Month: April 2022

  • Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Now here’s a curio – a largely forgotten Science Fiction film originally meant as a mockbuster alongside The Time Machine, but that stumbled into something interesting on its own. The production history of Beyond the Time Barrier is one of competent people brought together for a low-budget production (the American Pictures International logo being enough of a giveaway, even if they merely distributed the picture rather than produced it) and the result reflects that span of expertise. The plot, makeup, effects and acting are just fine – but they co-exist right alongside far less impressive bits of plot, makeup, effects and acting. The narrative is actually not too bad despite the unconvincing justification: an air force pilot finds himself marooned in the future after a scientific experiment, and meets a number of survivors of a global catastrophe who need him to repopulate the Earth. But this isn’t just an early forebear to A Boy and His Dog – there are savage mutants to contend with and (in a rather good extrapolation of what’s possible in that universe) other stranded time-travelers with their own plans for his time-travelling jet. If you can remain indulgent about much of the film’s production values, there’s some intriguing material here. I’m not exaggerating when I say that a similar premise could still work today, considering the kinship between this film and the much more recent The Tomorrow War (2021). This late-career entry from well-regarded director Edgar G. Ulmer has a few great moments, with Robert Clarke doing fine as the square-jawed hero and Darlene Tompkins looking really cute as the female lead. I’m not going to suggest that Beyond the Time Barrier is a hidden gem of some sort: It still pales in comparison to the better-known The Time Machine. But it’s more effective than many of the low-budget Science Fiction films of the time, and it still works well for modern audiences. Call it a solid success at a time when the SF genre didn’t have that many of them.

  • I Am JFK Jr. (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) Now that I’ve seen almost all of Derick Murray’s “I Am” series of biographical documentaries, I knew what to expect from I Am JFK Jr.: a semi-hagiography about a dead celebrity featuring friends and family, going through the man’s life and delivering a sympathetic assessment of his achievements. Considering those expectations, the result is not surprising. The obvious question about John F. Kennedy Jr., of course, is whether there was more to him than the scion who died too soon from a 1999 plane crash.   A young boy at the time of his father’s assassination, JKF Jr. instantly became American royalty – someone groomed for higher office, whatever and whenever that office may be. That never happened: other than founding a moderately striking lifestyle/politics magazine (“George,” which lasted from 1995 to 2001 — barely outliving its founder after a precipitous drop in interest while JFK Jr. was still alive), JKF Jr. worked at the intersection of law, politics and New York City: working in the public defender’s office and being a darling of the tabloid press. The documentary draws a largely chronological portrait of his life using interviews with notable figures (the most incongruous of them being Ann Coulter), friends and drawing upon archival footage. The tack that the film takes in approaching JFK Jr.’s legacy can be summed up in a simple quote cited early in the film as a framing device: “People often tell me I could be a great man. I’d rather be a good man.”  Or, in other words, here is someone to be applauded for living his life well rather than being insanely ambitious in fulfilling the expectations of others. Anything that would distract from this narrative (such as the ongoing decline of his magazine by the time of his death) is not really mentioned, although the film does leave a few breadcrumbs to suggest that, through it all, JKF Jr. was positioning himself to make a jump in politics if the right circumstances presented themselves. But that’s the nature of the “I am” biopic series: an homage, an easy lesson and not a serious work of scholarship. It’s well done, though, and entertaining as well – Four years later, Murray’s I am Jackie O would revisit a closely related topic, so there’s a double-bill possibility for you.

  • Cleopatra (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) What a surprise! My intention in watching the 1934 version of Cleopatra was comparative – how would the film compare to the lavish 1963 Elizabeth Taylor spectacle, and how would it compare to the 1925 series-of-tableaux silent version? The surprise was that I really started enjoying the film by itself. Completed right as the Hays Code started enforcing its ludicrous censorship, Cleopatra nonetheless includes scantily clad extras, and a gorgeous Claudette Colbert not wearing much either. (Those cheeks! Those dark bangs!) It helps that the film starts with a semi-comic tone, not daring to be taken quite seriously, as Cleopatra is first tied up to a post in the desert, then rolled up in a carpet from which she emerges triumphantly for her new paramour. The art deco set design doesn’t have much to do with classic Egypt, but it exemplifies classic Hollywood glamour. The dialogue isn’t particularly good, but the amazing images more than make up for it: director Cecil B. DeMille was clearly the reigning master of big-budget spectacle and there are some amazing shots for a 1934 historical epic. Even more impressive is the fast-paced battle montage that illustrates a war episode later in the film: even modern viewers will be amazed at how quickly the images are presented and how much mayhem those second-long bits show– I wonder how it played back then. Right now, though, this 1934 Cleopatra is certainly worth a look, and not simply as a companion to the better-known later version.

