Month: August 2021

  • Howling II: Stirba—Werewolf Bitch aka Howling II… Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985)

    Howling II: Stirba—Werewolf Bitch aka Howling II… Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) I’m not going to claim that werewolf thriller The Howling is a wonderful movie (I found it a bit dull), but it’s vastly more ambitious than this lazy attempt at a sequel, which heads almost immediately from Los Angeles to the cheaper shooting realms of eastern Europe for a mixture of folk horror, bland leads, vampire-inspired plot elements and people in hairy makeup passing themselves as werewolves. Fortunately, Christopher Lee is here to keep our interest as a werewolf hunter— but he can’t be in every scene of the film when he’s in a supporting role. There’s quite a bit of sex and nudity here, with no one claiming that it’s there for artistic merit: it’s very much in the exploitation vein all the way to an end-credit sequence in which the same shot of an actress baring her chest is repeated seventeen times in-between reaction shots of other characters taken from elsewhere in the film. If that’s not damning enough, I’m not sure what is. (B-movie queen Sybil Danning reportedly limited filmmakers to one nude shot as per her contract, and that’s what they did with it.)  It does give Howling II a crass and dirty feel — while the East European shooting location does allow the film to punch above its weight in terms of visuals, the script is the same kind of tripe that low-end horror sequels did so often in the 1980s. It’s not, to be fair, actively painful to watch: there’s a ridiculousness to it that makes up some unintended entertainment, the main song is catchy, the actresses are attractive (if you dig a bit, the film will give you a splendid excuse to read all about the extraordinary life of Marsha Hunt, of The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” fame) and even a performance by Lee in a terrible film is something to be appreciated.

  • Notre Dame (2019)

    Notre Dame (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2021) On paper, there’s something interesting about Notre Dame and its premise — a neurotic architect with plenty of personal issues is selected as the winner of a national contest to shape the parvis of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral. (Because you’re wondering: The film’s production preceded the devastating April 2019 fire even if the film’s release didn’t.)  But there’s a severe tonal unity problem that goes on to plague the rest of the film, as well as many exasperating choices made along the way. Never quite figuring out whether it wants to be an absurd farce, a piece of magical realism, a relationship drama, a character study, a social critique or a media satire, Notre Dame and its writer-director Valérie Donzelli both careen from one extreme to the other, never quite smoothing out the transitions through a solid core or a controlled screenplay. It plays like a series of scenes somehow starring the same actors with the same character names, but not really belonging in the same film. Some bits play out like excerpts from Amélie de Montmartre, some other bits revel in complicated relationship issues, second-act bits go for dumb social-media outrage and the end attempts legal farce, only to fall flat on its face, even in-universe. It makes for an exasperating film that wastes whatever it has at its disposal, with some curious choices (one of the teenage actors was just immediately unlikable) creating additional complications. There are a few good moments, but it would be nice if they belong to a coherent whole. Heck, there’s even a narrator that suddenly pops up well into the film and suggests yet another potentially-unifying layer that quickly goes nowhere. I suspect that most viewers will be interested to the film for the glimpses of a pre-catastrophe cathedral, but everyone should be warned — the building deserved far better than this film.

  • Tom & Jerry (2021)

    Tom & Jerry (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) With the wonders of modern digital animation, there are many, many ways to do live-action movies of classic cartoon creations — but not all of them feel equally natural. Constrained by tradition and IP requirements, some choices are weirder than others, and the bet that Tom & Jerry makes in incarnating all of the film’s animals in a flat cell-like fashion set against live-action actors and backdrops isn’t necessarily the most harmonious to look at. Of, sure, they do look like classic Tom and Jerry: that’s the point. Even the menagerie of supporting characters is familiar, although I’m really not all that up-to-date in my Tom and Jerry mythology. Looks aside, the setting for the film is designed to allow both animal leads to create a maximum amount of mayhem: A posh hotel in central New York City, with an entire menagerie and an impending high-society wedding converging. Chloë Grace Moretz plays a resourceful hustler who manages to get herself hired by the hotel on false pretence, with Michael Peña being his usual scene-stealer as the resident event manager. Alas, critics may struggle to find anything else to say about the result. Like many live-action films incorporating animated animals, it’s very much aiming low and cluttering its running time with dull human interactions in-between the animated showpieces. Director Tim Story struggles with tonal unity, as some sequences seem far more imaginative or stylistic than what surrounds them (case in point: the interrogation sequence, which seems to come from another more interesting film). Obviously, Tom & Jerry works when it seeks close adherence to its source material, and doesn’t quite work as well when it doesn’t — despite the weirdness of 2D-shaded animal characters, these are recognizably Tom and Jerry… enough so that the kids won’t mind. But unlike true family films, this one may bore anyone above eight.

