Month: January 2022

  • Bachman (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) Most people will know Randy Bachman as the Bachman in Bachman-Turner Overdrive (“You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” “Takin’ Care of Business,” etc.), but I felt a closer connection to him as the host of the CBC retrospective music show Vinyl Tap, which accompanied many of my Saturday evening drives with its thematic selections of classic rock music. But there’s a lot more to him than a band and a radio show, as retrospective biography Bachman clearly shows. Bachman, a next-level guitarist, was part of more bands than most people own cars, never lost his passion for music and had a relatively tumultuous life despite a quiet personality. Much of the documentary is made of affectionate interviews with close associates of the man rather than Bachman himself, along with historical footage, song snippets and a current-day story about Bachman putting together a new album. Highlights of his life include the way his Mormon beliefs held him back from turning into a sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll rockstar like many of his contemporaries; and the incredible 15,000-square-foot “Bachman estate” (complete with recording studio) that was the backdrop to Bachman’s most expansive years. (Alas, it’s a period that also led to his first divorce, something that the film does confront with honesty—even if it’s held back from exploring the full story by virtue of being authorized by Bachman.)  As a portrait of one of Canada’s most successful rockers, Bachman succeeds both at explaining why he was such a towering figure and at explaining what made him tick—always the consummate, quiet musician (just wait until he gives viewers a tour of his guitars) even when pushing people a bit too hard to go on tour, play music and make music. A Mormon rocker makes for an interesting blend of passions and beliefs, and much of the film’s interest is in that combination… even when we sense that there’s a lot left unsaid here, especially when it comes to the ex-wives and ex-bands. Even then, Bachman taught me much about the man-and-the-legend, and made me sad once more that Vinyl Tap is no longer being produced at the CBC.

  • The Search (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) There’s something amazing in the way cinema can reach across decades to make period-specific points with wide universal appeal. The issue that concerned socially-conscious director Fred Zinnemann in tackling The Search is intensely specific to the end of WW2—the plight of children separated from their parents during the war, and the efforts of allied forces to reunite families. Headed by the solid Montgomery Clift, the film uses real location shooting in Germany to present the bombed-out remains of the country as backdrop to a desperate time. Atmosphere and subject matter do what the rest of the film struggles a bit to achieve, which is to remain gripping: despite the universal interest of making sure a child is reunited with their parents, Zinnemann is often more about lofty values than cinematic interest (especially at this early state of his career—although he would almost always remain a very formal director than a stylish one). Oh, The Search remains watchable—but there’s something missing to take it where it should be. Still, it still has the ability to make us care about something that happened more than seventy years ago, and that’s wonderful in itself.

  • The Hand (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) One of Oliver Stone’s earliest movies as writer-director, The Hand is an oddity in his filmography in that it’s probably a supernatural thriller. I say probably, because in the usual fashion of psychological thrillers going for Todorovian ambiguity, it intentionally presents contradictory material in order to have it both ways. Michael Caine remains one of the best reasons to see the film, as he plays a comic book artist who loses one of his hands in a very contrived accident scene. That’s bad enough, but when his enemies and personal annoyances start dropping dead at the hand of a mysterious entity, we’re either dealing with our protagonist undergoing a psychotic break, or a supernatural disembodied hand going around and doing his dirty subconscious business. Even hard-core horror fans will opt for the psychological explanation… except that the ending of the film has other ideas. OR DOES IT?!? Because, as is often the case with those borderline thrillers, nothing is really expected to make sense. Still, Caine is fun to watch as a writer going crazy (he reportedly did the film for garage-building cash), and the special effects are not bad for the time and budget of the film. There’s some grand-guignol entertainment value to The Hand even if it’s not all that good, and it’s not even close to the worst film in Caine’s filmography.

