Month: September 2022

  • I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I had a big, big built-in reluctance to watch I Am Not a Serial Killer: I am not a fan of serial killer movies, and even less of films that somehow glorify serial killers. The main idea of I Am Not a Serial Killer, alas, builds on the serial-killer-as-a-hero idea. Our character is a young man living in a small Midwestern town: nothing special if it wasn’t for the strong suspicion that he is exhibiting all of the hallmarks of a budding serial killer. (The film doesn’t dwell much on this in order to keep him likable, I guess, so we largely have his word to go on this.) But he’s working on it: he’s in frequent conversations with a therapist, he has solid de-escalation mechanisms to diffuse his violent tendencies, and his job at the local mortuary takes care of many of his more morbid interests. But as the dismal winter goes on, he starts suspecting that his town harbours a secret: people keep turning up not only violently murdered, but missing body parts. Could there be another serial killer in town? As it turns out, I Am Not a Serial Killer makes the welcome leap into the supernatural: there is something in town, but it’s not human and it’s hungry for more. And there’s the third act for you: a budding (but reluctant) serial killer versus murderous monster. It ends up more fun than I had expected. Mex Records isn’t bad in the lead role, but it’s Christopher Lloyd who turns in a surprising supporting performance worth noticing. I Am Not a Serial Killer is not quite a fun film—the cinematography channels the desperation of a snowy winter that just won’t end, the directing goes for dark and gritty, while the topic matter is decidedly unfun with characters dying horribly throughout the film. It’s all implausible, but still better than most ordinary slashers. I won’t go as far as to say I liked it, but I found it better than expected and that’s already not bad.

  • The Dentist (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) The problem with trying to comment The Dentist is that there just isn’t much to say about it. Corbin Bernsen, far removed from his L. A. Law glory days, stars as a dentist who snaps and turns psychotic after being confronted with his wife’s infidelity. The legendary Brian Yuzna directs a script co-written by his frequent collaborator Stuart Gordon, but The Dentist isn’t much above the level of most 1990s slasher movies. Yes, I understand that the film is specifically made for people who clearly fear dentists more than I do. (I once almost fell asleep during a tooth filling, to give you an idea of my stress levels on the long chair.)  Much of The Dentist is about being defenceless in a chair while someone up to no good has you sedated with medical knowledge and power tools at his disposal. But even with that frisson of odontophobia built into the narrative, The Dentist struggles to deliver anything more than the usual psycho slasher (well, driller). Yuzna’s formerly impeccable filmography was fast declining during the 1990s, and The Dentist, save for some over-the-top flights of fancy of no great consequence, could have very well been directed by many other directors. It is, I’ll grant, a bit better than most other slashers: but not by much, and not enough to matter.

  • Kaleidoscope (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I’m not sure late-1960s Warren Beatty could do any wrong, and while Kaleidoscope isn’t in the same league as, say, Bonnie and Clyde, it’s certainly not the film that contradicts his early reputation as a terrific leading man. Much of the film’s story springs from one intriguing premise—what if you could slip into a card manufacturing facility and mark the cards about to be printed and shipped off to the casinos? It’s a silly concept (finding marked cards is trivial—experienced card sharks even call it “taking it to the movies”) compounded by Hollywood execution (as in: reading a card from nearly across the table) but it’s a good springboard for an otherwise rote conman romantic comedy. Beatty looks the part as he charms women, wins big at casinos, and gets in over his head with some scary people. The breezy first hour leads to a more intense second half as both the mob, the casinos and the police close in… but if you think this will have a downer ending, you haven’t been paying attention. Executed with some 1960s pop-optimism charm that can get you smiling even if you don’t want to, Kaleidoscope is a trifle of a film, but a fun one, and Beatty is perfectly at ease in a role that’s frankly undemanding for him. It probably could have been a bit shorter and punchier à la Gambit or Charade, but a charming Beatty compensates for many small issues.

  • The Manxman (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I would not have watched The Manxman if it wasn’t part of Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography: I’m not that fond of silent drama films, and it takes a conscious effort to dig into silent filmographies. But Hitchcock is Hitchcock, and The Manxman reflects that he wasn’t strictly a thriller specialist during the first decade of his career. A melodrama set on a small island off the coast of Britain (putatively Manx, but shot in Cornwall), it features a drawn-out multi-year love triangle between two very different friends (a fisherman and a lawyer) and the woman they both love and who loves them both. Despite some rough directorial choices from a then-young Hitchcock, it’s all very drawn out in the way most silent dramas are—dialogue cards, endless emoting, hesitant visual pacing and so on. It doesn’t help that the romantic plotting consists of one thing after another without much progression. I mean—The Manxman is not bad, especially by the standards of the time, but it’s not worth seeking out unless you are, like me, trying to slowly claim completion on Hitchcock’s entire feature-length filmography.