  • Satan Met a Lady (1936)

    Satan Met a Lady (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) It’s hard to argue that Satan Met a Lady is an interesting film by itself — while it features a killer title (especially for a film released so soon after the enforcement of the Hays Code), it’s executed like many jocular detective movies of the 1930s, and there are far better examples of the form than this one. But where Satan Met a Lady becomes truly special is in the exemplary lesson it offers in how tone can reshape a film adaptation. For this is, amazingly, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, five years before the John Huston adaptation that would help ignite the film noir genre and launch Humphrey Bogart to superstardom. The protagonist here, played by a twinkle-eyed Warren Williams, couldn’t be farther away from Bogart — he’s a smooth romantic operator and a constant one-liner generator who barely takes himself seriously. Not that he is the most outrageous deviation of the adaptation, which takes so many liberties with the source material than even viewers with fresh memories of the 1941 version will have trouble spotting the similarities. But the frankly comic tone is where the film is most distinctive, and perhaps most enjoyable as well. It’s not a good movie — Bette Davis, one of the film’s lone bright spots as the femme fatale, famously rebelled and refused to show up on set for the first few days of shooting—but it becomes fascinating when you put it against the film noir style of telling roughly the same story. Then again, film noir wasn’t even in the cards in 1936 — amateur sleuths and high-society escapes from the Depression were the vogue, and Warner Brothers was clearly aiming at chasing trends of the time. Despite a plot that becomes unpalatable late in the film’s brisk 74 minutes, Satan Met a Lady is not an unbearable watch, but it’s far best appreciated as the second feature in a Maltese double (or triple) bill.

  • The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018)

    The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2021) The best jokes play on brevity, and at a sixth instalment, there’s clearly a sense in The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time that enough is enough. Obviously designed as a meta-riff on the Sharknado series’ absurdity (and after five instalments, there’s a lot of it), this last film in the series starts in the prehistorical past and gets its characters to time-travel through a series of comic sketches before landing in the future for a big finale that brings the series to a full close. It’s really silly — but to be honest, I’ve seen maybe three of the five previous films, and they haven’t exactly made much of a lasting impression. So, if I’m not exactly hip to all of the references… I don’t care. There are a few laughs here and there—Ian Ziering and Tara Reid still give creditable performances among such looniness, and the way the film wraps up the series is mildly admirable, especially as it’s committed to giving loyal audiences a happy ending. (Many lesser movies would have gone for a cheaper nihilistic route.)  I am not suggesting that The Last Sharknado justifies the purchase of a collected edition of the series — but I will suggest that it doesn’t end it all on a note that makes viewers feel cheated, so that’s already quite an achievement.

  • Zonbi asu [Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead] (2011)

    Zonbi asu [Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead] (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) While it would be hilarious to take Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead as representing something fundamental about Japan, let’s admit that this is a film that’s far from the mainstream. Yes, it fits with films such as Tokyo Gore Police and Meatball Machine, but that’s a very specific flavour, not a national obsession. But anyway: As the title suggests, this is a film that blends gory zombie horror with flatulent comedy. As young students head to the woods for a weekend of camping, they encounter zombies created by a mad scientist’s experiment. The tropes pile up without too much logic, but then again if logic is what you’re after, you’re clearly not in the right frame of mind for Zonbi asu. As schoolgirls are bitten and experience fatal flatulence, director Noboru Iguchi goes for funny gross-out and generally achieves its objectives, all the way to a climax in which flatulence once again plays a pivotal role. It’s mildly funny, not really horrific, and clearly meant to disgust at times, but it’s saved by a tone that doesn’t quite go for extreme nihilism. It’s far from being the worst horror film I’ve seen this week, although that’s not really saying a lot. One fair warning: Zonbi asu is not quite as good as its title. But it’s not that far off either.