  • Anastasia (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) While I’m not a target audience for Anastasia’s mixture of costume drama, historical mystery and overwrought melodrama, I have to admit that there’s a certain grandiose nature to all of those elements brought together here. Add to that an Oscar-winning Hollywood comeback performance from Ingrid Bergman, a typically strong turn from Yul Brynner and you’ve got something that can be watched even if you think you’re not interested. (And it throws in a metatextual final line to reward everyone who made it to the end.)  Even if you haven’t grown up with European royalty ballroom fantasies, there’s enough cynicism going on in the conman subplot to make things interesting, and the lavish production design should satisfy those who did grow up wanting to become princesses. There’s a uniquely lavish 1950s quality to the result that makes it a very nice period piece. I can’t say that I’m a big fan, but Anastasia is watchable enough.

  • Glass Trap (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) For some reason, I’ve been finding a lot of ant-related horror movies in the TV listings recently, and I still don’t think that it’s a good topic for a credible horror film. Glass Trap won’t change my mind. Coming from notorious schlockmeister Fred Olen Ray, it’s a hodgepodge of dull storylines, cut-rate production values, laughably fake CGI, terrible characterization, bewildered actors and failed attempts at humour. The storyline has something to do with gigantic ants in a skyscraper and the people trapped in there trying to survive, but the real point of the film is to make a trailer that will convince unambitious viewers to give it a chance rather than stare at literally anything else for 90 minutes. It’s not completely terrible – there’s an occasional chuckle, lingerie-clad actresses, some screaming and a few accidentally entertaining moments. It’s infinitely preferable to, say, a depressing horror film that mean-spiritedly slaughters its entire cast. Still, this isn’t much of a compliment. Suffice to say that Glass Trap is only fit to be seen if you can’t reach the remote nor can get up, or if you’re desperate enough to make yourself an ant-themed horror movie marathon.

  • King of the Ants (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Seeing “The Asylum presents” pop up at the beginning of a film is usually a warning. With very few exceptions, The Asylum specializes in bottom-of-the-barrel genre productions with inane scripts, terrible special effects and cheap production values. But that’s now – The Asylum started with slightly loftier intentions, and early production King of the Ants is a glimpse at what may have been a very different company had it not found a more profitable racket. One notable difference is the calibre of the director: Stuart Gordon doesn’t have an impeccable filmography, but you can’t talk about him without mentioning Re-Animator and From Beyond, and that’s already a better filmography than most of The Asylum’s other directors. The result can be seen in the mean thriller that flows from King of the Ants’ opening moments, as a young man gets caught in a sombre assassination to ensure that a corruption scandal is never brought to light. Clearly influenced by a sadistic strain of neo-noir, it charts in often painful and gory detail the downfall of its protagonist through ever-escalating moral degradation and violence. King of the Ants never lets good taste or plausibility win when there’s an opportunity to be gross or gory – there’s a particular juncture at the mid-point of the film where we’re supposed to accept that the bad guys’ plan is to beat the protagonist into brain-damaged amnesia. It’s ludicrous, but it’s meant to make viewers feel intensely uncomfortable and that fits in the film’s logic. As a result, King of the Ants eventually becomes too contrived and mean-spirited to remain engaging: the tricks of the screenwriter (Charlie Higson, adapting his own novel) become too outlandish, and don’t help the film find a consistent tone in-between dark suspense or outright horror. It’s nice to see a few C-list actors show up for a while, most notably George Wendt in a very dark role, Ron Livingstone in a short cameo and Kari Wuhrer as the film’s lone female character of note (and object of the protagonist’s desire). I’ll give King of the Ants one backhanded compliment, though: as flawed and ugly as it is, it’s notably more striking than the average film that The Asylum would go one to churn on a regular basis.

