Month: September 2022

  • Fireheart (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I started groaning early during Fireheart when the film initially seemed to go for that easiest of clichés—an animated family film presenting female empowerment in a historical context. My objection is not reactionary—it’s one of a cinephile who has seen this noble intention being denatured through near-endless cynicism and mercenary takes that have too much to do with making the film more profitable than progressive. So, anyway: Fireheart’s first few minutes set up a brightly coloured take on 1930s Manhattan, in which the daughter of an ex-fireman dreams of becoming a firefighter, and passes herself off as a boy to be part of a team investigating the disappearance of all NYC firefighters. Yes, all of them: this isn’t a film that deals well with realism. But as the story advances, its initial grrl-power attitude morphs into an honestly more interesting plot involving a threat to the city and a plucky band of misfits banding together to fight evil. The subplot of a daughter proving herself to her father certainly remains, but it’s filtered through a more thorough father/daughter relationship, and becomes part of a more involving plot. (Better yet is the film’s antagonist, providing the antithesis of girls breaking through the glass ceiling of villainy as well.)  By the time Fireheart rolls its credits over depictions of historically significant female firefighter, it has earned that victory lap, not by mere intentions but by having delivered more than a pat statement. Fireheart is rather good in technical terms as well: while a bit rougher than the Pixar-tier state-of-the-art, Montreal-based L’atelier Animation (last seen completing Ballerina) aims for ambitious sequences on a smaller budget. I may quibble about some of the art direction: I don’t often complain about a film being too colourful, but there’s at least half a case for that impression here, as 1932 Manhattan (albeit with severely anachronistic characters) is transformed into a quasi glowing-neon palette. But that doesn’t matter a lot: Fireheart exceeds expectations and delivers enough entertainment for the entire family.

  • The Naked Street (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As far as late-noirs go, The Naked Street is… adequate. It manages an impressive blend of romance and crime in its short duration, with a narrative revolving around a mobster’s attempt to save, then frames his sister’s no-good husband for punishment. When it comes to execution, it runs on inertia—it’s not that good of a movie when compared to others of the time, but the mid-1950s were good for noir: thus The Naked Street benefits from adequate if unspectacular writing and direction, comfortable cinematography, actors that knew their business (notably Anthony Quinn as the mobster, an incredibly young Anne Bancroft as his sister, and Farley Granger as the no-good husband) and a polish of studio-driven technical competence. There’s some structural irony in the plot’s evolution from “save the boyfriend” to “fry the husband,” and that’s good enough for noir fans who have seen everything else. Still, the pacing is slack, the dialogue pedestrian, and the directing uninspired—not enough to make it unpleasant, but enough to keep The Naked Street from being anything more than on the B-list.

  • Swing Your Lady (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) The passage of time can be kind or cruel to some movies, often depending on later events that are completely outside the intent, scope or effect of the film itself. In Swing Your Lady’s case, you can certainly make a case that the film’s upbeat, comic title would be entirely unacceptable in a more egalitarian society. But that would be missing the film’s most hilariously passé element—Humphrey Bogart as a fast-talking wrestling promoter in a southern small town, in the middle of a trifling romantic comedy. What. A. Difference. From his later screen persona—but then again, Bogart aficionados know that late-1930s Bogart was still finding his niche, and Warner Brothers was using him badly—no longer really trying him in completely unsuitable roles, but getting value out of his contract by throwing him in wildly different films. (Hence The Return of Doctor X the following year.)  Much of the comedy in watching Bogart in Swing Your Lady (a title more about wrestling than dancing) is seeing Bogart out of his element and still trying to do his best to make a humdrum film come alive. (As a bonus, Ronald Reagan also has a small role here, plus a few wrestling figures of the time.)  Surprisingly enough, the film is as more progressive than its now-troublesome title suggests—much of its plot revolves around a physically strong woman blacksmith courted both professionally to become a wrestler, but also romantically by two men attracted to her: a far cry from the usual physically frail heroines in Classic Hollywood movies. (What’s more, the male lead abandons his professional wrestling ambitions in the final minutes of the film, to take up the blacksmithing business with his now-wife. A few troublesome details aside, that’s not too bad for female agency and representation.)  Still, let’s not go overboard: Swing Your Lady is interesting, but it’s not necessarily all that good: much of its comic value now comes from a wholly miscast actor gamely trying to be professional about it. But I’ll take it: entertainment is entertainment, even if it’s not what the filmmakers intended.