  • Bad Biology (2008)

    Bad Biology (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) There are times when I wonder if I’ve become too jaded and seen too many movies. (Especially after shrugging off a gory but dull horror film.) But then there’s something like Bad Biology to remind me that, no, I’m just jaded enough to sit through stuff like that. Because Bad Biology, from noted cult shlockmeister Frank Henenlotter, is clearly designed to upset viewers. Its first few minutes, after all, don’t just feature an abnormally libidinous young woman (with seven, ahem, pleasure centres) who has one-night stands violent enough to kill her partners, but has a biology so outlandish that every tryst is followed hours later by the birthing of a deformed fetus. All of it graphically portrayed. It’s not just that kind of film — it’s the kind of film where the protagonist directly turns to the camera and tells viewers to deal with it or stop watching. And there’s more to come, as the film then turns its attention to a tortured young man with a disembodied phallus who’s just as sex-obsessed as the female lead we just met. They don’t know each other yet, but clearly the intent of Bad Biology is to deliver a twisted love story of extreme characters. But it’s also a film in which the third act features a sentient, autonomous male organ smashing through walls in order to assault young women. Clearly birthed from the gore-comedy school of horror, Bad Biology is utterly tasteless, absolutely not to be seen by mainstream audiences and… actually rather entertaining in a what-will-they-think-of-next kind of way. Charlee Danielson and Anthony Sneed are frankly fearless in their portrayal of the lead couple, and that’s exactly the kind of go-for-broke tone that’s appropriate if the film is to work. Ironically, I may actually be too jaded by everything, because my main complaint about the film is that it could have gone further and covered up some of the second-third lulls with more outlandish material. But keep in mind that, even if I didn’t completely hate Bad Biology, I have no intention of every recommending the film… or seeing it a second time.

  • Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)

    Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) I usually despise gore-centric horror — I’m not a fan of violence in the first place, and gore movies often put a nihilistic disregard for humans (bolstered by special effects and makeup tricks) well ahead of any traditional cinematic value. This goes double for gore-centric horror/comedies, which come across as psychopathic if they fail to build the delicate equilibrium of balancing the exposed innards with the self-aware comedy. In this context, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is almost remarkable for being almost likable despite featuring prostitutes gleefully dismembering their clients with chainsaws. Coming from B-movie authority Fred Olen Ray, it’s incredibly cheap and tasteless: the sets barely meet high school theatrical production standards and the actors were probably hired in seedy offices with entrances on Los Angeles’ back alleys. The plot is an absurdly lurid tale of an Egyptian-worshipping cult sacrificing victims to Anubis, with a Private Eye narrating his efforts to get to the bottom of a killing spree. Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers clearly doesn’t take itself seriously from its amusing opening disclaimer onward, as the over-the-top narration is contracted at every turn by the sequences we see, and the special “gore” effects are so terrible that they just add to the comedy. Blood sprays like red-coloured water, clunky one-liners pepper the narration and dialogue, and the women disrobe on a predictable basis… but then wield their chainsaws with a big grin. The gore component is almost completely defused by the broad comedy, and then the noir/cult plotting takes over and the film’s 75 minutes are over before we can even dare question what we’ve just seen. If you’re looking for interesting cheap low-budget films in the comedy/horror arena, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers should be somewhere on your list (albeit nearer the bottom): it’s far from respectable, and that’s probably the best thing about it.

  • The Doorman (2020)

    The Doorman (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) The spirit of Die Hard is strong in The Doorman, at least in the basics of the plot: A protagonist with action experience; an implausibly isolated building; villains out for a quick safe-cracking score and a family to protect. There’s clearly an effort here for this to be a Ruby Rose vehicle, especially given her well-regarded performances in other action films. Unfortunately, a vehicle is better when it’s based on a strong script and this isn’t it — sticking close to genre tropes, The Doorman goes from one non-surprise to another until the end but can’t manage any wit or originality. Director Ryuhei Kitamura does occasionally use a flashy trick or two, but little of those tricks actually amount to a cohesive vision for the film: they feel more like trick shots you do when you get bored more than in pursuing a specific artistic intention. Rose is not bad in the role — if the point of a star vehicle is to showcase the star, that’s more than met here. There’s some additional pleasure in seeing Jean Reno as the antagonist — once more renewing with Hollywood when it’s looking for a French heavy, even more so considering that Reno’s indeed getting heavier these days. The Doorman got stuck in the mad COVID-time rush to release everything to streaming platforms, but it’s doubtful that it would have earned anything more than a straight-to-digital release even in calmer times. It’s that generic, and it doesn’t really work even as a failed homage to better movies in the genre.

