Month: August 2021

  • Just Add Romance (2019)

    Just Add Romance (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2021) I’ll give a shot to any Hallmark romantic comedy if the premise has a good hook, and food-related premises are one of the most reliable ways to get me to tune in. In Just Add Romance, we find ourselves in a fantasy world of a cooking competition in which two ex-flames find each other again, and encounter various obstacles on their way to a happy ending. Narratively, there isn’t much going on here: true to form, the film is intensely predictable from the get-go, two leads are already nuzzling each other by mid-movie and the only suspense during the third act is to wonder which contrived crisis will temporarily emerge to extend the film’s running time. You mean only one of them can win the first prize required to open a restaurant?! I hope they eventually realize they can collaborate as a couple! Disappointingly enough, the cooking aspect of Just Add Romance is treated as an afterthought — there isn’t much cooking here, and the cooking competition runs on clichés almost all the way through. The leads are likable without being particularly memorable (another Hallmark convention finely upheld) and neither the writing nor Terry Ingram’s direction are anything special. It’s not much in terms of a movie, but it’s certainly watchable while doing other things. Miss five minutes? Not a problem — you don’t even have to rewind to see what you’ve missed. A film menu can include empty calories.

  • Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)

    Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second or Third Viewing, On DVD, August 2021) There was a time (back when I was, like, nine) when I thought the Police Academy series was one of the best things in movies, only second to Star Wars. Well, that time is long gone, and watching Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment is now sometimes an exercise in teeth-gritting exasperation. The first film in the series still works, and if my memories don’t betray me too much, the fourth one has its moments. But this sequel has a harder time getting any respect. Loosely picking up after the training of the first film, this follow-up sees the motley crew of ridiculous police officers on their first assignment in a crime-ridden area of the city. Much of the cast is back alongside Steve Guttenberg, with some significant introductions, such as Bobcat Goldthwait in the role of a gang leader who would later become part of the police crew. The story is a loose frame on which to let all of the actors play their comic shtick. Some of it is more successful — anything with David Graf’s Tackleberry is usually fun, for instance, whereas anything to do with Art Metrano’s Mauser isn’t. What’s perhaps most frustrating about the result is not necessarily the juvenile repetitiveness of the jokes as much as uneven levels of absurdity. The good absurd sequences are funny (such as the various security systems deployed in the opening sequence, or the “disrobing guns” scene), but they come sandwiched between long stretches of very mild jokes. Coupled with the generally low-brow humour level, it doesn’t completely work, and leaves viewers asking for more. Now let’s see if my memories of the third instalment are similarly destroyed…

  • Lawyer Man (1932)

    Lawyer Man (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Anyone interested in William Powell’s career should have a look at Lawyer Man: an early-career effort, it first presents him at odds with his usual screen persona, only to gradually have it snap in focus by the end of the film. We first encounter Powell as a modest but ambitious lawyer who hits the big time with a landmark case, and gets hooked up with high society elements both good and bad. When his integrity leads him to rebuff offers from semi-criminal bosses, his fall is rapid. But wait, because there’s an entire third act to follow, and that’s when we get our typical Powell: Confident, eloquent, righteous and always in control. That’s the Powell that audiences were expecting! Calling Lawyer Man an origin story for Powell’s screen persona is ignoring many previous films making good use of his talents — it’s best to see this as a modest departure from his persona only to reaffirm it by the end of the film. It all works out rather well despite the technical clunkiness of this early-sound era film. At 68 minutes, it doesn’t have a lot of time to spend on non-essentials (although the horseshoe on the wall is a nice touch), so expect the narrative pacing to be at a breakneck speed. I liked it, although it’s hard to say whether I liked the film, or I just like Powell in general — suffice to say that Layer Man is still watchable without effort, and it does have a good satisfying character arc for the lead.

