Month: May 2022

  • Black Moon (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) If you’ve understood why every scene fits in Black Moon, you have a good career as a film vulgarizer ahead of you. Considering that even writer-director Louis Malle recognized that the film is more based on dream logic than anything else, explaining it would be quite an achievement. This is one of those films where the Wikipedia plot summary is a lifeline. Taking place in an indefinite period with hazy characters acting out in crazy ways, Black Moon is supposed to be a dream given form, with various elements just mixed in an experimental fashion. It’s clearly something – I mean, I don’t think there’s any other film going for those same images and there’s always something to be said for filmmakers who are able to just be as weird and personal as they can be under the constraints of a film production. (Malle reportedly shot most of the film on or near his own estate in the French countryside, with copious nature footage offered as proof.)  I’m really not the target audience for Black Moon – and I’m struggling right now with the impulsion to simply dismiss it out of hand. But if you’re in the mood for an oneiric, occasionally nightmarish fantasy, then this is for you. Maybe solely for you.

  • Soleil rouge [Red Sun] (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) There’s an admirable blend of influences at play in director Terence Young’s spaghetti western Soleil Rouge, bringing together a cast as diverse as Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, Toshirō Mifune, Alain Delon and Capucine in a vision of the Wild West quite unlike another. Consider that the plot gets going when a ceremonial samurai sword intended for American President Grant is stolen aboard a train heading east. Mifune and Bronson team up to get it back from the perfidious Delon, with Capucine and Andress providing further entertainment. There are a lot of cool ideas in here, so maybe it’s not so much of a surprise when the execution ends up being just about average. Sure, seeing an American gunman team up with a Japanese samurai sounds like the kind of revisionist western that would be a natural fit for a multicultural genre-blending twenty-first century. But as executed à la Italian western, it’s perhaps a bit more serious than expected and certainly more laborious than it should be. I’m sure that my limited attraction for westerns is at play here, but still – beyond the premise, Soleil Rouge is a far more average western than you’d expect, and that’s just too bad.

  • Deadly Friend (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) I don’t think I would have believed in Deadly Friend’s existence had I not actually seen it myself. It’s as if a few 1980s movie genres had been thrown in a blender as a dare, and the most remarkable thing about it is that it’s not an ironic retrospective film. This was put together in the mid-1980s, and it would work as a satire… had it been any better. Consider a film that begins as a typical teen science comedy in which a newly-moved protagonist has a robot pal that does silly things. But then (wait for it) the protagonist’s girlfriend is killed by her abusive father and he transplants his robot buddy’s microchip in her head and she revives and turns murderously evil. I’m not sure you saw that coming, right? Suffice to say that Deadly Friend doesn’t work. A look at its production history reveals numerous changes to the film in post-production, an attempt to capitalize on director Wes Craven’s reputation for gory horror, and how the film was shifted from dark SF thriller to outright gory horror – completely ignoring Craven’s attempt to branch outside the genre he’s best known for. Kristy Swanson does just fine as the killer robot girl, but the film itself is a jumbled mess. An object of contemplation more than entertainment, Deadly Friend has largely been forgotten by history… and it’s not hard to understand why.

  • Død snø 2 [Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead] (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) Now that’s more like it. As much as the first Dead Snow was hyped and disappointing, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead exceeded my modest expectations. Thankfully undoing the nihilistic implication of the first film’s everyone-dies ending, this sequel almost immediately then strikes out in much wilder territory. Limbs are swapped, American reinforcements are called in, the Nazis and Russians revive, there’s some zombie wizardry and a big fighting finale. There’s even a tank that finds its use during the wild climax. All of this takes place over Nordic greenery, further helping visually distinguish this sequel from its predecessor. Director Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow 2 exceeds expectations set by his previous film in most ways – the budget is bigger, the set-pieces are wittier, the script controls its horror/comedy blend much better (it feels like a fully integrated horror comedy à la Evil Dead 2 and not like a horror film with occasional gags as the first one did) and it works itself to a true climax. I liked it quite a bit, even when it amps up the gore and goes for some cheap laughs. That coda… wow, that coda… has there been a more twisted use of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? Anyway – clearly not meant for everyone, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead fully realizes the potential left unfulfilled by its predecessor, and makes a welcome addition to the relatively few films able to integrate stomach-churning levels of extreme gore with a tone that nonetheless remains darkly comic.

