it is the rest. Although the film lacks a clear climax and generally feels like lower-tier Wilder (it’s not one of his most popular features), there are plenty of good moments, starting with Martin spoofing himself by seamlessly going from his show to an exaggerated womanizing parody of his stage persona. (Some of the early plans for the film sound wilder — but Peter Sellers had a heart attack and Marilyn Monroe died, landing us with Walston and Kim Novak.) The result does feel more overtly ribald as other Wilder films of the time and not quite as witty, but as a 1960s sex comedy, Kiss Me, Stupid is not a bad pick at all.

  • Blue Iguana (2018)

    Blue Iguana (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2021) There’s a heavy dose of Guy Richie’s influence in British gangster comedy Blue Iguana, but I’m surprised at how little of it seems effective. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and jaded; maybe it’s because I watched the film in French; maybe it’s just underwhelming. Suffice to say that this fast-paced, darkly comic crime film does go through the motions of a heist comedy but doesn’t quite manage to impress. Oh, it’s entertaining enough, but just enough: Despite Sam Rockwell’s usual presence and Phoebe Fox’s willingness to repeatedly turn her attractiveness dial up and down, it’s curiously just… passable. Writer/director Hadi Hajaig is clearly having fun, but there’s a spark or two missing despite a few good ideas. I suspect that the way you approach the film will shape a good chunk of your reaction: If you’re willing to tolerate a second- or third-generation copy of better British crime comedies, then Blue Iguana will do just fine. But the moment you expect something more, well, you may not have such a good time.

  • Equus (1977)

    Equus (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cablet TV, August 2021) I’m a philistine when it comes to modern theatre, but even I was dimly aware of Equus’s reputation, largely because there seems to be a scandal whenever it’s revived, and that one of the last spats involved an attempt by Daniel Radcliffe to get away from his earlier teenage persona. If nothing else, the film adaptation would let me experience some of what the fuss was about, and help complete my filmography for both Sidney Lumet and Richard Burton. The opening is really quite good, as Burton sombrely frames the story in apocalyptic terms from the back of his darkened office. Then there’s an immediate narrative hook in how our psychologist protagonist (Burton, appropriately rumpled) is asked by an old friend to take on a most unusual case: a young man who abruptly blinded six horses. Getting to the heart of mystery will, obviously, take us deep in repressed perversion, Freudian symbolism and out-there psychological problems. The mystery is matched by the protagonist’s own descent into issues of his own. Like many theatrical adaptations, Equus is very talky and arguably too long for the film format. It also, crucially, literalizes many of the metaphors and stage tricks employed during theatrical productions that can’t bring real horses onstage. You can feel some of the symbolic power of the theatrical play leeched away by the realism of the film adaptation, but enough of it remains to get the point across. Burton got an Oscar nomination for the role, and so did Peter Firth for his intense performance as a troubled young man. There’s an interesting footnote in finding out that this very respectable film was a product of the infamous Tax Shelter years of Canadian cinema, in which many very bad movies (and a few surprisingly good ones) emerged from federal fiscal policy. As for Equus itself, it’s curiously respectable even after taking so many risks for a delicately evocative source material. It’s blunt in its psychological drama, but then again — it’s about a young man blinding horses in the throes of psychosexual trauma, so it has to go big.

  • Percy aka Percy vs Goliath (2020)

    Percy aka Percy vs Goliath (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cablet TV, August 2021) The story of Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser is the stuff of intellectual property precedent — cross-pollinization between his seeds and those of Monsanto led to a lawsuit from Monsanto alleging intellectual property theft, a case that went to the Canadian Supreme Court and resulted in a mixed decision. Percy is a heavy dramatization of the entire multi-year saga, featuring Christopher Walken as a humble down-to-earth farmer who steps into a world of seed activism, intellectual property, arcane precedent-setting legal rulings and becomes the symbol of agricultural malaise against megacorporations. It wears its messaging on its sleeve — by mid-film, we’re asked to consider issues with ramifications going well beyond a simple farmer and his seeds. It also shoots in very many directions, which is not always all that effective. While I’m on-board in questioning the idea of patenting nature, I’m not necessarily as anti-GMO as the filmmakers and their characters so firmly want us to be as a package deal with the other issues. (There’s a counter-argument about feeding increased populations, barely mentioned in the film, that isn’t truly explored.)  Percy isn’t as heavy-handed as it could have been: its depiction of anti-GMO crusaders taking on Percy’s case is suitably dubious, clearly highlighting the trade-offs in accepting their support. Walken remains a rock throughout their entire film, although it’s important to note that the character he’s meant to portray is almost a fictional creation. The film doesn’t even acknowledge the real Percy’s long career as a provincial politician — not exactly a salt-of-the-earth type unaware of the world. Still, the portrait can be interesting, and the film does make its way to a suitably nuanced conclusion.