  • Their Big Moment (1934)

    Their Big Moment (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) We’re getting deep in the weeds of 1930s cinema with Their Big Moment, a 68 minute (!) mystery involving séances, revelations from the afterlife, a comic relief turn from Zasu Pitts (in a film not generally meant to be funny) and some murder shenanigans. It’s not great art — you can feel the perfunctory effort in how the film blends its elements, but there’s a charming period atmosphere to the way they take their séances seriously, how Pitts is being used for a few laughs (she’s really a supporting player here) and how the 1930s archetype of amateur sleuths is deployed without amazement or irony. Their Big Moment is certainly watchable, although not worth obsessing over.

  • The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)

    The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) It took me too long to realize it, but The Man with One Red Shoe is very much a remake of Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire, and for all of the good we may think of Tom Hanks in the lead role as a mild-mannered man thrust into spying intrigue through no fault of his own, he’s not quite Pierre Richard. Hanks is intensely likable, but he doesn’t have Richard’s manic goofiness nor his slapstick chops. Fortunately, the American version realizes that and dials back the physical comedy in favour of reaction shots whenever Hanks’ character finds himself in situations he’s ill-equipped to handle. The mid-1980s atmosphere is almost overpowering, taking place in a Washington, DC, demimonde of spies trying to one-up each other through the use of an unwitting stooge. Contrivances naturally run high in a film of that nature, with the void left by Richard’s performance felt most acutely in the film’s very mild humour. It’s not a terrible film, but it doesn’t quite reach the level of other Hanks comedies of the era. The period atmosphere of the film is getting better as time goes by, and young Hanks is always interesting to see the more you know about his later career. As a remake, The Man with One Red Shoe is disappointing—so don’t watch it too close to the original.

  • Illicit (1931)

    Illicit (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) I’m always a bit amazed at the way 1930s films, either pre-Code or post-Code in a comic mode, treated the so-called institution of marriage: People got married on a whim, divorced quickly and filled the in-between with bickering, adultery, cynicism and everything that movies then spent decades downplaying. Illicit isn’t all that different from other Pre-Code films, but the biting (if theatrical) dialogue is still mordant. Barbara Stanwyck’s first starring role gets quite a bit of attention considering the risqué subject matter: two long-time lovers seeing their relationship sour after finally marrying, and straying far apart before ultimately reconciling. At times venomously cynical about marriage, Illicit doesn’t quite hit all of the right notes, but it does match enough of them to still be eyebrow-raising even for Pre-Code fans. This being said, let’s not be too enthusiastic about it: It’s not that scandalous (as per him having an affair and not her), and the conclusion seems remarkably unconvincing in its sudden espousal of traditional values. Coming from the early-1930s, the staging is sadly too theatrical, and the subject matter suffers the sad fate of being daring, but not daring enough for us viewers ninety years later. Still, Illicit can be worth a watch for a frank treatment of shifting social more before the Production Code infantilized American cinema.

  • Johnny Eager (1941)

    Johnny Eager (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Not quite film noir yet but more than gangster films of the 1930s, Johnny Eager does begin on a strong note, with a charming ex-con managing to keep the authorities convinced that he’s back on the straight path, even as he’s back to controlling a good chunk of the metropolitan underground—and being utterly ruthless in doing so. Things get far more twisted when he gets an occasion to seduce the daughter of an influential district attorney. The plotting gets to be a lot of fun after that, with romance, crime and thrills thrown into the mix. Still, the highlight here is Van Heflin in an Oscar-winning performance as an alcoholic intellectual with florid dialogue, the only person able to talk back to the protagonist and get away with it. Robert Taylor is also quite good as Johnny Eager himself, both charming and homicidal. Meanwhile, Lana Turner does her best at, well, being Lana Turner. As a criminal melodrama, Johnny Eager isn’t particularly respectable, but it moves quickly, features a few good performances, and wraps everything up in some well-crafted irony.