  • Influence (2020a)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) While Influence feels like a pilot for an upcoming TV series, it does have (unlike its BET+ original stablemate Sacrifice) the decency of delivering a complete plot, intriguing characters and just enough fun to offset the film’s problems. Adapted from a very different novel by Carl Weber, it introduces the Hudsons – a family of lawyers working together as a small law firm able to take on impossible odds and win. As the film begins, a music/acting superstar is found stabbed in bed, and the number one suspect is his wife, equally renowned as a singer/actress. It doesn’t take a long time to understand that this is going to be a blunt and awkward film, far from the polish of better productions: the on-the-nose opening sequence creates more questions than exposition, and this keeps going all the way to a botched ending with a blindingly obvious fact presented as an astonishing revelation, as well as a murderer whose identity makes no sense. Still, let’s be frank: I don’t watch BET movies for strong plots or filmmaking prowess: I watch it for the attractive actresses, interesting characters and general atmosphere. On those metrics, Influence certainly delivers. It’s simply a lot of fun, in-between quickly sketched but promising characters (see above for; feels like a pilot for a TV series), actresses such as Deborah Cox, Kellita Smith and Nadine Ellis (Influence not only features The Lingerie Scene familiar to nudity-averse BET originals, but it’s announced an hour before it happens), and a generally pleasant atmosphere halfway between cheap plot contrivances and blunt wish-fulfillment. Music, acting and expensive shopping figure as prominently as capable characters banding together for justice, a few alluring hints of hot romance, and sequences built more for cool than plausibility. It’s not subtle stuff – some plot revelations can be guessed an hour in advance simply by seeing how the straightforward narrative suddenly stops for a supposedly throwaway detail (Hmm, I wonder if those angel figurines commented upon by the detective will play a role later on…). Even the acting is limited by a script that doesn’t offer credible dialogue – as much as I like Roger Guenveur Smith, he’s saddled with lines unbecoming of his stature. Still, don’t get me wrong: I liked it. I would probably watch a TV series featuring these characters in further adventures (which doesn’t seem likely two years later). I realize I’m betraying the film criticism community for liking an objectively bad film, but there’s something hard to resist about BET+ original films: their earnest imperfection, maybe.

  • Northern Pursuit (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Even though Canadian audiences are among the closest to the American ones (long-standing proof being that the “American” box-office totals are really the sum of the American and Canadian grosses), there’s a long and rarely glorious history of Hollywood romanticizing Canadian history and landscapes in ways that feel hilarious north of the border. Northern Pursuit, in a vein very similar to the near-contemporary British film 49th Parallel, uses WW2 anxieties to propose a Nazi spy running across Canada toward a dastardly plan, and a brave Canadian Mountie tracking him. Considering that none other than Errol Flynn plays the heroic Mountie, few will be fooled by a momentary suggestion that he had joined the Nazis – and even fewer will be surprised that the film devolves into heroic antics. It’s a revealing look at how Hollywood exoticized even a near-neighbour, and a sometimes-wild demonstration of the limitations of movies shot on studio backlots. No Canadian with experience dealing with snow, for instance, will be convinced by the obviously fake winter scenes shot indoors: there are a few outdoors sequences, but not enough to distract from, well, the distracting rest. (The film’s production history notes that nothing was shot in Canada – at best, Idaho doubles for the outdoor sequences.)  Northern Pursuit is far funnier and sillier than anything else – especially as a propaganda film meant to bolster morale at home. At least it’s not as astonishingly stupid as the 1934 version of Rose Marie.

  • Jessica (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If your idea of a good time is to hang out in a small Sicilian village with Maurice Chevalier being your guide as a young attractive American woman arrives to upset nearly everyone, well, there’s Jessica for you to watch.   But be forewarned: the film is almost obscure for good reasons: it’s far duller and longer than expected, doesn’t quite know what to do with its assets and plays out in a way that fails to engage. Chevalier himself was in his seventies by the time the film was shot – far too old to play a romantic lead, and so safely neutered as an elderly priest able to pick up an instrument, directly address the audience and be his own one-person musical segment. Angie Dickinson is cute as an attractive America earning lust and jealousy alike. But the film’s attractions (once you factor in the Italian scenery) pretty much stop there, because its development is laborious and there’s seldom any strong attachment to the material being shown. Jessica is practically unknown today, and the sorry state in which TCM (infrequently) shows it is indicative of the lack of attention it has attracted since its release. At best you’ll see Chevalier in another a late-career role as romantic facilitator, but even his considerable charm can’t do much to save the rest of the production.

