Month: January 2022

  • The Bachelor Father (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Even the most ordinary pre-Code films have their charms, and so The Bachelor Father’s enduring impression is based on its very casual depiction of fatherhood, as a British aristocrat decides one day to track down his three estranged children (from decades-ago liaisons) and recall them to his estate for a reconciliation. For those young men and women, it’s like winning the lottery—even more so for one of them, as she is unaware of her parentage. Movie secrets have a tendency to form the backbone of third acts, so it’s not any big wonder if that ends up being The Bachelor Father’s eventual climax. (Along with some transatlantic flying—recall that Lindbergh had completed the first such flight only four years prior.)  Marion Davis is not bad as the unaware unrelated young woman, while C. Aubrey Smith (reprising his role from the theatrical version) doesn’t too badly in the older man’s role, despite built-in objections to him as the worst father ever. While not particularly funny nor heartwarming, The Bachelor Father nonetheless goes down smoothly as a competent Pre-Code film, a bit racier than later movies and generally handled well enough in an appropriately short running time.

  • Rock ’n’ Roll High School (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Cinephile live for the small surprises—those films that end up being much better than expected, bringing together bits and pieces of pop culture and managing to be hilarious along the way. Going cold into Rock ’n’ Roll High School, I was expecting something very familiar—some kind of silly high-school comedy with the teens facing off against the teachers against a rock-and-roll soundtrack. That’s what this film is, true, but I wasn’t counting on a few add-ons: a heavy presence from The Ramones, and an absurdist one-gag-every-thirty-seconds kind of high comedy. I strongly suspected the film would be much better than I expected the moment I saw the ever-wonderful Mary Woronov pop up on-screen, and I wasn’t disappointed—although her frequent on-screen partner Paul Bartel has a funnier role and, if the film’s production history is to be believed, was the reason why The Ramones were selected as the film’s band. The story is nothing we haven’t seen before, what with music-mad protagonists attending a rock concert and running up against their high school’s overly rigid administration along the way. But it’s the cheerfully over-the-top comic tone of Rock ’n’ Roll High School that sets it apart, with the laughs (not chuckles—laughs) frequently coming until the apocalyptic end. While I’m not the biggest The Ramones fan in the world, their continued presence in the film was a welcome reminder about the energy of their discography: who can’t resist their biggest-hits concert in the middle of the film? Woronov is terrific as the rigid principal, while Bartel also makes an impression as a Ramones convert—on the protagonist side, Dey Young and P. J. Soles make a dynamic duo as the two Ramones-obsessed girls driving the plot. Even the teenage rebellion angle (not so reliably funny to this now-middle-aged reviewer) remains amusing due to the excesses of the comedy and the final act. A good example of a “you won’t believe what I caught on late-night cable TV last evening” recommendation, Rock ’n’ Roll High School is a great blend of good comedy and now-classic music.

  • Repeat Performance (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Crime noir crashes into supernatural fantasy in Repeat Performance, a suspense film in which a woman having murdered her husband wishes she could do it all over… and finds herself reliving the events of the past year, an aghast witness at how history seems fated to repeat itself. Not much of a rational explanation is ever provided for the do-over (other than wishing really, really hard) and the film does have a few challenges in selling its premise. There are also some built-in problems in beginning the story as close to the murder as possible, then having to constantly establish who’s who and how their new role in this repeated year differs (or not) from what happened before the film began. Still, this is a wonderfully weird and different film noir—the fantastical elements add a lot to the usual elements of a neo-gothic thriller and it’s not as if they are tangential: remove the do-over and the whole thing becomes meaningless, and the film doesn’t really try to pretend that this is all taking place in the lead character’s head. Much of the plotting is driven by irony, as events keep falling into the same configurations despite the protagonist’s attempts to change the course of the future. Joan Leslie is not bad in the lead role, with director Alfred L. Werker handling everything in unobtrusive matter-of-fact fashion. Deservedly rescued by the dregs of oblivion by the Film Noir Foundation, Repeat Performance isn’t an all-time classic, but it’s sufficiently different to be worth a look for either film noir buffs or time-loop fans: a classic Hollywood film that plays with elements that would pop up more distinctively in later movie eras.