  • Latin Lovers (1953)

    Latin Lovers (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Watching older films is a minefield if you’re particularly sensitive to social equality — as a straight white male, it’s a privilege to watch those movies describe a world built by (and often for) people like me, but even I have my limits and Latin Lovers ends on a note fit to give dry heaves to everyone. And yet, at the very same time, you have actors like Lana Turner and Ricardo Montalban being as charming as they can be, taking much of the edge off but not entirely. The plot, as thin as it is, has our wealthy heroine (an heiress) doubting she can attract men uninterested in anything other than her wealth, which explains her dating an even richer man. Her courtship is humdrum, so it’s no surprise if a trip to Brazil means her meeting and falling for a dashing Latin lover (Montalban, in fine form), at which point the question of money comes back to the forefront. After a few shenanigans, her solution is to give all the money away… to him. Now, it’s possible that this is a wry commentary on how wealth distorts love — after all, the script is from Isobel Lennart, who had (despite an early death) a long list of very good and not-so-misogynistic scripts to her credit. Maybe there’s a satirical intention here that I’ve missed. Maybe the script is simple enough and frothy enough that it invites excessive attention to this flaw. Maybe it’s a romance and I should worry about it all that much. But for all of the colourful pageantry of the film’s trip to Brazil and the romantic comedy of the women, I found Latin Lovers empty until the moment it becomes unpleasant, and then merely unpleasant because that’s how it ends.

  • The Conqueror (1956)

    The Conqueror (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Some films have become infamous for all the wrong reasons, and if you polled various cinephiles for their examples of worst miscasting, The Conqueror’s inexplicable decision to hire none other than John Wayne to play Genghis Khan would still be ranked near the top of the list even more than half a century later. It’s not just whiter-than-white Wayne playing a Mongol warrior, it’s everything else in the film seemingly bowing to Wayne’s refusal to adapt anything of his habits to the requirements of the role. Simply put, Wayne shows up here like he’s in a western (something facilitated by much of the film being horseback riding and fighting barbarian tribes) and doesn’t change a single thing about his approach. The film feels stuck with him with no way out — florid dialogue is pronounced with a pronounced American accent and the same nasal intonation that Wayne uses in other cowboy roles. Even the film feels afraid to truly show what it’s about: far too many sequences seem taken straight from a western, almost entirely negating the attempt at Mongolian drama. But Wayne remains the weakest link in The Conqueror — playing a grander-than-life historical figure not with theatrical grandeur but with aw-shucks cowboy stoicism, woefully ill-equipped for the requirements of the role. As someone who can’t stand Wayne (and that’s putting it mildly), I’m surprisingly gleeful at seeing him stray outside the limits of his acting talent, and being derided for it: it’s not because you’re a star that you’re a good actor and there comes a point where talent and wit are about recognizing your own limits. Otherwise, it plays world-wide on screens big enough for generations to see.

  • The Outlaw (1943)

    The Outlaw (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) There’s plenty to be said about Howard Hughes’ various failings and eccentricities in all the facets of his personal history. Even as a film director-producer, his filmography is an amazing collection of disasters: decent movies that came out years after production because he wouldn’t stop tinkering with them (Jet Pilot); movies where he, as a producer, would rapidly clash with directors and go through several of them (also Jet Pilot, but others too); films in which he let his interest in specific actresses dictate aspects of the film (The French Line), and other wonderful stories in which he deliberately courted scandal. But he was primarily an entertainer, and films like The Outlaw (even if Howard Hawks secretly co-directed) show his first-rate instinct. As a story, The Outlaw is a hodgepodge of familiar western elements, centred around one of the most overused common grounds for American Westerns: Lincoln, New Mexico and the associated legacy of Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday. Little of the film is meant to be based on fact, and as it moves forward, it’s clearly written around popular entertainment rather than accuracy. Hughes was a billionaire, but he was also a first-class female form appreciator, and that’s how The Outlaw is often mentioned as a spectacular showcase for Jane Russell’s sex appeal. There’s no way to see the haystack scene and not be impressed — in fact, The Outlaw’s release was delayed for two years, as Hugues tried to deal with the censors throwing apoplectic fits over Russell’s presence in the film. That, as you can imagine, does provide a distinctive flavour to The Outlaw — in a genre often concerned with asexual machismo, it’s a bit of a surprise to see Russell being so blatantly presented as an object of desire. Coupled with the entertainer’s instincts of both Hughes and Hawks, the result is a bit more than yet another dreary rerun through the Billy the Kid mystique. As someone who keeps being fascinated by Howard Hughes and nearly everything surrounding him, I found The Outlaw more captivating than expected, especially for an early-1940s western.