  • Final Analysis (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Don’t be surprised to experience a strong and repeated sense of deja vu during the now-obscure Final Analysis, especially if you’ve already seen many 1990s erotic thrillers. Clearly in the same mould as Basic Instinct (released roughly at the same time, so not a copycat case), this thriller features a psychologist (Richard Gere) with poor impulse control when it comes to sleeping with patients, a disturbed woman who ends up being a femme fatale (Kim Basinger) and a younger woman (Uma Thurman) who may be sympathetic to one or the other. You may be thinking that you’ve already seen all of those elements before in slightly different combinations and you’d be right – watching Final Analysis is like rediscovering a forgotten film that somehow feels redundant. The plot is squarely in-line with the later series of erotic thrillers launched in the wake of the far-more-successful Basic Instinct – featuring things like a psychologist character too smart for his own good, yet easily manipulated. You can see the Hitchcockian influence, but also the way it anticipated a long string of prestige thrillers throughout the following decade. I didn’t hate it – even though it felt intensely predictable down to the personas of the actors involved, that very predictability also made it comforting to watch. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be that surprised to learn that the largely forgotten Final Analysis really came from a very similar parallel universe in which Hollywood history played out in slightly different yet similar ways.

  • The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s a fascinating intersection of two separate micro-trends at play in the low-budget Canadian thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, plus two celebrities to headline the cast. The first of those trends was a steady descent into ever-more-shocking horror throughout the mean 1970s – gone was classic Hollywood, and the movies were getting increasingly bloodthirsty even when featuring nice protagonists. The second micro-trend was a brief flash of interest for Quebexploitation genre films produced for the American market by Quebec-based producers. (In this case, Astral Films, early adopters of the Canadian federal tax breaks that led to a brief “Tax Shelter films” period.)  That second micro-trend is largely forgotten today in the rest of the world – Scanners and other Cronenberg films may endure as the subgenre’s most celebrated achievement, but Canadian TV channels wanting to show “classic” films often dip into the 1970s Quebexsploitation corpus to meet CanCon requirements. So that explains how The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is still shown fifty-five years later… although –let’s not fool ourselves—the presence of a very young Jodie Foster (famously body-doubled by her sister in a late-film nude scene, eek) and none other than Martin Sheen (as a hamster-killing antagonist) in the cast does ensure that the film is still interesting today. It features a 13-year-old girl (Foster) living alone despite increasingly pointed questions from neighbours, and uncomfortable sexual advances from the film’s villain. She’s not the most likable character, but the film does force a certain sympathy for the situation by pitting her against an even worse antagonist. Clearly the kind of dark and depressing 1970s film meant to make you want a cleansing shower after watching, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane does leave an impression, Quebexploitation or not.

  • Open (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) There are days where only a trashy BET-broadcast romantic drama will do. Open is nearly guaranteed to satisfy you if you’re used to the quirks and limitations of the subgenre: low-budget filmmaking that is rife with iffy acting, dubious scripting, cheap directing and explicitly saucy content. This specific film plays with the idea of open marriages, unsurprisingly concluding that they’re not workable in the long term. I wouldn’t expect anything less for BET’s audience, just as I wasn’t expecting them to skip over the near-mandatory lingerie scene. (And indeed, it comes within moments of the film’s opening.)  This amusing back-and-forth between suggestive content and traditional morality is one of the things that keeps Open alive throughout its melodramatic pace, as one of the husband’s past infidelities comes back with receipts, the wife is tempted by a past fling, and both of them start breaking the rules they established for themselves (which is what usually happens in mainstream films about open marriages). The conclusion, perhaps inevitably, is an all-around disappointment – trying to promote the idea of marital fidelity after wallowing in the opposite ratings-seeking behaviour and taking its characters way past the point of no return. But I don’t really mind: that’s the fun of those films. Essence Atkins stars as the wife, but it’s supporting players like the beautiful Marquita Goings and Jasmine Guy who become the reason to watch the film even as the contrivances and hypocrisies pile up. I’d love to sit down with novelist turned writer-director-producer Cas Sigers-Beedles to ask about the production constraints, the thematic intentions, whether there’s some ironic distance built in the script and how it is to put together such films on what must be a tiny budget and a breakneck pace. The result is frankly recognizable as substandard made-for-TV material – but Open is a lot of fun in the right frame of mind, and it is the kind of movie that got me to start systematically watching all of the BET original films I haven’t yet seen: they’re flawed in interesting ways, which almost feels like a breath of fresh air compared to slick Hollywood mega-productions that fail in very predictable ways.