  • Slightly Dangerous (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) A trifle of a small-scale late-screwball comedy, Slightly Dangerous nonetheless has its charms. Many of them rest on the cute shoulders of a 22-year-old Lana Turner, playing a bored small-town waitress running off to New York City and slowly getting into a complex situation where she takes on the identity of a long-lost heiress. Meanwhile, the man blamed for her disappearance (staged to look like a suicide) travels to the big city to clear his name, and some very influential people are highly skeptical of her claims. Going for “web of lies” comedy, Slightly Dangerous has amusing moments—I really like the sequence in which Turner’s character deduces the heiress’s favourite childhood toy… and sinks even deeper in inextricable deception. Robert Young is okay as the male lead, but he’s playing catch-up on both a real and in-universe level to Turner herself—the comic impact of a hotel room scene is entirely dependent on him trying to escape the situation. The film gets a bit messy due to the heroine lying through her teeth in order to drive the plot forward (and you can certainly argue that the ending isn’t fully earned) but it gets there eventually and if the result remains primarily a Turner showpiece, it’s still quite watchable as a comedy.

  • Les créatures [The Creatures] (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I watched Les creatures because it’s from writer-director Agnès Varda: absolutely not one of my favourite filmmakers, but such a significant figure in the history of French cinema that she earns a spot on the “should see their entire filmography at some point,” list. I was momentarily delighted to understand that Les creatures, beyond being (as blurbed), a film about “a writer being inspired by locals in writing his novel” was veering in Science Fiction, as the writer is working on an SF novel about people being possessed by mind-control devices. The film supposedly gets more fun once the barriers between reality and fiction break down (albeit relying a lot on the tired trope of the writer being unable to write anything not taken from their lives—a spectacularly dumb thing to say about SF writers), but let’s qualify “fun” with “Varda”—she’s a glum filmmaker at her cheeriest, rarely determined to deliver a crowd-pleaser. As a result, Les créatures is a slog even when you buy into its overlaid premises. The low-budget production values constantly grate, and even having actors such as Catherine Deneuve isn’t much of a balm. The atmosphere of the small French town is far from being bucolic (the realistic cinematography doesn’t help) and the slap-dash directing (which occasionally uses tinting on the black-and-white images for effect) is frankly disappointing. Even in its imperfect state, I found a few things of interest in Les creatures that a more populist filmmaker could reuse to good effect. But Varda is almost audience-hostile at times, and this film suffers from too-elaborate artistic intentions that are not supported by basic watchability. The film ended up being a such a failure upon release that Varda repurposed the celluloid of the movie into an art installation called Ma cabane de l’échec (My Cabin of Failure). Which may be the funniest thing ever said about Les creatures.

  • Night of Dark Shadows (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) It’s about time that I face reality: I’m in an abusive relationship with haunted-house movies. I keep making a point of watching them, expecting thrills and chills, and they keep disappointing me by flying off in all directions but the ones I want to see. For all of the atmosphere, twist ending (well, “twist” ending), historical backstory, possessed characters and better-than-average filming location, Night of Dark Shadows merely settles for being a weak shade of okay. It is, admittedly, a sequel to a film I haven’t seen (House of Dark Shadows) based on a TV series I haven’t seen either (Dark Shadows), but that doesn’t seem to matter much: the problem here is one of limp execution rather than incomprehensible back-story. A look at the film’s production history reveals a more interesting issue: the cutting of about 35 minutes of material from the first cut of the film, leaving a neutered and less coherent 94-minute final cut. The result delivers the bare bones of a haunted house film without going much beyond the strict minimum even if the early-1970s cinematographic style adds period interest. There was some potential in having genre-aware characters (the supporting couple are writers who specialize in horror, meaning that they understand what’s happening well before the lead couple), but that goes largely untapped. While writer-director-producer Dan Curtis’s Night of Dark Shadows should be good enough for undemanding audiences, it’s not exactly a reference in the genre.

  • Clara (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2022) Science fiction drama Clara has a running time of 105 minutes, 100 if you take out the credits. I liked about 98 of those minutes—but, unfortunately, not the last two. If you happen to think (as I do) that “Science Fiction” should also be a genre about the process, trade-offs and drama of the scientific process in addition to spaceships-pew-pew spectacle, then it’s certainly a movie that talks a good game. Much of this intimate low-budget drama takes place between two people: a driven astronomer looking for habitable exoplanets, and an artist hired as an assistant who eventually becomes something more: No, not just a girlfriend but a low-key manic pixie dream girl whose purpose in life and death is to teach the male protagonist a life-improving lesson. Regrettable use of clichés aside, there’s a lot to like in Clara for hard-SF types: thanks to writer-director Akash Sherman’s attention to detail, scientific details ring true, the stakes are credible, the portrayal of a “rational” protagonist driven mad is interesting, and the film makes few concessions to dumbing itself down for audiences, trusting viewers to follow along. There’s enough of a romantic core to provide a scaffolding for the scientific themes, and the relationship is nicely done (the film’s two leads, Patrick J. Adams and Troian Bellisario, are married in real life). Which isn’t saying that it’s all good—for all of the slick Science Fiction aspects to the film, it’s on far more contrived grounds when it comes to human drama. But then there are the final two minutes, in which a film having already delivered on its promise keeps going into something far more fantastic, going out of its sway to undo the rigour of the previous 98 minutes. I’m as much a fan of slingshot endings as anyone else, but it’s not appropriate in Clara’s case, and it makes the entire film feel much cheaper than if it had stuck to its initial intentions. (The film’s production history suggests that the ending was revised by the actress, so that gives us someone to blame.)  It’s really too bad, because for most of its duration, Clara is the kind of SF film I want to see more often—something down to earth, engaged with science and not afraid to go to the end of its idea. But that last two minutes? Unnecessary.