  • Tale of a Vampire (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) Fully playing up the archetype of the brooding romantic vampire, Tale of a Vampire makes great use of Julian Sands as an old-school vampire who spends his days brooding after an old century-dead flame, conducting scholarly research and reluctantly feeding upon animals and the dregs of society. Compared to many other vampire films, it feels almost refreshing in its classical nature: the horror is not always played up, and the melancholic nature of its protagonist almost makes him sympathetic—especially when he’s manipulated by an old rival in meeting a woman who reminds him of his long-dead love. Unfortunately, there’s a penalty for going with the torpid brooding: much of the film is far less interesting than it should have been. While a first viewing may coast a long time on the promise that this is all leading to something interesting, writer-director Shimako Sato can’t quite make good use of his promising elements to turn out something that goes beyond the evocation of an interesting situation. Sure, there’s something sexy and likable about cute librarians being romanced in the stacks by suave immortal undead creatures… but once that’s firmly established in the opening act of the film, it doesn’t go beyond that. Too bad—although I suspect that the film plays better now as a forgotten film than upon initial release in the early 1990s when it had to contend with a full-blown romantic vampire craze. (There’s also a clear line from this film to the Twilight series.) But that’s the way it goes—those who like atmospheric films will like Tale of a Vampire better than plot-driven audiences. It’s still a bit better than your average vampire film.

  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) In order to make my life easier, I’m going to ignore how Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is presented as two separate films, and consider them as one. Released four months apart, both are halves of the same Frank Miller graphic novel, and I’m not even sure there would be a situation in which you’d get one but not the other. The story more or less seamlessly flows from one to the other, and the cast and crew are nearly identical from one to the other. The only reason to split them apart is that, as a remarkably faithful adaptation of a thick graphic novel, it clocks in at a total of 152 minutes—too long for its kind of direct-to-video animated film. Now, if there’s such a thing as a “lukewarm fan,” that would describe my reaction to the original graphic novel: while I rather like its then-groundbreaking take on the Batman and Superman characters, Miller does remain a problematic writer and the art style of the book is nothing short of atrocious from my aesthetic perspective. I was very, very surprised at the faithfulness of this animated adaptation, which barely softens some of the fascistic edges of the original (even calling them out by name, as if to ask what we’re going to do about it) and even keeps the Reageanesque Cold War elements. I suppose that the jaundiced take on the DC universe plays more widely in 2012 than in 1987: thanks to the expansion and self-awareness of the modern comics universe, we’re now far more used to alternate takes on superheroes, especially rough and violent ones. As a result, there’s a feeling that this animated film doesn’t have to do as much heavy lifting as the graphic novel, nor pull its punches. (I also suppose that a large portion of its viewing public will be familiar with the original and would not have forgiven wide deviations.)  Batman: The Dark Knight Returns makes for a rather good elseworld Batman film, though: often forgotten due to its direct-to-video pedigree, it’s nonetheless a film that pokes at the core of the character, retains the high-tension fight with Superman, examines the burden of loneliness that comes with the character (all the way to awkwardly resolving it at the climax) and keeps much of the warts-and-all nature of the original. I quite liked it, to the point of wondering why it’s taken me ten years to finally get to it. Recommended to DC graphic novel fans—it’s surprisingly committed to a faithful adaptation.

  • The Honeymoon Killers (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) The early 1970s aren’t known for fun fluffy movies. In fact, those years were nearly a high watermark of sort for gritty crime drama. In other words—the perfect time for films such as The Honeymoon Killers, a deliberately black-and-white grainy docu-fictive take on a killing couple that preys upon lonely women through lonely-hearts services. Writer-director Leonard Kastle makes the most out of his low-budget by being as stark and realistic as he can be out of necessity. The impact is still effective today, especially considering that the lead actors of the film, Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco, cheerfully remained outside the Hollywood star system. However, the ransom of this effectiveness is obvious: The Honeymoon Killers is raw and often unpleasant to watch—both low budget and high concept combining to make a film you won’t necessarily watch on a whim to be entertained. But that is also how much of the early 1970s turned out for many cinephiles.