  • All Styles (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As hard as I was on a few instalments of the Step-Up series, I do miss them—they were the closest the first two decades of twenty-first century Hollywood had to offer as updates to the musicals of the 1950s. I miss the sense of fun of the dancing and the silliness of the plotting, the combination of modern filmmaking techniques with plain old dance moves. This may serve to explain why I’m somewhat partial to All Styles, even though it’s not much of a movie. This little-seen, low budget, somewhat unambitious film may be far from the best-of-breed, but it still has this spark of interest that makes musicals so much fun. The story is nothing special—a young man trying to put together a crew for a dance competition, little elaboration required. But even if writer-director Angela Tucker is limited by a small budget and the lack of technical polish she would have working for a Hollywood studio, she gets the crucial parts right—the dialogue, the cinematography and, most of all, the dance sequences. All Styles is not, and I’ll highlight this a few times, all that good. Nor is it any original. But it’s more entertaining than you’d think and some of the dance numbers get popping: That’s almost all I ask of a dance film these days.

  • Kataude mashin gâru [The Machine Girl] (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) As much as it’s tempting to look at films such as The Machine Girl and think that Japan must feel constitutionally obligated to out-shock all other nations on Earth, the truth is more prosaic: There’s an extreme subgenre of Japanese cinema, and those tend to be the films best known in North American genre circles. In this specific subgenre, gory horror and over-the-top comedy make close companions: Tokyo Gore Police, Dead Sushi, Meatball Machine and Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead had their brief moment in the sun circa 2009 or so, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing if it remains a marginal phenomenon. (To wit: The Machine Girl, Zombie Ass and Dead Sushi were all written and directed by Noboru Iguchi, who has an extensive background in pornographic films.) They’re not all that successful—the blend of gore and comedy doesn’t always take, and the failure mode of such imperfect blending is films that are simply too gross to be liked. The Machine Girl skirts that line closely—it’s about a girl who, thanks to an assault from hoodlums who also murdered her brother, has her amputated arm fitted with a machine gun and goes on a rampage of revenge. It’s not a pretty rampage—limbs are cut off, heads are decapitated, holes are blown through bodies, and body-puppets spray enough blood to fill up kiddie pools. It could have been unbearable, but it somehow manages to have enough comedy and manic energy to avoid nausea. Much of the film’s sense of cool depends on a fascination for gruesome special effects, and that’s not necessarily for everyone. As such, you won’t be surprised to learn that the film is often mean-spirited, needlessly sadistic and doesn’t really sport anything like character development or a complex plot. But you get what you get from The Machine Girl: an overdone segment of extreme cinema, barely made tolerable by copious comedy and some filmmaking zaniness… even if the manic energy often goes out of control and creates issues of its own. Not for everyone, but certainly memorable.

  • First Lady (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As much as it’s easy to lambaste Hollywood for its history of sexism, the record isn’t quite so clear-cut if you accept that female power often manifested itself in ways not necessarily recognizable as feminism. There’s a truly fascinating case to be made that First Lady, for instance, is a case study on hidden power—a film built around a universe in which even first-rate politicians are mere puppets for the ambitions of their wives and potential mates. Adapted from a theatrical play, the film showcases Kay Francis and Verree Teasdale as Washington, DC women maneuvering behind the scenes to ensure that their men end up with their party’s nomination for President. Both the comedy and the drama are slight—at least in appearance. But the fine dialogue makes up for a relatively lack of big effect—much of the screenplay is remarkably sly and biting in its depiction both of power and personal politics. But it’s really the idea that the powerful men are pawns in a bigger Bene Gesserit-scale game that’s the best thing about First Lady—or would be if the film didn’t happen to star the wonderful Francis, doing her best to keep up with the talky script in barely 83 minutes. Watch the film for Francis, stay for the enjoyable portrait of DC wives fighting it out… with the fate of the nation an incidental consequence of whom will best the other.

  • Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As a Canadian, the American deification of Abraham Lincoln often leaves me nonplussed. Sure, I get the highlights—iconic appearance, wrestling champion, freed the slaves, fought the Civil War, and was assassinated at the theatre. But it’s films like Young Mr. Lincoln, that plays as a prequel in the ever-expanding Lincoln Cinematic Universe, that have me asking bigger questions than usual. Here, Henry Fonda (impossible to see as anything but Henry Fonda) plays the future president in his young hungry lawyer days as he establishes his practice in small-town Illinois. The film, based on a true story, nonetheless plays as a Matlock episode with the lawyer going for a dramatic courtroom deduction. I may sound flippant, but I actually liked the film, and more than I thought I would. Young Fonda remains a compelling presence, especially when playing smart capable characters. The entire film is directed by John Ford, who could reliably turn some solid entertainment at that stage of his career. And the screenplay (nominated for an Academy Award) is filled with solid bits of business meant to humanize its intimidating lead, with Fonda doing the rest of the aw-shucks persona. I’m told the film takes large liberties with the facts of Lincoln’s life and I can understand why—the result, at least, is quite compelling. Even if you don’t like other Ford films, or can’t quite grasp the holiness of Lincoln. [December 2025: Having done more research into Lincoln, and measured him against other presidents, I get it now.]