  • Pal Joey (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) If you’re going to make a 1950s film about a cad of a crooner, there were no better choices than Frank Sinatra at a moment where he was ascending as the Rat Pack’s “chairman of the board.”  Even in toning down the material from the original Broadway show (where, in an uncanny parallel, the character was played by Gene Kelly), Pal Joey has him gallivanting as an incorrigible womanizer, forced to a nomadic existence because of his issues with women. The cycle begins again when he lands in San Francisco and finds himself in another singing spot… unless he can’t help himself. While Pal Joey doesn’t quite measure up to the great musicals of the decade, it’s not a bad watch by itself—largely due to the charismatic nature of Sinatra’s performance, as well as the presences of Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak in supporting roles. A few of the songs are fun or well known — “Zip” is about as burlesque as they could get away in an all-family musical, while “The Lady is a Tramp” is another take on a classic. (I still like Lena Horne’s version better.) The cad-learns-better story is familiar but handled in a way that suits what Sinatra can bring to the role, and the technical aspects of the film are not bad for a non-MGM musical—although the film deals with its dance choreography in close-up fashion rather than going for a wide multi-dancer approach. It also remains a Broadway musical in conception, limiting what movie-magic could be done with the structure and plotting. Pay Joey was an undeniable success for Sinatra (who paid for a house on the film’s proceeds and opened a restaurant of the same name) and still all wraps up into something worth a look, even if it’s probably not all that memorable as some of its musical contemporaries.

  • Our Dancing Daughters (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) While the traditional definition of Pre-Code cinema usually starts with the beginning of sound cinema, it’s obvious that it didn’t spring from nothing—the trends were already there, the morals already loosened by the swinging 1920s, the appetite for frankly portraying the world already whetted. While Our Dancing Daughters is a silent film at the very end of that era, its frank subject matter revolves around a young woman (Joan Crawford, in a star-making turn) playing with codes of what’s a good or bad woman at a time where unprecedented freedom was available. The story, with its numerous supporting characters, eventually turns to romance which resolves with a rather hilarious punishing-the-bad-girl-by-throwing-her-down-the-stairs ending. Our Dancing Daughters is sometimes tedious to get through given the low narrative density of silent cinema, but it’s not uninteresting as a Pre-Pre-Code piece of cinema. Crawford here shows the qualities that made her a star, and exemplifies the flapper archetypes that silent cinema just managed to catch at the right time. Older cinema usually survives when it has something to say or illustrate, and there’s a good case to be made for Our Dancing Daughters as a still-interesting portrayal of another era.

  • Operator 13 (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) There’s something interesting in Operator 13’s dive into American Civil War history as a pretext for a spy romance. It features Marion Davis as a showgirl pressed into service to spy on southern forces as a maid (in blackface, unbelievably enough). With Gary Cooper to blandly serve as a romantic interest, you can see how the film is an early shot at the four-quadrant demographics even in the 1930s. For modern viewers, the dismay at the blackface stuff may (or may not) be matched with the unusual nature of a spy story set at an unusual period—especially now when few spy thrillers ever delve beyond World War II. The ludicrousness of the story was apparent even to 1934 viewers, but there’s some lingering effectiveness to this early-Hollywood attempt to dramatize recent history (reminder: The American Civil War was as distant to 1934 as the mid-1950s are to 2022) even when it scarcely makes any sense.

  • Irene (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) It’s not because it’s classic Hollywood that it’s, well, classic—there are plenty of half-remembered films that don’t quite work even when they use tried-and-true elements, and Irene certainly feels like one of them. It should be better than it is—it certainly plays with solid tropes, with its shopgirl heroine getting swept into a Cinderella-like episode with a richer man. Irene’s most remarkable moment is when it goes from black and white to colour the time of an evening ball, but even that isn’t all that enough to keep the film from feeling unusually dull and distant. Romantic criss-crosses help but don’t improve the film enough. Despite being an adaptation of a Broadway theatrical, Irene doesn’t impress much with its musical numbers either. Anna Neagle doesn’t do all that badly as the titular character, but the film itself lets her down. Oh, Irene is watchable—but memorable? That’s another story.