  • Paisà [Paisan] (1946)

    Paisà [Paisan] (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) It’s almost amazing to see how quickly Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan came together after World War II, given how it deals with evens scarcely two years distant. Set during the Italian campaign of 1944, it’s a film that presents 6 smaller stories as the American forces move north, either set during combat or shortly thereafter. It’s not a war film in the usual sense of the world, as physical violence takes second place to other considerations, and practically no large-scale warfare is shown. Clearly belonging to the neo-realist school, Paisan offers a stripped-down, on-location, down-to-earth approach with unpolished actors and scripts that don’t necessarily follow conventional lines. As for the stories themselves, they cover a wide range from theological debate to romantic betrayal, guerilla warfare, missed romance, culture clashes and life-and-death drama. I can’t say that I was particularly charmed by the results, but the production year makes it a fascinating piece of cinematic history, as the people playing the characters had direct experience of what they were playing, and the film could use the scarred settings where it all took place. It’s also interesting in that the film, coming far away from Hollywood, had little of the propagandistic bombast of most WW2 films until the late 1960s. War does much to make Paisan interesting, even to those usually dubious about neorealism—and so the film may end up reaching a wider audience than the arthouse crowd.

  • The Wilde Wedding (2017)

    The Wilde Wedding (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2021) I rarely talk about the quality of a French dub, let alone lead a review by its mention. There are a few good reasons for that: Not only are French dub assessments of no interest to Anglophone readers of these reviews, the French dubbing industry has grown remarkably competent during the decades of American filmmaking hegemony. It’s not rare to find some clever turns of phrase in the translations, and the actors specialized in dubbing are good at what they do — films with less-than-average actors are often improved by the dubbing process. (Madonna and Kirsten Stewart, for instance, are far better in French than in English — their dull line readings are improved by more capable actresses.)  In other words — most of the time, it doesn’t make that much of a difference if you see a film in original English or in dubbed French. But we Francophones have grown complacent regarding the quality of dubs, and it takes one striking counterexample to highlight how good we’ve got it, and that example is the French dub of The Wilde Wedding (“Mariage chez les Wilde”), which is by far the worst dub I’ve experienced in years. There’s a basic disconnect between the voices and the actors, and the dub direction is atrocious to the point of wondering who allowed it to be released. The worst performers are, alas, the most important two: The male lead (played by John Malkovich in English, and a wheezing amateur in French) and—ack—the narrator of the film dubbed with an almost-complete lack of affect that makes you wonder if it wasn’t a voice synthesizer at work. I’m not blaming the dubbing actors as much as the dub director here, because it’s that’s terrible. Worse: this terrible dub is overlaid on top of a film that would be disappointing even in an original 4K 3D stereo widescreen presentation: Taking on the old trope of a wedding bringing together friends, family and exes in a posh remote location, it starts out breathlessly presenting more than a dozen characters, only a handful of which will prove to be actually important in the ensuing chaos. There are so many sex scenes shown or implied that it probably would have been better as a pornographic film. Worse yet: The Wilde Wedding leads to a place so trite that you can see it coming well in advance, and can’t muster any sympathy for the characters. (If you were expecting anything close to the wit of Oscar Wilde, as I was… you’re not going to have a good time.)  The result is all the more disappointing that it features actors that I either really like (Minnie Driver, Patrick Stewart — albeit that last one near unrecognizable with some curly hair) or respect. (Glenn Close, Malkovich, bringing back memories of Dangerous Liaisons that aren’t to this film’s advantage.) They don’t have a lot to play with, even with sex hijinks and family strife (and sometimes sexy family hijinks). Even the plotting feels doubly dubious toward the end: Much of the third act is a detonation caused by a character sleeping with… the only dark-skinned character of note, whose exoticism in the middle of so many WASPs is highlighted by her bisexuality and her dancing at the drop of, er, anything. Hey, I get it — Paula Singer is lovely. But she’s stuck with a really problematic character in the middle of a damaged film. Even the extensive use of electro swing, a favourite genre of mine, simply sticks out incongruously. Writer-director Damian Harris clearly fumbles the ball here, and his multi-decade career means that he doesn’t have the excuse of youth or inexperience. But the result is a disappointment no matter the reason, as they layer on top of each other. At least watching it in the original English will remove the constant irritation of the French dubbing.