  • The Mad Miss Manton (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) There’s a wonderfully entertaining quality to The Mad Miss Manton that cannot be solely explained by seeing Barbara Stanwick and Henry Fonda in their first co-starring appearance—although it helps. No, the sheer scene-by-scene interest of the film has more to do with its ridiculously likable atmosphere, with 1930s Manhattan socialites running around solving murders and falling in love as if there wasn’t anything more important going around. (One day, I’ll try to figure out why I’m a wealth-redistribution advocate who nonetheless loves Classic Hollywood depictions of the idle rich, but not today.) There’s nothing funnier here than seeing Stanwyck’s queen-bee character running around with seven (!) socialite butterflies following her as a Greek chorus of commentary—and often taking on Fonda’s journalistic protagonist as the target of their patter. But murders are the plot justification of this film, and it’s great fun seeing the leads aggravate each other as Fonda appeases a police corps exasperated at the women’s meddling in their investigation. (Both Stanwyck and Fonda end up slapping each other at some point.)  Some good dialogue helps flesh out a typically-short film (at 80 minutes, it’s even a bit long for 1930 amateur sleuth comedies), leading to a result that can be enjoyed every day of the week. Future Oscar-winner Hattie McDaniel also shows up for some voice-of-reason housekeeping duties. Sure, you can see Stanwyck/Fonda pairing in The Mad Miss Manton as a dress rehearsal for the superior The Lady Eve three years later—but it’s perfectly enjoyable on its own terms as well.

  • Ode to Billy Joe (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I can sort-of-see how Ode to Billy Joe has aged in interesting ways. At the time, the film was well-known to have been based on a song describing a suicide, and also for coming up with a reason to explain the suicide. That reason, a young man unable to accept his homosexuality in 1950s small-town Mississippi, would have been shocking at the time. Today, of course, it plays differently: as a mournful southern-US gothic showing how social strictures doomed a bright young man. (Not that the film is necessarily less mournful by itself, but there’s a sense that the young man is a mere accessory to illustrate the growth of the female lead, the chief piece of evidence being that his suicide occurs midway through the film.)  But for all of that improvement in effect, and the film’s rising status in queer-cinema studies, Ode to Billy Joe remains a chore to get through. I’m not overly sympathetic to small-town nostalgic dramas in the first place, and this one seems more unbearable than most—get me out of here! is my overriding reaction to the thought of spending any more time in dead-end rural Mississippi. It’s easy to empathize with the female lead once she becomes determined to get out of town. I suppose that the film will appeal to a certain audience, but it’s really not in my wheelhouse by any measure—not by theme, not by tone, not by genre. But I can respect the intention, and I’m dead-certain that Ode to Billy Joe is better appreciated now, even by a small number of cinephiles, than it was back then by general audiences.

  • Woody Woodpecker (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Most of the time, wondering why I haven’t seen a big-budget film five years after its release can be explained very simply: the film isn’t good, made no lasting cultural impact, didn’t stand the test of time, and has found a place in the media landscape solely as filler for content-starved budget-conscious TV channels or streaming services. Woody Woodpecker (the character) has a surprisingly long history in movies—including being part of the classic hard-SF film Destination Moon back in 1950. But chances are that we’ll remember the 1950 snippet longer than the full-length 2017 film, because it’s really not good at all. Financed by the home-entertainment wing of Universal for theatrical release in Latin America (the character is apparently an icon in Brazil) and straight-to-streaming in North America, this Woody Woodpecker is an unwieldy mix between live-action actors and a computer-animated Woody, except that the script was apparently written for slow grade-schoolers. Blend that undiscriminating target audience with a low-end production budget and a mercenary approach from writer/director Alex Zamm and you get what he was paid to deliver: a dumb movie with substandard visuals, ham-fisted messages, cartoonish characters (even when they’re played by real actors) and an overall annoying impression. It’s not a lot of fun to watch and, even at 91 minutes, increasingly irritating the longer it goes on. No, if you haven’t seen Woody Woodpecker, it’s not of any fault of your own. You can even go back to not knowing the film ever existed. Although, alas, I see there will be a sequel.