  • It Happened Tomorrow (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) One of the most interesting aspects of watching classic Hollywood is seeing them grapple with classic science fiction or fantasy themes in a context where these ideas had not yet permeated in the general population. Tentative over-explanations, basic treatments and now-obvious twists presented as shattering conclusions are part of the experience, and It Happened Tomorrow doesn’t quite deviate from that tradition, as it takes a very long time to make the most out of its anticipating-the-future-through-tomorrow’s-newspaper premise. Director René Clair eventually takes his material somewhere interesting (the last twenty minutes of the film are quite good), but the early going is a drag, as It Happened Tomorrow seems almost afraid to commit to its Lord Dunsaney-inspired supernatural plot device. Otherwise, the film is presented in a rather straightforward fashion, with a newspaperman trying to resolve his romantic and financial issues with knowledge of what tomorrow will bring. There’s almost certainly a better movie out there making use of those elements, but let’s be honest—much of the appeal of It Happened Tomorrow is in seeing how it comes to grips with its own premise, as a period piece in more ways than one.

  • Eye on Juliet (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2022) I’ve been bouncing all over Kim Nguyen’s filmography lately, trying to understand how he could go from an oneiric fantasy in 2002 (Le marais) to a hard-core techno-thriller sixteen years later (The Hummingbird Project) and every film in-between has been a graduated step from one end to the other. In Eye on Juliet, for instance, we have a modern-day romance facilitated by (barely fictional) robot drones remote-controlled from across the globe. Here, a young American man keeping track on a North-African pipeline from Detroit is gradually drawn into the life of a young couple over there, and sets out to facilitate their emigration. Bridging the link between Un ours et deux amants and The Hummingbird Project, there’s some high technology, some romance and some dreamlike interludes, as the magic of automated translation and some unusual characters give an added dimension to the techno-tools used here. There are some inevitable similarities here with such similar drone thrillers as Good Kill or Eye in the Sky, but a few specific peculiarities as well. If Eye on Juliet has its limits, however, it’s in being perhaps more interesting conceptually than through an overlong execution even at 96 minutes –a sign of an undercooked premise stretched too long. It probably would have worked better as an anthology segment than a feature-length film. On the other hand, it’s a clear progression in Nguyen’s filmography.

  • Running Out of Time (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) In watching Running Out of Time, I think I’m closing the filmography of writer-director Chris Stokes’s feature-film work for the BET channel. I’ve written elsewhere of my growing awareness of Stokes as a filmmaker and my ongoing disappointment in his work, but I have to admit that Running Out of Time is a high note. While he’s still riffing off a very familiar concept—this time around, a home invasion in which our characters are threatened by bad guys about a secret they don’t know about—, there’s some welcome effectiveness to the opening half of the film. None of it is subtle and some of it borders on overdone, such as the voice of one of the masked antagonists. Much of Running Out of Time is predictable—the mid-turn twist isn’t impressive, and there’s a sense that (as in other Stokes films) the screenplay is simply playing with big broad ideas while not having much to say on its own. Things decline throughout the third act, especially as the action moves outside the house, breaks the tight spatial unity of the story, and steadily dissipates to be replaced with increasingly cheaper attempts to ape better films. The epilogue is baffling—fast-forwarding a few months later for nothing more than a coup de grace that could have been administered earlier and with much less fuss. (So how did she get that top-secret assassination device? There’s an entirely other film in that.)  Tasha Smith looks great, walks around in lingerie but doesn’t have much of a character (not, apparently, much in terms of directing attention) to get into. Running Out of Time is, to be clear, not that good. But when put against other Stokes films for BET, it’s slightly tighter, slightly less ridiculous, slightly more effective. It’s still a significant notch below comparable thrillers, but it’s not as terrible as it could have been.