  • Død snø [Dead Snow] (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) The first Dead Snow has an interesting place in pop culture history, helping bring about a new wave of Nazi zombie films and videogames. I’m not calling it the root of the sub-sub-genre (with a decades’ worth of zombie films by the end of the 2000s, someone was bound to put Nazis + Zombies together, and many did so at the same time) but it was reasonably popular and played into a wider trend. Alas, finally seeing it thirteen years later, I was disappointed by the result. Clearly put together on a small budget by writer-director Tommy Wirkola, the film struggles at first: the tone is an uneven mixture of comedy, horror and clichés as a few college students go to an isolated cabin for a weekend of snowy fun and then get attacked by undead Nazis. While the film whips itself up to some good old-fashioned zombie splatter, it doesn’t have full control over its tone. It doesn’t feel like a horror comedy like its obvious Evil Dead inspiration — it feels like a gory horror film with moments of comedy, and those are different things. This can be seen all the way to the ending, which takes a very easy way out that may leave viewers wondering if it was all worth it. As a result, the film struggles to keep audiences invested beyond the most obvious elements – since its characters are expendable, little effort is made to distinguish them beyond blunt distinctions. Elements of the execution are well-handled: cinematography and special effects make this a well-crafted film despite its weaknesses. But it should have been much better. [June 2022: The sequel is fortunately much better.]

  • Broadway Serenade (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) The 1930s were big on Broadway musicals, and Broadway Serenade stars high-pitched operatic singer Jeanette MacDonald in a familiar story about a married couple in which she strikes it big and he doesn’t. It all leads to a big musical number directed by Busby Berkeley that will be, for many, the single biggest reason to see this otherwise undistinguished film. (Robert Z. Leonard otherwise directs the rest of it.)  MacDonald is a hit-or-miss kind of star – while her vocal talents were undeniable, they weren’t always suited to the kinds of musical comedies in which she starred – an opera singer forced into a movie singer role. I’d rather watch Virginia Gray (who looks wonderful here), but that’s not necessarily a knock against MacDonald. The sexist plot isn’t worth remembering (especially given the flaws of the male protagonist – many of which go unacknowledged by the film) but the musical numbers are much better. After all, Broadway Serenade was designed as a star vehicle for MacDonald. It’s effective as such – but anyone looking for Broadway musicals has several many better choices to pick from.

  • No Man of Her Own (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Preposterousness looms large over the plot of No Man of Her Own, as a pregnant woman kicked out of her relationship finds herself in a train crash and takes on the identity of the woman (also pregnant) who died next to her. Welcomed in a new rich family willing to accept her as their new daughter-in-law from their also-deceased son, life suddenly looks up for our protagonist… until her no-good ex-boyfriend comes back with blackmail and evil intentions on the family fortune. Then there’s the brother-in-law who seems to understand what’s going on, while being drawn to her. It’s a lot of contrivances, and there’s little doubt that none of it would work as well had it not been for having Barbara Stanwyck in the lead role. She is far more credible than what’s going on, and that credibility eventually rubs off on the film. The domestic drama of the film’s first half eventually turns to true film noir, so anyone wondering why the film is often included in noir filmographies will have a bit of suspense figuring out when that switch happens. There’s also a technically interesting train crash sequence, especially how suddenly it completely upends the plot of the picture. None of this makes No Man of Her Own a great movie, but it certainly makes it a mildly interesting one, with enough twists, quirks and turns to keep viewers involved.

  • Ich bin dein Mensch [I’m Your Man] (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) As technology advances, some science fictional concepts are fast becoming more realistic, and so is fiction’s treatment of them. Androids as custom-made romantic partners have a long history in genre fiction, but one of the most noteworthy elements of I’m Your Man is how it takes that idea and treats it in a very down-to-earth way, almost as a mainstream drama. The plot gets going as our protagonist, a German anthropology researcher (played by Maren Eggert), is selected to act as a juror for a most unusual study: Should androids be given human rights? In order for her to judge, she is assigned her own robotic partner for a few weeks. At first, her interest is strictly hands-off, appreciating the efforts made to custom-tailor a partner for her own preferences (he’s played by British actor Dan Stevens, speaking what sounds like good German– and even that is a plot point) but not getting involved with him. This changes, of course, leading to a complex conclusion in which what she says is not what she wants – or vice-versa.  I wasn’t bowled over by I’m Your Man: in seeking mundanity, it certainly finds it. But, as much as it’s about an android possibly being a romantic partner, it also has a lot to say about the non-spectacular parts of romantic relationships – beyond the grand gestures and love scenes, the in-between moments of domesticity and moment-to-moment minutiae of living with someone else. And that’s part of the process in moving something from genre fiction to mainstream drama.