  • Scanner Cop II aka Scanners: The Showdown (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) It will take supernatural psi powers to determine whether Scanner Cop II is more the second film in the Scanner Cop series or the fifth one in the Scanner series—suffice to say that it’s both and yet not a worthwhile movie. Alluding to events going all the way back to the classic 1981 Cronenberg film, it’s still intent on going more or less through the expected beats of that first film and presumably its sequels—a bit of scanner-on-scanner tracking, some mumbo-jumbo acting as feeble justification for the plot, and a showdown in which at least one head explodes (but not the viewer’s). It’s all very rote—the only area where Scanner Cop II could be an improvement would be in the technical credentials of a straight-to-DVD mid-1990s effort versus an early-1980s low-budget production… but that’s really not much of a recommendation when the film seems determined to go through the expected plot points one after the other. It has a basic thriller’s narrative drive, but not much more—although I suppose that being more familiar with previous films in the series could help.

  • Dance-off (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) There’s a reason why movie musicals died out as a dominant movie genre after the 1950s and the end of the studio system—as much fun as they can be to watch, it’s a form of filmmaking that demands a lot of specialized resources. Whether it’s generous budgets, capable filmmakers or performers trained in multiple disciplines, musicals stress-test everyone involved in a production. The results can be glorious, but it’s not the kind of thing that can be done on a shoestring budget… as Dance-off sadly proves. Much (most) of this low-budget production is terrible even by made-for-TV film standards: the script alone is an atrocious mix of failed comic relief, clichés and situations so contrived that it seems aimed at preschoolers. This is certainly not helped along with actors that span the range from earnest to flat-out terrible, overacting the comedy and underplaying the drama. The dramatic scene staging is as amateurish as the set design, showing the depth to which filmmaking can sink if it doesn’t have a solid crew to support its creative side. There is, however, one constant exception to all of this, and it’s the one that keeps the film from the worst possible assessment: The dance sequences are acceptable. Not good—we’re still far away from even the Step-Up series here—but acceptable, and that’s a significant improvement over the rest of the film. Director Alex Di Marco clearly knows how to spend his low budget for maximum impact, and so the dance sequences here are not terrible. It helps that of all the actors, the two leads are the best—Kathryn McCormick is very cute as in the female lead role, and that helps a bit throughout the entire film. So, to sum up: Dance Dance-off: tolerable; Off-dance Dance-Off: terrible. Call it a demonstration of why movie musicals need at least a medium budget to succeed.

  • Catch the Fair One (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As I write this, Canada is in the middle of a years-long reckoning with its less-than-glorious past when it comes to its relationship with First Nations. That reckoning is manifesting itself in part by a wave of films tackling related topics—residential schools, science-fiction film showing First nation insurgency against white oppressors (or white zombies), horror films literalizing transgenerational trauma, revenge fantasies about missing and murdered indigenous women… it’s in that vein that I say that the most surprising thing about Catch the Fair One is that it’s not a Canadian movie. Set in the United States but otherwise tackling matters of Canadian interest, it tracks an ex-boxer as she infiltrates a prostitution ring, trying to find out what happened to her missing younger sister. From the get-go, this is not a cheerful film—shot near Buffalo, NY (explaining why it looks Canadian), the film is not interested in tidy glossy entertainment. Despite a muscular performance from boxer Kali Reis in the lead role, it’s a film that delights in gritty visuals, downbeat narrative and maximalist villains. As a thriller, it’s quite respectable, although the ending sinks it slightly for me—it smacks of learned helplessness to withhold satisfaction from the protagonist, as if there was no way for this all to end satisfactorily. Otherwise, I like a lot of what writer-director-producer Josef Kubota Wladyka is doing here, wrestling with issues from an insider’s perspective (compare and contrast: Wind River) and not flinching away. I just wish there would be bigger wins in the end.

  • Maudite Poutine (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As an overweight pure-laine French Canadian, I’m probably made of 2% poutine at any given time—but if you’re watching Maudite Poutine (translated as “Damned Poutine,” the kind of title you’d expect for a foodie comedy) hoping to get delicious insights on fries, curd cheese and dark gravy, then you’re so, so, so sorely mistaken. At least the opening minutes will set you straight, as the film’s harsh black-and-white gritty aesthetics present an opening sequence in which a few young men are taken up to an office to be brutally beaten up. Writer-director Karl Lemieux sets his film entirely in rural Quebec, exploring the small-scale yet utterly ruthless local bikers who control the flow of drugs in the area. The film is clearly, resolutely, obstinately not fun to watch: everything about it ugly from the visuals to the topic to the music (considering that the protagonist also plays in a punk-rock band). As much as it’s important to note Lemieux’s consistent artistic approach (those shots from inside small factories and warehouses… beautiful) and how he refuses to make the film accessible, I have a hard time being enthusiastic about the result. Despite my usual favourable tilt toward French-Canadian productions, Maudite Poutine is a 91-minute ordeal on all senses and doesn’t really care about presenting a narrative—let alone an interesting one! Too bad—and I’m still waiting for my Plateau-set foodie urban romantic comedy that will best reflect the same title.