  • The Signal (2007)

    The Signal (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) Even though there have been many, many horror movies about electronic signals turning people crazy, I still hold out hope that, some day, someone will manage to make a worthwhile movie out of it. Even after watching The Signal, I’m still waiting. A hodgepodge of ideas badly stuck together, it does have some residual interest… but it doesn’t take a long time for the usual horror silliness to undermine the ideas. In true genre fashion, writers-directors David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry seem more interested in gore and cheap scares than in exploring any of the ideas they may have started with. It doesn’t really help that the film is structured along three shorter films, and that much of the film focuses on TV signals, probably as a visual device. While the result is much narratively tighter than most anthology films, it’s still a disappointment. There is a good case to be made that the filmmakers were interested in showing people being violent to one another, and that the TV thing was just a thin justification on top of what they wanted to do anyway, and I’d go for that… except that stripped of its rationale, The Signal is another one of those cheap horror films that seem to find inherent worth in violence, which is where I disagree. Instead, it feels like so many forgettable films, the madness of its characters poorly motivated and ultimately leading to nothing but more red syrup spilling out. It’s striking that such a great idea, reflective of our ambivalent relationship with technology, hasn’t managed to produce at least one great horror film where the metaphor is made literal. Maybe some day…

  • ¡Tintorera! aka Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977)

    ¡Tintorera! aka Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) If you ever watched Jaws and caught yourself thinking, “The shark is cool and all, but what this film truly needs is a ménage à trois,” then have I got good news for you! Melding creature horror with pretentious “erotic” melodrama, Tintorera features a British woman, two men and the sharks that love to eat them all. But there’s more: more women, more skinny-dipping and more sharks eating characters, either in part or in whole. Writer-director René Cardona Jr.’s film is supposed to be horror, but in-between so much wanton romance between the characters, it’s easy to lose track of that… especially when the execution of the horrifying bits is so underwhelming. The female characters aren’t particularly convincing (neither are the male ones, but they don’t get as much screen time) and their whole bizarre blend of libidinous vacation relationships with killer sharks is remarkably off-putting. There’s some camp value in Tintorera, but I’d rather select my cult favourites by other factors than a clunky film that doesn’t work.

  • Seven Sweethearts (1942)

    Seven Sweethearts (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Sometimes, you don’t need plot as much as a few likable actors playing to their persona. Ask me in a few weeks about the plot of Seven Sweethearts and I’m liable to blurt something about a father wanting to marry his seven daughters in chronological order, largely dependent on the film’s log-line. But I’ll be far more voluble about what fun it is to see Van Heflin as a young romantic lead going up against S. Z. Sakall as the marrying dad and the rather wonderful ensemble of young women (including leads Kathryn Grayson and Marsha Hunt) that make up the seven titular daughters. It’s all rather cute and fun if you make it past the film’s strong paternalism, with a rather comforting embrace of middle-western values, decent work by actors playing in their wheelhouse (most especially Sakall, clearly enjoying playing a patriarch), some local Dutch-American atmosphere (it all takes place in a small town with a significant Dutch-born population and a big tulip festival) and a happy ending that is never, ever in doubt. You can see why it would play well in an anxious America then plunged into war. A few musical numbers integrated in the action help this reach musical fans, with the romance and character work doing the rest. Seven Sweetheats is not a great or particularly memorable movie by any means, but it’s pleasant enough to make anyone smile.

  • Lovely to Look At (1952)

    Lovely to Look At (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Now that I’ve seen most of MGM’s biggest musicals of the 1950s, I’m left to track down the rest of them, and Lovely to Look At certainly isn’t one of their best. You can tell a lot about a film’s status by how it looks when it’s shown on standard-bearer TCM, and in this case you’ll have to struggle through a 1.37:1 TV-like aspect ratio (apparently the original shooting ratio) and a terrible blurry image quality that suggests that the film hasn’t been on anyone’s recent restoration schedule. Still, even a second-rate musical from the best years of the genre does have its qualities. It opens on a rather good musical number, “I’ll Be Hard to Handle” that features a splendid later-day appearance from Ann Miller in a leggy purple outfit. The cast includes not only Kathryn Grayson (almost as beautiful as Miller), but Red Skelton doing his usual comic mugging for the camera, and a feature film debut for Zsa Zsa Gabor (as “Zsa Zsa”). Vincent Minelli reportedly directed the fashion show toward the end of the film, although then-veteran Mervyn Leroy is the credited director. The premise and music are taken from the early Fred Astaire vehicle Roberta, but the details are very different from the start. Alas, this doesn’t necessarily lead to anywhere very interesting — sure, the romance and the comedy work, but little of it sparks in the way other MGM musicals of the time did. It’s still not bad (the craftsmanship, comic acting and overall tone are enjoyable no matter what), but Lovely to Look At is one of those films that’s best approached by those who have already seen better examples of the form and can appreciate the details even when the whole is lacking.