  • Down to Their Last Yacht (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Probably the most interesting thing about Down to Their Last Yacht is that it’s one of a surprisingly small number of films from the 1930s to acknowledge the Great Depression—were you to see films from that period without knowing better, you would be convinced that it was a decade of prosperity in which the main topic of discussion among Manhattan elites was marriage and remarriage. But this acknowledgement of financial problems remains the pretext for comedy: Here, a family of formerly rich socialites is reduced to renting their yacht to richer families. But that only leads the film to its second half, as a charter cruise is interrupted by running aground on a deserted island and a primitive tribe ran by a lovesick white queen. (This somehow happens within sailing distance of New York City but never mind because the film doesn’t.)  It’s all rather dull, unfortunately. Even the somewhat racist last half of the film fails to register as offensive because it’s so dull. The singing and dancing are wasted, failing to lift this up. It’s not exactly bad—there are a few one-liners, a gruff performance from Ned Sparks, a bit of interest in seeing the depiction of fallen riches… but it’s really nowhere near what it could have been. At least Down to Their Last Yacht doesn’t really outstay its welcome at barely 64 minutes.

  • Les maîtres du suspense [The Masters of Suspense] (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) As someone with a much-better-than-average knowledge of the French-Canadian book publishing scene (some of my best friends are best-selling authors), there’s an additional fun factor in watching the comedy of Les maîtres du suspense and measuring it against the dull reality of a novelist’s life. Our characters are not the well-adjusted, slightly introverted writers I know—they’re either a womanizing celebrity with a lasting writer’s block, a slightly-unhinged ghost writer confronted with divorce, or an exuberant man-child with an outsized storytelling talent. The plot gets going when an editor’s increasingly insistent requests to see a new manuscript force the celebrity thriller author to ask his usual ghostwriter to get to work, except that this ghostwriter is so drained by his ongoing divorce that he ends up farming the novel to a neighbourhood daycare worker. It’s all good for a few chuckles: Michel Côté is his usual dependable self as Quebec’s foremost leading man, while everyone else does their part in keeping the film going. Writer-director Stéphane Lapointe doesn’t completely control his material, though: A third act set in La Nouvelle Orléans shifts the tone of a largely domestic comedy into something weirder and certainly more expensive, with little impact. Sure, there’s more colour to the film—but it doesn’t necessarily help the film confront its themes, and it leads to a conclusion that’s as disappointing as it perpetuates bothersome myths about novelists. (Having the protagonist “triumph” by writing… an autobiography is really not closing the loop on his inability to write fiction that precipitated the entire film.)  There’s metafictional material about a film shoot (adapted from his novels) that doesn’t really pay off other than providing a love interest to the protagonist, and the film’s comedy is simply not wild enough to accommodate the sort-of-serious issues raised by the film’s plot turns. There are many ways the same premise could have been spun, but the result seems stuck between those possibilities, awkwardly unable to really dive into the material. A disappointment more than a failure, Les maîtres du suspense is readily watchable, but doesn’t leave much of an impression. Although it is considerably funnier when you know how writing a novel works.

  • Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) While not personally directed by Tyler Perry, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is clearly a Perry movie, and his first as well—he wrote it, and makes his big-screen debut(s) as a lawyer, an elderly man and Madea herself. The film comes straight from his prior theatrical experience and box-office receipts—Perry’s life and rise to notoriety will one day be the topic of a movie, and I expect that this film will be a major turning point. It certainly exhibits in even rawer form than usual the trademarks of Perry’s later career: the brute-force melodramatic style of his movies, the awkward blend of funny and serious scenes, the role of spirituality, the earnest romantic material, the importance he places on female characters, and—most strikingly of all—the place that his Madea character would occupy in his work. As the film begins, our narrator (a rich, pampered wife of a respected lawyer) finds herself kicked to the curb in an absurdly over-the-top sequence in which her belongings are stuffed in a moving van, her husband’s side-chick moves in her formerly palatial house (along with two mentioned-but-never-seen kids) and she finds herself abruptly homeless on their 18th wedding anniversary. Seeking refuge with Madea launches the Madeaverse in a broader sense, and leads to the film’s funniest sequence in which Madea goes for some tough-love chainsaw-powered retribution (which then, less joyously, results in the first of her many skirmishes with the law). The rest of Diary of a Mad Black Woman goes high and low in the search for self-fulfillment and forgiveness of its main character—and she’s certainly not portrayed as a saint considering that some of the third-act wild turns have her become an abuser. There’s some great material here, although it’s presented in very raw form: While Darren Grant directs efficiently, this is Perry’s show—the story often can’t focus, goes through wild mood swings, does not deal in execution subtleties even when it tackles challenging material, and does offer decent showcases for its actors. Kimberly Elise is not bad in the lead role, while Steve Harris does get some rough material to play as her near-ex-husband. Cicely Tyson appears for a few scenes as the protagonist’s mother, foreshadowing Perry’s gift for casting great actors in later films. Diary of a Mad Black Woman probably plays better now than it did in 2005—Perry is now a known quality and a certifiable success, so this works better as a piece of juvenilia than a calling card for a new talent. If you’re a fan of the Madeaverse, it’s decent-enough entertainment: at least you know what flaws to expect.

