Month: February 2022

  • Seuls (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) A seldom-discussed aspect of movie adaptions is what to do when the source material is ludicrous. Sure, filmmakers change source material all the time, but there’s presumably a limit to what you can do if the original is insane—does it remain an adaptation if you take all of the bugs out? This is relevant to any discussion about Seuls in that while the film benefits from an intriguing beginning, it gets dumber the closer it approaches its conclusion, and that’s squarely because of the source material: As a comic book series now counting 20 volumes, Seuls gets progressively loopier with its contrived mythology, sloppy afterworld-building and convoluted drama. I only discovered this after watching the film and being increasingly dumbfounded at the way it closes. The opening moments are richer in possibilities, as four teenagers discover that they’re the only people left alive in a French city (not Paris, for once). Trying to piece the elements of what happened only gives unsatisfactory answers, especially if you’re coming to the movie unaware of the original series. Much of the film consists of seeing the characters going through the same motions and not learning much. Things suddenly start to get crazy in the concluding stretch, as they discover that there are dead and (in the film’s last few minutes, instead of a conclusion) that there’s a war going on for the control of the afterlife. Or something like that. Without some awareness of the source material and specifically the 15+ volumes that follow the events loosely summarized in writer-director David Moreau’s Seuls, there’s no way to be happy with the way it ends. There will, of course, never be a sequel to the film: having not done terribly well at the French box-office nor travelled overseas (not much of a surprise considering that ending). Anyone wondering what happens next will need to switch back to the comic books and swallow whatever nonsense it’s ready to throw up. Which brings me back to my original question: If a film adaptation remains too faithful to a bad original, where’s the fault for a terrible film?

  • The Bigamist (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2022) The Bigamist has a few things going in its favour, but twenty-first century audiences will focus on how the film was star-director Ida Lupino’s sixth film (of seven), and the first in which she directed herself in a lead role. (To reiterate the obvious: women directors were exceptionally rare in Classic Hollywood.) Much of the plot has to do with an unwitting matrimonial triangle in which a man has separate lives with two women. It all leads to a courtroom retelling of how the affair came to be—a distant wife, a business-trip fling, an unintended pregnancy. Straight-up dramas seldom age well, but this one still has a spark of interest to it. What twenty-first century viewers may miss is some of the off-screen material that preoccupied viewers at the time, most notably how co-stars Lupino and Joan Fontaine had, in real-life, been involved in drama involving the same man, Collier Young (who wrote the film’s screenplay!), who divorced Lupino in 1952 and married Fontaine immediately after. (I don’t have the space here to summarize how that happened, but it’s a classic case of plans blowing up and filmmakers reacting quickly through friends and acquaintances.)  All of this means that, refreshingly for a film of the period, The Bigamist remains less-than-absolute about the morality of what happened. While the conclusion clearly states that the man in that sorry triangle has much to answer for, the depiction of what happened is not unsympathetic to him and his intentions. It’s not quite the same heavy-handed condemnation that other films of the era would have maintained throughout, and that helps The Bigamist remain unusually watchable today even if you don’t know anything about its remarkable production history.

  • Pulp (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) I swear there’s a much, much better film locked inside Pulp, struggling to get out. What we get instead is barely an aperitif, a taste of how different a better film could have been. The off-beat opening is intriguing, as it introduces a pulp thriller writer (played by Michael Caine, no less) with the talent to seduce an entire room of typists, suddenly asked to ghostwrite the autobiography of a mysterious figure. Murder and mystery soon reach the writer, as people around him die violently, and he’s asked to make sense of it all. That’s a great premise! Unfortunately, writer-director Mike Hodges seems content to wallow in the worst of early-1970s refusal to provide any kind of closure, and soon starts messing with the essentials of murder mysteries. The conclusion clearly falls short of satisfaction. The rather grim final scenes are made the more curious by the film’s otherwise lighthearted tone, as it features a writer confronted with something out of his own imagination. The film appears to begin in one genre and end in another one, a meta-comedy gradually slipping into conspiratorial thriller with no happy ending. Caine is compelling as usual (with none other than Mickey Rooney to provide some support), but the rest of the film doesn’t measure up to his presence. Pulp all amounts to a substantial disappointment—a case of a promising beginning unravelling into a terrible conclusion.