  • Island of Love (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If ever you find yourself squinting in amazement at a hitherto-unknown film’s cast and wonder why you’ve never heard of it, the answer (depressingly enough) is likely to be the same no matter the circumstances: it’s probably not a good movie. And even if it does begin on a promising note, it will degenerate later on. So it is that the first sequence of Island of Love, even if clunky, does suggest a much better film to come: Here we have Robert Preston playing close to his Music Man persona by incarnating a con man, Tony Randall as his long-suffering writer friend, Walter Matthau playing a crime boss with some kind of curious speech impairment (flanked by four yes-men) and the splendid Betty Bruce as a gangster moll thrust in front of the spotlight. But what initially feels like a clunky but promising showbiz crime comedy unexplainably takes a turn for much duller pastures at the end of the first act. Soon enough, nearly all of our characters find themselves on a small Greek island where the rest of the story plays out in an abundance of dull clichés and contrived coincidences. Preston is rarely less than compelling, and the supporting cast is interesting in many ways – but nothing quite gels, as the film squanders its initial promise and settles for something quite generic. Too bad – but if ever you come across Island of Love and start saying, “Wow, what a cast!” remember why it’s increasingly obscure.

  • Gunman’s Walk (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) The 1950s were a rich period for westerns and as the decade drew to a close, films in that genre had to find something to distinguish themselves. It was a decade where more movies were shot in colour, where the role of Native Americans was being redefined ever so slightly, where having a cowboy with a gun wasn’t enough to sustain a narrative for a more demanding audience. Gunman’s Walk may not be that good of a film, but it fits in that trend in fitting a family drama in a western context, and is more nuanced about its native characters than most westerns of a few years earlier. Much of the story revolves around a hard patriarch (a good late performance from a mustachioed Van Heflin) having to contend with two very different sons: an overly aggressive and racist one (Tab Hunter, playing against type) and a more refined one who doesn’t fit his idea of what an heir should be like. One cattle drive later, there are multiple complications: One son falling for a half-Native woman (Kathryn Grant, looking great), the other accused of killing the woman’s brother. The tangled drama is enough to keep audiences interested even if they don’t like westerns, and give everyone in the cast a few good sequences to play. Gunman’s Walk remains a western, but one that’s not intolerable (if sometimes a bit dull) to modern audiences.

  • Babam ve Oglum [My Father and My Son] (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, April 2022) A common failure mode of using best-of movie lists as mandatory viewing guides is the presumption that every film on the list is an utter masterpiece. That way lies disappointment and madness – a far better approach is to see the best-of lists as samplers where every pick has some kind of baseline quality. Seeing My Father and My Son pop up on lists such as the IMDB 250 creates expectations that the film probably can’t match – even ignoring that IMDB is a favourite battleground for Turkish viewers wanting to manipulate rankings to boost or bomb specific films. The film begins with a melodramatic bang, as a man tries to get his pregnant wife to a hospital, but is left to his own devices due to the 1980 coup and suffers fatal consequences. The rest of the film, alas, doesn’t quite go as hard as the opening, as the father, years later once out of prison, goes back to the family farm in rural Turkey in order to make sure that his son finds a home given his own fatal disease. There’s dynamism to the film’s execution by writer-director Çağan Irmak, especially when it focuses on the young boy’s imagination and translates flights of fancy into fantastic visions given form. This more comic material eventually meshes with the more tragedy of a father trying to reconcile with his estranged family before his own death, and integrating his son in their lives. It’s not a bad film: the glimpse in a place that most of us will never know – a Turkish family farm—is often evocative, and there’s some very emotional content later on as the boy learns to say goodbye to his father. Is it necessarily a top-250 film of all time? I can’t answer that for you. But its presence on the list will, at least, open up an entire national cinema – if you like My Father and My Son, there are plenty of similar films just waiting for you.