  • Two by Two: Overboard! (2020)

    Two by Two: Overboard! (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) I’m not usually one to maintain that you must have seen the previous film in a series to make sense of sequels, but Two by Two: Overboard sorely tests this conviction. As a kids’ animation film with the usual tone of comic action, it’s not meant to challenge the plotting brain cells of adult viewers. There are cute animals, they are in danger, they triumph over danger, the end. But as a sequel, it gets roaring on a foundation of unlikely concepts presumably introduced in the previous film, not the least of which being a fantastically unlikely fictional race of animals with extraordinary capabilities, taken as granted in Two by Two: Overboard even as first-time viewers aren’t too sure about the rules covering those characters. It doesn’t make the film incomprehensible — it’s aimed at kids, after all — but it makes it feel artificial, arbitrary and contrived. I won’t place all of the blame on this being a sequel, considering that the script and animation are clearly second-rate: the jokes are often lame, the structure is overly familiar, the dialogue is bland and there’s always a willingness to reach lower to get the kids to giggle. (Flatulence is a big, big thing in this film.)  But it’s the way Two by Two: Overboard preens about with those dumb ideas (introduced in the first film) that makes it surprisingly unapproachable if you’re not among the easily impressed target audience. Maybe watch the first film. Maybe watch neither of them.

  • Hot Summer Nights (2017)

    Hot Summer Nights (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Anyone hearing “coming of age film starring Timothée Chalamet” may be forgiven for recoiling in dread of another snoozefest along the lines of Call Me by Your Name, but it turns out that Hot Summer Nights is quite different. Also quite incoherent, which begins early on, as the film shows us our protagonist being sent to live for the summer of 1991 with his aunt in Cape Cod, MA. Neither townie nor part of the rich hordes descending upon their summer houses, our protagonist soon hooks up with a local drug-dealing celebrity hoodlum, and somehow gets close to the local dream-girl. That nagging voice you’re hearing is not so much the sound of multiple clichés crashing into each other (namely: coming of age meeting drug kingpin tragedy) than a narrator who has no business being in the movie. While our narrator is the link between the film’s fast-paced opening and the film’s epilogue (especially considering that nearly everyone described by the narrator ends up dead a few years later, portending nothing good about our lead characters), he also immediately and ultimately blurs the film’s narrative viewpoint — are we following the adventures of an aimless young man sent to Cape Cod for the summer, or are we following those of this outsider coming to town and becoming a legend to the locals? When the narrator gravely intones, at the end, that “we never saw [the protagonist] again,” you just want to slap him behind the ears and say HE WENT BACK HOME, YOU SMALL-TOWN YOKEL. But such fuzziness is endemic to Hot Summer Nights — our lead character is both a young troubled man and someone who picks up the local weed trade in a matter of days. He’s a shy outsider who somehow gets the attention of the local hottie. He’s coming of age, but also starring in a teenage version of all drug kingpin movies ending with the inevitable consequences of organized crime. The coming-of-age thing doesn’t work when they’re selling hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs on a weekly basis. The criminal narrative is squarely stolen from Scorsese and al, barely scaled down to fit in Cape Cod. The third act is an overly familiar blend of personal tragedies, climaxing just as a hurricane makes it to the town, destroying everything as everyone kill each other. The period soundtrack is similarly used as blunt instrument. If none of this sounds subtle, you have no idea — even the film’s hyperactive opening (in which local legends are discussed) seems poorly imitative of better movies. It does end up with a mildly crowd-pleasing film (well, as long as you have the capacity to cheer for juvenile drug dealers), but it’s a film that dies the moment it stops moving, because that’s when the questions emerge, and the longer you question Hot Summer Nights the faster it falls apart. I did like it better than Call Me by Your Name, but I’m not fooling myself: this is really far from being as good as the other coming-of-aged film featuring Timothée Chalamet.