  • Warning Shot (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) There’s something very contemporary about a film exploring the repercussions of a police shooting, but don’t go into Warning Shot expecting much in terms of police contrition: this is one of those movies in which deadly force by the police is not just explained and justified, but repeated in time for the finale. There isn’t much to see in cinematographic terms either: the film was shot by a TV production unit and it shows through the flat lighting, close-up framing, limited locations and generally unimaginative colour cinematography. Still, there’s a nicely-handled plot throughout, as our policeman protagonist must defend himself against accusations of having shot a noble doctor for no reason, and finds himself ostracized by everyone except by a ratings-seeking media personality. There are plenty of elements that have become far more familiar over the past few decades, and one wonders if a more stylish take on the story (race-flipped to make it more interesting) would do well these days. A few known names (including Lillian Gish, Eleanor Parker, George Sanders and Joan Collins at very different stages of their careers) pepper the supporting cast. Warning Shot doesn’t have much of a profile these days (I happened to see as it was featured as part of TCM’s “neo-noir” series, which feels like a stretch) and it’s easy to understand why—aside from a few known names in supporting roles, there isn’t much here that’s distinctive. But it can still be readily watched.

  • Booty Call (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2022) As its title suggests, there’s nothing particularly subtle about Booty Call, but it has some discipline in presenting the misadventures of two men and two women as they hook up for the night… or rather have trouble trying to. Jamie Foxx and Tommy Davidson carry most of the comedic load as two best friends wooing their dates and then having to venture out in order to purchase condoms so that the rest of the night can go forward—their simple plans are complicated by being too ambitious, running into an armed robbery, or having to walk a dog. Meanwhile, Vivica A. Fox and Tamala Jones also seem to have fun playing their dates—another pair of friends with strong personalities. (Fox is funnier, but Jones does have a splendid lingerie scene.)  Booty Call impressively manages to keep its action tied to a very short timespan, roughly beginning when the sun goes down and ending as it comes up. The third act ventures a bit farther afield both in location and in comic methods, but the script manages to fit its episodes within a solid framework with recurring gags. Production values are decent, and the script generally knows how to be naughty without being vulgar, which is something that’s not necessarily obvious in less-skilled hands. It all combines into an amusing sex comedy that is sometimes even insightful about gender roles and expectations. Catch it if you’ve missed it.

  • Tension (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Now here’s an intriguing film noir, even if it’s completely ludicrous at times. After an ominous voice-over opens from the film’s detective character (“The only way to solve a case is to apply tension until someone snaps”), Tension features a mild-mannered bespectacled man (Richard Basehart) who, upon being left by an ungrateful wife, creates a second glasses-less identity in preparation for a nefarious goal and is eventually involved in the murder of his wife’s new boyfriend. There are many complications, including a good girl played by Cyd Charisse in one of her most sympathetic turns of her pre-stardom 1940s. Meanwhile, Audrey Totter plays the deliciously quasi-caricatural evil wife with some devilish relish. Still, Tension is a pretty straightforward film noir with a lead character turning to the dark side and not being sure of getting away from it. Not all of the pieces of the film work together: the opening voice-over suggests something harder than what follows, and the transformation of our protagonist into some other personality (complete with a new apartment!) stretches a great deal of credibility. Still, there’s a pleasant atmosphere coming from Tension that makes it worth a look, especially if you’re looking for some sunny California Noir that straddles the line between 1940s formalism and slight ludicrousness.