  • Freaked (1993)

    Freaked (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) As someone with a specific affection for spoof comedies that lean into absurdity, I have to admit that Freaked was a discovery — it’s a horror comedy that doesn’t have a single qualm about going for big dumb jokes, and it completely flew under my radar. Sure, the production values are on the lower-end of things (makeup budget excepted), and that was never intended to be a production with class — but the tone is often very close to some of the spoof comedies of the 1980s, even if writers/directors Tom Stern and Alex Winter don’t quite manage the same attempt-to-hit joke ratio. Wonderfully weird, it opens with a framing device in which a backlit “disfigured” former child star recounts to a TV show hostess how he got involved in a body-mangling freak show in South America, a situation that shifts into fighting corporate malfeasance by the time the climax rolls around. It’s all weird and unabashedly designed for laughs — there’s scarcely a joke left on the table, especially if you don’t mind the deliberately gross makeup effects used through much of the film. Freaked is not a great movie by any means, but it’s a nice surprise: the film’s production history shows that its budget was abruptly cut toward the end of the shooting by new executives, and that shows most in the lack of polish in the post-production areas. Still, Freaked was never going to be much more than a niche comedy for horror fans and it’s perhaps better than it has remained an underrated curiosity.

  • The Comedians (1967)

    The Comedians (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) To answer an obvious question: No, The Comedians is not a comedy. It’s really at the other end of the scale, since it’s a brutally convincing portrayal of Haiti under the murderous Duvalier regime, with its unrestrained tonton macoutes enabling a reign of terror over the island. Like many French Canadians, I have an above-average awareness and affection for Haiti, and wasn’t expecting a 1960s American film to be so effective into portraying a regime of terror that endured well into the 1980s, overlapping with my childhood memories of then-current events. Much of the darkness of the film clearly comes from Graham Greene’s original novel, writing squarely in his usual “white man goes to a poorer country; terrible things happen” mode. This time, the white man is portrayed by Richard Burton, with then-wife Elizabeth Taylor playing his married mistress. The plot is a downbeat mixture of British operatives, American businessmen, Haitian oppressors, diplomatic personnel and homegrown resistance. It really, truly, definitely does not end well. Still, there’s quite a bit to like here: Burton plays world-weariness like few others and he shares a few good sequences with Taylor. Alec Guinness brings some dark comedy to the cast, with Peter Ustinov also contributing some flair to a supporting role. Some black American actors of the time, such as James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson, also get supporting parts due to the setting of the film. Downbeat tone aside, The Comedians suffers most in its pacing — at a punishing 160 minutes, it’s too scattered, too leisurely and too inconsistent as well to be truly effective. Probably too faithfully to its source (Green adapted his own novel without concision), its lack of concision does its topic matter no favours. I still found it interesting, largely for Burton and the portrayal of Haiti (even if filmed in now-Benin), but I can think of several ways in which the result could have been better.

  • Tunnelen [The Tunnel] (2019)