  • Libel (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) In many ways, Libel should be more interesting than it ends up being. The story of an English aristocrat veteran with amnesia about his wartime years, it kicks into high gear when he’s accused of not being who he is—that he’s another person having usurped the noble’s identity. The ensuing trial takes us back to wartime POW camps when everyone starts having doubts about who he says he is. Dick Bogarde plays the protagonist (and, in a casting choice designed to keep everyone guessing, also the man he’s accused of being), while Olivia de Havilland plays the increasingly doubtful wife. While Libel’s first act is set largely against the stately backdrop of upper-class British estate, the rest of the film goes for POW camps and courtrooms. It all sounds promising on paper, but in practice it’s more annoying than anything else: we can’t quite care for the lead character, which doesn’t help a film in which we’re asked to root for him. It wraps up nicely, though—even if the road to get there passes through some very convenient amnesia. It’s not that bad, but Libel should have been much better, at least in reaching its own potential.

  • Blowing Wild (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) While Blowing Wild is technically set in 1950s rural South America, there’s something recognizably familiar about the setting—despite the oil derricks and cars, it’s the horses and sagebrush surroundings that suggest that this is a modern Western, harkening back to the themes of the form. That, and Barbara Stanwick, are probably the two most interesting things about the result, though: The film struggles to retain interest except when Stanwyck walks into frame. Sure, Gary Cooper and Anthony Quinn also star as oil men competing for her attention, but while Quinn occasionally flickers with interest, Cooper is his usual bland self. There’s still something provocative about re-using Western tropes in a modern (now historical) setting, but I don’t think Blowing Wind was thinking about developing itself along those lines. Alas, there isn’t much more to take up the slack.

  • La ronde (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) I’m not going to seriously pretend that the French have something unique going on when it comes to romance, but there is a long tradition of French poetic realism that remains distinctive even after decades of cinema. La Ronde is very much in that tradition, with a flowery master of ceremonies introducing ten small segments on love. As per French standards, the material is more explicit than American cinema of the same era. Poetic speech, ironic circular structure and a diversity of approaches that fits an anthology film characterize La Ronde, which is interesting even when it draws long and repeats itself. Written and directed by Max Ophüls, it’s a change of pace from the usual narrative-driven film, but very much in-line with its tradition of romantic imagination. French speakers will be blessed to understand the cadence of the material.

  • Case 39 (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) There’s an interesting misdirection early in Case 39 when all signs point to a child being abused by her parents. But since that plot thread wraps up at the end of the first act, there’s clearly more to the story than adults trying to kill their kid. As the social worker on the case takes an adorable little girl home, the real shape of the story eventually develops—and gives splendid reasons to the adults for trying to stuff their adopted daughter into an oven. At its best, Case 39 is a bit wild, and greatly enhanced by a few good casting choices. For Renée Zellweger, playing the kind-hearted case worker means a relatively rare genre film excursion and she’s not bad at it. Jodelle Ferland gets an early great lead role as the unspeakably evil young girl, Ian McShane brings some gravitas to a stock character, but it’s Bradley Cooper who’s most interesting here: Dating from his pre-stardom days playing doomed boyfriends in horror films (also see 2008’s The Midnight Meat Train—Case 39 was actually completed in 2007), watching him here now has a different connotation than upon the film’s release: We expect him to last much longer than he does. It all adds to a straightforward but well-executed horror film that deals in (eventually) obvious matters but does so with a certain zip. The ending disappoints, though: after setting up its antagonist as someone with near-unlimited powers and bringing her back for a few encores, the climax of the film ends up being somewhat perfunctory after some better-handled moments in the third act. Still, not a bad pick—and at a time when horror films were going for the rough-and-gritty found-footage style, Case 39 marks a welcome return to a more conventional style.

  • Sin Takes a Holiday (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) I don’t think I’ll ever get over my delight at the particular subset of Pre-Code romantic comedies set in the Manhattan upper-class, where marriage is treated casually as an excuse for the far more serious business of love. So it is that, in Sin Takes a Holiday, we have a suave bachelor agreeing to a marriage of convenience with someone with a crush on him, except that the marriage can’t be consummated and is agreed-upon to self-destruct after a year. (He wants to take himself off the market, but not too much.)  That’s not a particularly sensible set-up for romance, but you know where it’s headed anyway. While there’s some comfort value in this typically unreal depiction of love and marriage in the NYC upper-class in the early 1930s (no mention of the depression, never!), there have been many better films in the same subgenre, and Sin Takes a Holiday struggles to distinguish itself against similar offerings. Only the lead presence of Constance Bennett and good (if unrewarded) supporting turns from Basil Rathbone and ZaSu Pitts are interesting from a cast point of view and add to the film’s impact. The film is probably a little better-known than it should by virtue of having been accidentally dropped in the public domain a while ago and works well according to its sub-genre conventions, but it’s not as essential as many others.