  • The Wild North (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) As I make my way through the second and third tiers of Cyd Charisse movie, it’s easy to notice a trend that’s simply as obvious from her best-known movies: Given her dark hair and middle-European facial features (she was of German/Austrian ethnicity), she could reasonably pass as someone of non-Caucasian ethnicity and Hollywood certainly noticed: She was cast as a Mexican in at least two films, while in The Wild North she gets to play Native-American. Or rather First Nation, as the film takes place in the Canadian North. Now, it doesn’t hurt to say that Charisse looks really cute in stereotypical tresses… but in-between her casting and Stewart Granger’s oversized French-Canadian accent, it’s difficult to take the film seriously. Which may not be as scathing a criticism as you can imagine, considering that the film is made in the overblown tradition of the MGM technicolour spectacles, in a reality somewhere adjacent to ours. Even the plot goes back to basics with a French-Canadian trapper accused of murder, a steadfast Mountie tasked with bringing him in, and the First Nation girl showing up at infrequent intervals to make things more interesting. There are some good things about the result if you’re willing to be indulgent: most notably some good action scenes set in the wilderness, thankfully shot in colour rather than black-and-white. The dialogue-heavy portions of the film, on the other hand, veer closer to comedy than thriller. As a French-Canadian, I’m not entirely unhappy with Granger’s broad accent—he behaves in such an over-the-top way that it’s more charming than insulting. Still, this all makes The Wild North a bit of a draw: uneven, often disappointing, sometimes interesting. I may need a second viewing to make up my mind.

  • La ciociara [Two Women] (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) It’s interesting to see actresses known for their sex-appeal decide to commit to a heavy dramatic part in an equally serious film—and that’s even more interesting in Sophia Loren’s case is that she was barely 25 at the time she shot Two Women, and took time away from her rocketing Hollywood career to go back to Italy and director Vittorio De Sica for a gritty, unsentimental, hard-to-watch film of a mother and daughter trying to survive during wartime. Considering that much of the film revolves around the aftermath of their gang rape and then, later, the death of one of the main characters, it’s clear that this isn’t a film that plays well to mainstream audiences. Shot in stark black and white, it’s filled with cold compromises between virtue and survival, with the mother trying to protect her daughter against the worst of it. In the war movie pantheon, it comes about ten years earlier than comparable American films, clearly belonging to the war-is-hell camp long before the mainstream followed. For Loren, the gamble paid off—her role earned her an Academy Award (the first Oscar for a non-English role) among many, many other honours. Perhaps more crucially, it also proved to everyone that she could be more than a sex-symbol at an important juncture in her career. Without it, maybe her career wouldn’t have lasted as long. No wonder other actresses remain eager to try something similar.

  • Sombrero (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) While Sombrero features a mildly intriguing opening act that introduces a small Mexican village through fractious beauty contest, little of it sustains the entire film. The Mexican setting, MGM production and cast (with Ricardo Montalbán, and Cyd Charisse once again asked to play Hispanic) may bring to mind 1947’s Fiesta, but Sombrero struggles to maintain the same dramatic intensity—perhaps an artifact of having been adapted from three blended short stories. To be fair, some of the colour cinematography is sumptuous, Yvonne De Carlo looks amazing and Charisse gets a dance number to herself, even if it’s a weird one. But the film fails to take off. As for it being a representation of Latin America in Hollywood, well, it’s probably best not to look closely: The stereotypes run fast and thick and half the actors look as if they’ve been miscast. Yes, sure, Hollywood didn’t know any better then… but that’s not much of an excuse to twenty-first century viewers.

  • Dracula 3D (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2022) Dario Argento tries his hand at the classic Dracula mythos in his Dracula 3D, but budgetary limitations obviously hold him back… not to mention a redundant approach that doesn’t provide much satisfaction once the 3D calling card of the film is flattened for TV broadcast. The low-budget is immediately visible from the cut-rate special effects shown on-screen, but it also influences a story that curiously stays in Transylvania throughout the entire plot, never getting to England. Beyond that, however, is a striking lack of style to the result. Some of the sets and costumes are not bad, but the entire film feels like a no-name low-budget horror rather than something from someone of Argento’s stature. It’s striking that the Francis Ford Coppola version of the same story had more eroticism than this one… or that this film does so little with the elements it has. Like many classical adaptations throughout the years, Dracula 3D may serve as an exercise in how to compare and contrast it to other versions, but doesn’t hold much value by itself.