  • Garden of the Moon (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Director Busby Berkeley does (mostly) non-musical comedy in Garden of the Moon, a humdrum film showing the management of a nightclub by an unscrupulous owner dealing with a temperamental band leader. It’s amiable stuff, not all that funny nor all that musical: contrary to many Berkeley films, this one remains very sedate while it presents the nightclub band doing its thing. (But then again, this was Berkeley’s last musical for Warner Brothers – by that time, the musical genre in which he specialized was seen as expensive and on its way out. He’d get his revenge a few years later at other studios as the genre regained in popularity.)  Garden of the Moon is watchable without necessarily being good – the film’s most memorable moment comes very late in its running time, as the owner fakes death to keep his star signed up. That doesn’t make it unsatisfying, but only Berkeley completists will seek out this one.

  • The Gang’s All Here (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Like many Busby Berkeley musicals, The Gang’s All Here is an otherwise average genre entry made remarkable by a few signature scenes. In this case, Berkeley’s colour debut earns its rave largely through Carmen Miranda performing “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” while backed up by dozens of fruit-clad dancers – a visually inventive anthology number (girls waving gigantic bananas!) no matter how you see it. True to form, the film also scores a terrific concluding segment, “The Polka-Dot Polka,” again due to Berkeley’s staging of a large-scale hallucinatory ensemble dancer number. It’s not just in colour: It’s incredibly colourful in its design, and clearly shows how Berkeley could marry new elements to his cinematography. The rest of the film? Fair, but not particularly remarkable. The plot is equal romance, equal musical, and equal wartime propaganda. Benny Goodman and his orchestra show up for a bit part and a few numbers. There’s also a version of “Brazil” that’s good for an earworm or two. Miranda gets a really good showcase here, and Berkeley also scores a good directing coup with a complex one-shot opening sequence taking up from fiction to, well, more fiction. Some contemporary reviews made comparisons with Fantasia (I’d add 2001: A Space Odyssey) and they’re not wrong – even more so than many black-and-white Berkeley productions, The Gang’s All Here gets its best visual impact by pure shapes and movement, with the humans being mere props to a bigger vision. It may not be one of Berkeley’s very best musicals on a sustained basis, but it ranks as a can’t-miss entry in his filmography solely due to its high points.

  • Daughter of Shanghai (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Until very, very recently, the history of Asian performers in Hollywood was, in a word, dismal – which makes the extraordinary career of Anna Mae Wong in the 1920s and 1930s even more remarkable. Alas, her filmography is not always pleasant to watch – her roles were often heavily smothered in exoticism even when they didn’t need to. It’s in that context that Daughter of Shanghai becomes something quite special – enough so that the film was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry in 2006: It’s a very, very rare film from Hollywood that actually gives Wong a featured role in a film that directly addresses issues of importance to the Asian-American community – in 1937! Here, Wong teams up with Philip Ahn as a pair of investigators trying to get to the top of a human smuggling ring. She plays the avenging daughter of a businessman who died resisting organized crime; he plays a federal agent on the case. As was often the case for B-grade genre films, Daughter of Shanghai breezes by at a scant 63 minutes, roaring from one plot point to another – the identity of the ringmaster is actually interesting considering the context of the film. Now, there’s a fair criticism to be made that the progressive values of the film outweigh its more traditional film qualities, or that the presence of two Asian-American leads doesn’t necessarily to a film that escapes the white-male dominance of its production crew and likely audience. That’s all true: the film is often problematic even with its qualities. But that should not lessen the landmark nature of the film’s achievements – a rare bright spot in an otherwise sorry landscape of Asian-American images in Hollywood history. Alas, it was a film released toward the end of Wong’s career – there were a few follow-ups to Daughter of Shanghai, but nothing like what it should have led to.

  • Dead of Winter (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) Any film that dares re-create a Gothic horror story in a somewhat modern setting gets my attention – that it happens to star the lovely Mary Steenburgen is a really nice bonus. Taking place under a deep cover of snow and ice, Dead of Winter sees a struggling actress (Steenburgen) travelling to an upstate mansion under the impression that she’s auditioning for a part in a movie. It’s for a part all right – but in a twisted familiar melodrama of familial feud, murdered women, identity replacement and amputation. Locked in the middle of nowhere, her frantic efforts to ask for help result in a devilishly frustrating confrontation with visiting police, in which her captors coolly argue that she has lost her mind. Dead of Winter, appropriately shot in Ontario, honestly comes by its Gothic credentials – it’s an unofficial remake of the 1940s domestic thriller My Name Is Julia Ross, itself adapted from The Woman in Red, a novel written in the heyday of British mystery fiction. While Roddy McDowall is suitably creepy as the antagonist, Steenburgen has a lot to do here, with the plot naturally leading her to play three different roles. The plot is almost entirely preposterous down to the importance of free gas station goldfishes (don’t ask) – but the point here is the thrill of a woman stuck in the middle of nowhere, desperately trying to escape a situation rigged against her. The film stands as director Arthur Penn’s last theatrical release – even if the true authorship of the film is muddled through a mid-production change. The result is not that good, but it’s reasonably entertaining – and a treat for Steenburgen fans.