  • 3 Godfathers (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) While the 1948 colour version of 3 Godfathers is relatively well-known, I chose to watch it as the second film of a double bill with the earlier version of the same story—the 1936 version of Three Godfathers. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because I found myself liking the 1936 version more than the better-known one. Of course, there’s a reason why the 1948 version is the better-known—it’s directed by John Ford, with John Wayne in the lead role and colour cinematography to make it pop. It simply plays better nowadays. Unfortunately, which the premise of the story remains the same (three criminals on the run encounter a dying woman and her baby in the middle of the desert, only to swear to her that they’ll bring the infant to safety), this later version is considerably toned-down from the previous one. John Wayne being John Wayne, his character is made to be much nicer: Not as much of a scoundrel, not a killer, barely a thief. He, significantly, makes it alive to the end of the film. This version does restructure the opening act of the film to be focused on the three godfathers rather than the small-town citizens, providing a contrast to them in the previous version: a far more defendable choice in terms of dramatic unity, but one that does make the film less interesting. Colour cinematography has its advantages, but this post-war version does put far emphasis on the parallels between the three godfathers and the story of the nativity, all the way to a blatant visual comparison. It’s still not a bad film—the central conflict is quite unlike most westerns, and uses the setting as an obstacle rather than a justification by itself—but comparing 3 Godfathers shows how much better it could have been.

  • Three Godfathers (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) While probably best remembered as the precursor to the 1948 feature film starring John Wayne, this earlier version of Three Godfathers (the fifth of seven recognized adaptations of the original novel) does have a few interesting features compared to the later, better-known version. It starts with a rather long prologue in which the three titular men are introduced against a backdrop of civilization. From their interactions with citizens of a small town in the American west, it’s clear that the protagonists are scum—a liar, a cheat, a thief and a killer. The story gets going after the gang of three completes a bank robbery and goes off in the desert, where they find a dying woman and her baby. Tasked with bringing the baby to safety, they find themselves in desperate circumstances, miles away from water and civilization. Much of the film is an elimination contest, as those bad men (headlined by Chester Morris, Lewis Stone, and Walter Brennan) sacrifice themselves to save their charge, all the way to a melodramatic and rather satisfying finale. While not without lulls and technical limitations, I found this version of the story far more satisfying than the watered-down 1948 version that I saw immediately after this one. (I also attempted to record Hell’s Heroes, an earlier version of the story, for a triple bill… but the DVR ate it.)  It’s got a better redemption arc, more interesting material in the prologue and an unspectacular black-and-white cinematography that focuses more on the moralistic aspects of the tale than its place as a western.

  • Together Together (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) There is a point in Together Together where I realized that the awkwardness of the opening moments of the film was going to be like that for its entirety. That what I took in as throat-clearing and prologue was, in fact, the main feature. That it was never going to actually begin, because it had already begun. There’s a specific kind of mixture between humour and uneasiness that I don’t find particularly palatable, and writer-director Nikole Beckwith squarely makes this the predominant tone of her film. Scene after scene of people feeling uncomfortable, exchanging awkward dialogue, poking and prodding at an unusual situation by deliberately drawing out everything that’s meant to be off-putting about it. I can recognize that it’s good at what it does: in chronicling the relationship between a single forty-something man and the unusual twentysomething woman acting as a surrogate mother for his child, Together Together upends nearly everything that Hollywood has offered as a portrait of pregnancy. There’s no doubt that the two characters are destined for greater intimacy throughout the entire film, but at the same time the tone of the film makes it clear that a conventionally happy ending is never going to be in the cards. (Indeed, the film just… ends.)  I went through Together Together experiencing the equivalent of a big shrug: I can see how it’s being provocative, but I don’t really care.