  • Teeth (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2022) Some horror-movie concepts are so obvious in retrospect that it’s a mystery why they haven’t been done before or more often. Why, indeed, hasn’t anyone used the idea of the timeless male phobia of the vagina dentata into a high concept for a film, before or after? (A much smarter writer than me recently investigated and didn’t find any further examples.)  Fortunately, you could say that writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth is good enough that it doesn’t need an alternative nor a follow-up. The story of a young woman who discovers that her intimate parts have cannibalistic appetites, Teeth decides to go for vengeful comedy/horror, saddling the protagonist with a succession of terrible males who deserve every maiming they get. From 2022, Teeth feels like a film about ten years ahead of its time—with sharp feminist overtones that would feel quite at ease alongside such overly transgressive works as Promising Young Woman and the misguided 2019 Black Christmas (not to mention the 2021 version of Slumber Party Massacre, among many others). But it may age a little bit better than some of them—it comes across its toothy edge honestly, and packages it into a darkly comic tone that seems more earned than performative. Needless to say, it remains a recommendation for those who can handle the subject matter.

  • Lisztomania (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Circumstances dictated that I ended up watching writer-director Ken Russell’s Lisztomania in two halves, interrupted in the middle of the film’s best-known scene featuring more phallic imagery than any thousand randomly selected films. If Russell had rolled to credits right after that, I would have given Lisztomania a far more positive review than this one. Alas, the film keeps going, and going, and going… and it’s clear that, for all of the dizzyingly comic razzle-dazzle of the film’s first third, there’s not much of a focus to it all: this wildly dramatized biography of 19th century musician Franz Liszt may have a lot of energy, but it’s not sustained nor tied together. Some things work really well, though: the idea of treating Liszt like a rockstar may not be as fresh today, but it’s given a maximalist treatment that bounces from erotic excess to absurdist humour. There’s clearly a 1970s rock aesthetic to the entire thing, what with rock star Roger Daltrey (of The Who) as Liszt, and Ringo Starr popping up late in the film as none other than The Pope. It gets wild. As Wikipedia says, and I can’t encapsulate it better than this quote: “Liszt and the women decide to fly to Earth in a spaceship to destroy Wagner-Hitler, who has now ravaged Berlin in a fiery machine-gun frenzy.” And yet, at the same time, it doesn’t: at 103 minutes, the film outstays its welcome and can’t quite cash the checks it wrote during its first half. The delirious scene-to-scene invention can’t be sustained or linked together, and that eventually starts to grate. The film’s production history partially accounts for this disconnection: Russell, never a particularly disciplined director, went through the film without a finished script, regularly ran out of money, and grossly ran out of time in a difficult situation with investors. There’s clearly a lack of control here that often spins the surrealist outrageousness into a dull bore. Despite some real admiration for Lisztomania and a feeling that it hasn’t aged as badly as some other mid-1970s productions, it’s clear that the film could have been much, much better if Russell had managed to control his worst impulses.