  • Living in a Big Way (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Relying more on Gene Kelly’s comedic/romantic talents than his dance prowess, Living in a Big Way is sometimes identified as a comeback picture of sorts for him. After the doldrums of his military service, this is the film that offered him a chance to choreography a few numbers, work with Stanley Donen (who would co-direct many of his later hits) and develop his comic persona. The story is something that could only work in the immediate post-war period – servicemen coming back from the war to find that their hasty wartime weddings were not built on a solid foundation. Here, the dramatic conceit is taken to a comic extreme when his new wife proves to be much richer than he expected, and a chunk of her family leagues against him. Of course, it’s up to Kelly’s usual charm, his dance routines (including a number set on a construction site that is classic Kelly) and the intervention of the movie gods to set things straight. Living in a Big Way is not a great movie despite the pedigree of writer/director Gregory La Cava – while the post-war setting definitely makes this a film of the late 1940s, there’s a feeling that the film tries to recapture the screwball comedies of remarriage of the 1930s without quite making it work. It’s still worth a look for Kelly fans, but only just.

  • The Dyatlov Pass Incident aka Devil’s Pass (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Message to filmmakers: if you ever find yourself helming a found-footage film, turn back – you may be getting lost. One of the few things distinguishing Devil’s Pass from so many found-footage films of the early 2010s is finding that it’s from once-A-list director Renny Harlin (whose career never really recovered from Cutthroat Island). Harlin’s filmography, of course, is a weird one – from 1990s Hollywood blockbusters to cheap horror/action B-movies to a few Chinese-language movies to, well, who can say – he’s not a director with a strong personal style, and his filmography screams work-for-hire. But with Devil’s Pass, he finds himself handling a wild take on the much-overhyped Dyatlov Pass incident in which Russian hikers died under (if you believe it) mysterious circumstances. What begins as conventional found-footage horror (with American adventurers/filmmakers heading over to the site of the incident for a documentary) eventually becomes a wild science fiction narrative with time loops and mutations. That’s not exactly bad… but I’m not sure the film’s tone is under control. Those who are exasperated with found-footage films will not be converted over by this one, which has enough out-of-focus shots, constant shrieking, annoying characters, dumb decisions and footage that can’t logically exist to reaffirm the film’s belonging to the subgenre. While the opening does raise the hope that the characters will be interesting enough to follow (not always a given in the found-footage method), the rest of the film pretty much dispenses with characterization except in providing different pitches for the inevitable constant screaming. Where Devil’s Pass does better than the average, however, is in Harlin’s experienced directing and in the bonkers concluding arc that goes the extra mile in providing an interesting conclusion. So interesting, in fact, that it unbalances the rest of the film – what were we doing losing our time with those losers if there was such a neat idea waiting at the end? Alas, while this may be enough to help Devil’s Pass float above many, many other found-footage horror films, it’s not quite enough to get it to a recommendation. It feels like a lot of work for not a lot of payoff, and something that could be easily summarized as “…and they all died in mysterious circumstances you won’t care about.”

  • Highway to Hell (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) As far as high concepts for a horror movie go, retelling Orpheus and Eurydice in a late-1980s context is not bad nor that original – it’s not that big a surprise to find that well-known filmmaker Brian Helgeland came up with the screenplay of Highway to Hell. It helps that the film doesn’t take itself all that seriously despite its classical inspiration, and that it all starts from Las Vegas. As a young man goes to rescue his girlfriend from having been brought to hell by a zombie cop, we get a tour of a satirical vision of the netherworld mocking 1980s society. While the two lead actors remain little-known (well, depending on how you feel about Kristy Swanson), there are a few cameos in supporting roles, including pre-stardom Ben Stiller and Gilbert Gottfried, as none other than Hitler. Unfortunately, despite an imaginative premise and some occasional wit in the execution, Highway to Hell remains limited to cult-movie status: it doesn’t quite have the budget (or the special-effects sophistication) to do justice to its ambitions and must settle for an evocative approximation. Even its best moments almost do it a disservice, highlighting how much better the film could have been had it had the budget, time or additional motivation to do better. But the result is still quite a bit better than you’d expect from a little-known 1991 horror comedy.