  • Jack and Jill (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) Much as some films are instant classics, others earn near-unanimous enmity and that’s where Jack and Jill comes in—immediately reviled upon release by the critical consensus, it has since become a bit of a punchline when someone wants to make a point about a bad movie. The trouble starts with the premise and certainly doesn’t stop there: With Adam Sandler playing both the protagonist and his twin sister, there’s a lot of potential there for showboating, crude jokes and an overarching “Isn’t it funny to see Sandler in drag???” atmosphere that will irritate even those who don’t dislike Sandler already. But Jack and Jill keeps going further and further into ill-conceived moments. To see an aggressively dumb film as this one manage to pull in none other than Al Pacino to play himself as the butt of jokes is almost confounding. I won’t try to pretend that Pacino’s career is solely made of unimpeachable material, or that it’s always terrible for stars to make fun of their image. But there’s something unusually repulsive in seeing Pacino beclown himself to such a degree, and even having the film itself acknowledge how terrible it is (“Burn it.”) doesn’t bring much solace. Jack and Jill is just irritating throughout—never as funny as it thinks it is, even dumber than it pretends to be and seldom amusing even as it goes through the motions of having a serious actor laughing at himself. It’s just a confounding film and not one that’s pleasant to watch. Critics had a point—while Jack and Jill is still watchable on a purely technical level as the product of a big-budget professional filmmaking enterprise (hence none of that stupid “worse movie of the year” nonsense, please), it’s still markedly worse than most comparable films. Heed the warning and give this one a miss… or do as I do, and wait a full decade and an easy “record this” button on your DVR to finally have an aghast look at the wreckage.

  • The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) I’m not sure that the one-joke premise of The Boss Baby stretched to expand a sequel. After all, it was already such a poorly-motivated stretch that even the first film had trouble making it to the finishing line, barely kept up by a generally amiable tone. The sequel takes things to the next generation, as the grown-up hero of the first film re-experiences the baby empire through his kids. This time, they’re up against a mad educational genius who proves to be… yes… an evil baby. If your suspension of disbelief still holds, let’s just say that The Boss Baby: Family Business may or may not be credible, but it’s executed up to the level of most mainstream animated family films. Fast action sequences, straightforward narrative momentum, plenty of jokes and sight-gags, as well as a decent animation quality. There’s no real reason to watch this film if you haven’t already enjoyed the first one—but commercial logic works on its own level. I’m about half-certain that there will be a third film. I’m reasonably sure I’ll see it. I’m not at all convinced I’ll remember it a few days later.

  • Habit (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Life’s too short to hate movies, but I’m almost willing to make an exception in Habit’s case, a black comedy so violent and profane that it challenges viewers to find any shred of interest in the result. Much of the story revolves around a bad girl with a Jesus sexual fetish turning to nun’s habits in order to conclude drug deals and eventually running afoul of a powerful drug lord who vows revenge. So far so good—a comic crime film is often exactly what I’m looking for, and it’s not as if I’m all that much of a good Catholic anyway. But there’s dark comedy, and then there’s a foul-mouthed unlikable protagonist who ends the film by graphically decapitating (with a knife) another woman. Ugh. Bella Thorne does herself no favour by playing the lead character in a thoroughly detestable movie (she also produces, which says much for her taste in material). The problem is not that Habit is sacrilegious—I’ve enjoyed far more blasphematory material before—but that it’s nihilistic, hollow, devoid of redeemable qualities and visually ugly as well. Janell Shirtcliff directs, which will serve as a warning for whatever film she tackles next. On paper, Habit goes for the foul-mouthed crime comedy genre, but in practice it feels like the result of a psychopathic cast and crew with no concept of humanity or decency—especially when it tries to crack jokes about repellent material. Pretentious yet juvenile, hateful to the point of being loathsome, Habit is a mess of a film that repels even its target audience.