  • Kimi (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) A new Stephen Soderbergh film is a mystery box. He has worked in so many genres, taken so many chances, and threatened retirement often enough that you never quite know what you’re going to get. Maybe it’ll be great! Maybe it won’t! In Kimi, he goes back to his thriller roots to deliver something like a blend of homages to previous thrillers, questions about the techno-surveillance complex and a few pointed observations about the lockdown years. It stars Zoë Kravitz, a minor movie crush of mine who, to my recollection, never had a leading role until now despite a fourteen-year career in some showy supporting roles. Here she plays a young woman who, thanks to past trauma, fully embraced the shut-in lifestyle made popular during lockdown. Even a toothache won’t have her leave her apartment… or at least until she gets evidence of a murder and tries to escalate the matter through the appropriate channels. Unfortunately, she’s in the middle of a thriller in which evil people can hire hitmen, and where every movement can be tracked. There are traces of Rear Window, The Conversation, Michael Clayton and many other similar thrillers here, but when it’s combined with the lockdown quirks acquired in North-American society throughout 2020-22, the effect is fresher than you’d think. The script’s techno-skepticism isn’t as new (not when even animated family movies such as Ron Gone Wrong overtly talk about such issues), but it all blends together in a rather good mix. Our resourceful heroine is easy to like (the visuals of her agoraphobic self getting out of her apartment and sticking robotically to the walls are among the film’s strongest images) and she eventually levels up to a far-fetched but satisfying action heroine by the time the finale rolls around. There are a few interesting casting choices (most notably Derek DelGaudio in a villainous role), with Soderbergh keeping a tight control over the production. Kimi is not a bad thriller, but time will tell whether it ends up being a time capsule of current anxieties. In the meantime, it’s an easy-enough thriller to watch. Now what will Soderbergh do next?

  • Love Sarah (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) If you’re going to make a feel-good comedy about reconciliation in the wake of a tragedy, you might as well get the most terrible moments out of the way first, and that’s exactly what Love Sarah does in its jarring opening: As an energetic young woman cycles to the opening of her new bakery, she is hit by a vehicle and the title card pops up. Following her death, her family and friends have a hard time agreeing on what should be done. Her daughter wants the bakery to open, but the departed’s best friend (the very likable Shelley Conn) has gone back to the corporate world. It takes quite a bit of work to get everyone back together: the best friend, the mother (Celia Imrie, acting like the British acting elder she is), an ex-boyfriend doubling as a gifted chef and a clear commercial goal for the struggling bakery. Love Sarah is not a great film, nor a particularly memorable on. It’s comfort food put on screen, indulging in showing pastry but also making sure that the viewer gets a big homely rush of contentment by the time the ending credits roll. It’s not meant to take place in any kind of realistic setting, and that’s probably for the best. It’s short enough to be worth a look without feeling stuck with it—enough of a snack to be tempting despite not leaving much than warm air afterwards.

  • Malignant (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) I wasn’t expecting much from Malignant, but in the footsteps of frequent collaborator Leigh Whannell, who delivered the terrific Upgrade out of nowhere, here is director James Wan going back to his horror roots after a detour in big-budget action territory. Despite a middling start, Malignant gets progressively faster, crazier and better the closer it gets to the finishing line. Taking a premise similar to Stephen King’s The Dark Half but pushing it to eleven, this slick horror film takes a while to build but unleashes its strengths in style. By the time that scene hits (intercutting some wham-bang exposition with a demented fight inside a prison cell), there’s no going back: Malignant gets bonkers and becomes better for it. There’s some clever playing with expectations throughout the film, as the question of whether this is all in the protagonist’s head is never too far away. (Spoiler alert: Yes, it is. But literally.)  While Wan is being showy with his direction (especially as he uses CGI to present a particularly warped version of “Is she imagining all of this?”), Annabelle Wallis does very well in the lead role with its misdirections and physical requirements. Now, I don’t think that Malignant is perfect—the two-hour running time leads to far too much padding in the first half, and extends the high-concept slightly too far. There’s some sense, especially in retrospect, that the film is spinning its wheels when it puts slightly too much stuff together—it would have been better to focus a bit, lop off thirty minutes and get to the craziness sooner. Still, I do like the result: it goes beyond the usual horror film and while most of it is empty calories without much thematic substance, it’s got just enough energy to bulldoze through valid narrative objections. I’ve seen the film described as a modern CGI-fuelled giallo and that may be half the fun. On the other hand, I’ve also seen the film referred to as a parody and I think that misses the point of high-concept horror, where pushing it beyond the limit is not meant to be funny as much as exhilarating. No matter why or how, Malignant is a strong genre entry by the time it gets to the point.