  • Bye Bye Braverman (1968)

    Bye Bye Braverman (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) If you’re looking for a plot premise for Bye Bye Braverman, here it is: Four men (all writers, none happy) learn about the death of their friend, so they get together to attend the funeral, then go back to their homes. That’s it. Clearly, this (an adaptation of a novel) isn’t meant to be a narrative-heavy experience. You can even argue that it’s not meant to be particularly dramatic, as grand epiphanies are nowhere to be found, and the characters all more or less end up at the same place at the end of the film as at the beginning, with interpersonal conflicts still left intact. What’s left is dialogue, character and atmosphere: Taking place in the New York City Jewish community, Bye Bye Braverman is largely made of the four articulate characters riffing off each other, snarkily commenting on the funeral, various encounters along the way to and from the funeral, and the protagonist (played by George Segal, sometimes showing glimpses of a funnier persona) reflecting on life and death in fantasy segments. Directed by Sidney Lumet, it’s generally well-handled, but at the end of the entire thing, we’re left wondering what’s the point of the film: with adequate dialogue, low stakes, non-existent character development and mild comedy, Bye Bye Braverman struggles to justify its existence. It does a bit better as a late-1960s slice-of-life period piece taking place in the likable company of frustrated NYC Jewish writers, but not that much. Call it a piece of Lumet’s filmography if you really need to see it.

  • I Used to Go Here (2020)

    I Used to Go Here (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) I’m a forgiving audience for movies about writers, but even my best intentions left me unmoved by I Used to Go Here, a riff on the “coming home” subgenre that sees a writer struggling with an underperforming first novel and a broken-off engagement being asked to go back to the small-town campus where she was a superstar student. The film follows how she clearly enjoys the regression back to a simpler time — revisiting her old room in town, hobnobbing with younger students, and flirting with the idea of a teaching position. Gillian Jacobs (as the writer) and Jemaine Clement (as a mentor) are the two biggest names in this low-budget, low-stakes dramatic comedy. (There’s also Kate Micucci, but she’s practically unrecognizable here and not used to her fullest potential.)  I Used to Go Here is not unpleasant to watch, although the lack of self-awareness from the protagonist is grating, and the abrupt character development at the conclusion is not particularly convincing. As a movie-about-a-writer, it plays things cynically but still indulges in romanticism about writers in the post-honeymoon phase of their first novel. (Although, now that I write this, I realize that I have far more knowledge of genre writers for whom a first novel is not a capstone as much as the start of a far more prosaic and mercenary process — by the time their first novel is published, they have usually finished their second and are starting a third.)  The film could have done more to puncture the regression enjoyed by the protagonist even if writer/director Kris Rey does carry the narrative from one point to the other in entertaining fashion. There’s a great sequence in which a young man has a terrific evening enjoying mundane things with a middle-aged woman after being “caught” in some nonsense scheme — the film could have used more of that loopiness. Alas, by the time it’s over, I Used to Go Here is so inconsequential that it practically leaves no impression. Not a terrible choice, but somewhat of an underwhelming one.

  • Hausu [House] (1977)

    Hausu [House] (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, August 2021) I should probably explain that I frequently decide to see movies based on “best of” lists. In those cases, I often have just a title and a date to go from — sometimes a director, less frequently a plot summary. In other words, I often see those films without many preconceptions other than language and date of production. So… I really wasn’t expecting the looniness of House’s blend of low-budget comedy and over-the-top horror. Working with limited means and even-more-limited special effects technology, this is a film about seven schoolgirls going to a mysterious house possessed by an evil spirit. The plot details and mechanics are inconsequential to the mounting sense of dread and showpieces in which the schoolgirls are killed by the evil spirit — by the time a piano eats a girl’s fingers and then swallows her whole thanks to special effects that are now more hilarious than scary, we’ve attained the maximum of what House is going for. It was never intended as a serious film — the acting is amateurish (appropriately so, considering that most of the actors had no professional experience), the tone is deliberately light, the special effects are intentionally lousy, and the details are ridiculous. Still, the film is even funnier now considering how slap-dash the cinematography can be, with a handcrafted artificiality that only reinforces the surrealism of it all. It will take a more knowledgeable scholar of Japanese comedy/horror to confirm, but I do have the impression that House is the grandfather of the entire splatter-comedy genre that only the Japanese do like they do — that there’s a straight line from House to The Machine Girl and its ilk (not to mention the Anglosphere side-trip through Raimi and Jackson’s early work). Needless to say, that wasn’t what I was expecting when I saw that House was the next film on my list and it was available from the very serious Criterion collection — I was expecting something like Ozu, but clearly didn’t have a clue what to expect from director Nobuhiko Obayashi.