    Tunnelen [The Tunnel] (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) There’s something really interesting to see when typically American movie genres are taken up by filmmakers in other countries — the mixture of genre formulas with national sensibilities can be quirky by North American standards, and what works in a context can be a harder sell in others. So it is that The Tunnel hails from Norway and cleverly uses a distinctive national feature — its kilometres-long tunnels allowing for road traffic through the country’s numerous mountains—as backdrop for a pure catastrophe thriller. After a perfunctory but efficient opening sequence, the mayhem begins when a truck crashes deep inside a nine-kilometre-long tunnel. No problem — everyone just has to turn back and get out, right? Well, no: Even discounting the snowstorm holding back the rescue at one of the ends of the tunnel, it’s not quite so simple as driving out. Not only are the cars, buses and trucks stuck in the tunnel confident that things will get moving again and wait in place, the situation gets deadly when the crashed truck explodes, transforming the tunnel into a burning oxygen-free death zone. Stakes get personal when our protagonist (a wonderfully stoic Thorbjørn Harr) realizes that his daughter is in the tunnel, and the ensemble cast also gets involved in various ways. The American tradition of an escalating situation is obvious enough, although some will quibble that director Pål Øie starts slow and doesn’t quite build up neatly to an over-the-top finale. But the Norwegian touch is what makes the film special. Compared to the usual formula, The Tunnel often zigs and zags. There’s a loathsome supporting character who doesn’t get stuck in the tunnel, for instance — and whose dramatic arc is to appreciate that he’s not dead and neither is his son. There’s a goofy character in the first act who becomes a figure of grief by the end of the film. And then there’s the wonderfully restrained heroism of the coolly efficient Norwegian rescue workers as they confront the disaster with a minimum of histrionics, trying to make the best out of a fatal situation. Even for Canadian viewers used to the snow and the cold, there’s some exceptional exoticism out of something that has no equivalent here, and the support mechanisms that those tunnels require. I do have issues with bits and pieces of the conclusion, about how the film is sometimes very cold-blooded about its characters’ deaths, and how some obvious questions from non-Norwegians are not always answered very quickly. But it’s original enough to be worth a look for thrill-seekers open to unusual disasters in unusual places. Make it a triple feature with The Wave and The Quake for a strong dose of large-scale Norwegian disaster movies.

  • In Name Only (1939)

    In Name Only (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Despite coming from a time in which Cary Grant was fast ascending as a Hollywood superstar and following an impressive succession of solid hits that made his reputation, In Name Only is seldom named as a Grant favourite — in fact, it usually struggles in the bottom tier of the actor’s filmography. The reasons for this become clear as the morass of the main plot becomes apparent: Grant plays an unhappily married man who falls for another woman, except that his current wife will not make any kind of divorce quick or easy. Grant has the great good fortune of being flanked by both Kay Francis (as the wife) and Carole Lombard (as the mistress aspiring for more), both of them beautiful and legends of 1930s comedy. But the film itself is not meant to be funny — clearly aiming for romantic drama rather than any kind of comic mayhem, the film trudges along gently on the charm of its co-leads, and ends up roughly where we expected after ninety minutes of repeating the obvious. There are now-odd moments (such as a drunk character falling asleep in front of an open window and getting a potentially fatal illness out of it) that don’t help. It all amounts to a frustrating film — three actors playing against type in a film that can be read as a repudiation of the screwball comedies that took marriage so lightly. Lombard, of course, would have a career shortened by a tragic plane crash three years later, making the thought of missing another great comic performance from her all the more poignant. To be clear, In Name Only is not a terrible film, but it goes through its downbeat premise as expected, wraps up things in time for a happy ending seen from far away and seemingly wastes the considerable comic timing of its actors without giving them much in terms of dramatic acting performances. Casting lesser actors would have improved it.

  • La planète sauvage [Fantastic Planet] (1973)

    La planète sauvage [Fantastic Planet] (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) I am aware that La planète sauvage is widely hailed (as per Wikipedia) as a Science Fiction classic, an alternative animation landmark, a strongly allegorical counter-culture reference and all sorts of superlative monikers. But for someone who grew up reading metric tons of written SF, it feels like a naïve, blunt, ugly piece of psychedelia with little internal coherency and even less real-world relevance. Adapted from a 1957 Stefan Wul novel by writer-director René Laloux, La planète sauvage feels like baby’s first conceptual breakthrough SF allegory, obvious to the point of exasperation. Consider for yourselves: It’s about humans living on a world dominated by blue giants —Traags-—that usually regard humans as pests, with the exception of a curious youngster who takes on a baby human as a pet after the mother is killed by three young Traags playing at “boys will be boys.” The plot develops once the human escapes and rejoins fellow humans trying to mount a resistance to be considered as equals. So that’s one thing. The other is the animation, taking place almost exclusively on a 2D plane. It’s clearly meant to be stylized, but it’s ugly to the point of repulsion — it takes a special kind of aesthetic to find any of it beautiful, and when combined with the naïve script, it doesn’t leave much space for any kind of affection for the result. I can see why La planète sauvage was such a critical hit in the 1970s, but these days… it’s best seen as a historical curiosity.