  • Money Plane (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) There’s clearly something wrong with me, because I found Money Plane rather enjoyable despite its significant shortcomings. It’s useless to pretend that it’s anything other than a low-budget action/thriller film. From the opening moments, the cinematography, the actors, and the pacing are all clearly inferior to Hollywood’s quality. And yet… it has a canny goofiness that makes it fun to watch. A regrettably-coiffed Adam Copeland (a wrestler, now a thespian) stars as the leader of a band of professional thieves whose latest and greatest heist falls flat, forcing them to an even grander scheme to rob an airborne casino travelling in international space and catering to the scruple-less ultra-rich. Kelsey Grammer cackles madly as the businessman funding the endeavour (and, eventually, waving a machine gun around), while Denise Richards shows up briefly, but long enough to make us wonder what happened to her. The airborne casino thing doesn’t make a shred of sense, but who cares—at its best (which is admittedly still a low bar), Money Plane glides on chutzpah and insouciance: everyone involved in the film knows they’re not there for high art, and that the ridiculousness is the point. It’s actually able to conjure a few set-pieces out of simple dialogue—many of the scenes set aboard the casino-in the-sky are like that: more words than budget, but they create an atmosphere. Of course, the good bits of Money Plane are brought down by its not-so-good bits, odd moments where the structure goes wonky (practicality in the face of low budgets is usually to blame), substandard special effects or suddenly-bland dialogue. Still, I got a lot more out of Money Plane than I expected—in fact, more than many other so-called respectable movies seen lately. Sometimes that happens: movies happen to hit you at just the right angle, making them feel better than they are.

  • Superstition (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) Supernatural slasher films are often far more interesting than “realistic” psycho-with-a-knife ones, but films like Superstition temper that assessment. Dating from the heydays of the slasher films, it’s a horror movie that’s all about the escalating body count… except that it’s all due to a supernatural witch. Which, when you think about it, makes the entire thing feel even more pointless: while a human psycho-with-a-knife still has to somehow physically move through space and time to kill his victims, the supernatural entity can pretty much do anything to anyone at any time, which makes the elaborate staging of the film’s deaths feel even more arbitrary than in normal slashers. But oh well. Plot-wise, there’s nothing to Superstition: characters waiting to be butchered, environments optimized for their killing-staging potential. There’s some amusement in noting that “the serial killer is a witch from earlier centuries!” premise is what the recent Fear Street trilogy played with. Otherwise, well, even with its supernatural justification, Superstition is nothing more than a slasher—cruel, brutal, pointless, and a chore to watch. Psycho with a knife; witch with unlimited power—in the hands of director James W. Roberson, there’s not much of a difference. Nice poster, though.

  • Swallow (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) In transgressive cinema taking on extreme psychological issues, there’s a delicate balance between putting up a freak show and being a responsible filmmaker. I would argue that the best approach is an over-the-top one that makes social responsibility irrelevant—if a comedy is so ridiculous, no one will care about the deviation from reality. At the other end of the scale, filmmakers can make the sensitive drama that they want, but they should then not go wallowing in transgressive moments that may bring the whole tonal balance down. Unfortunately, Swallow gets the balance wrong. It’s super-serious, super-clinical in its depiction of pica, a disorder in which someone eats objects not meant to be consumed. In Swallow’s quasi-clinical approach, this means that we’ll squirm in seeing a doll-like protagonist (Haley Bennett, suitably cute) ingest marbles, batteries and a thumbtack—to deleterious effect. This is all meant to illustrate a deeper problem—her pampered existence as a housewife to a wealthy man and her aimlessness of purpose. Maybe she should have learned how to code. But such sarcasm feels unwarranted in the light of the film’s solemn yet exploitative treatment of its subject. There’s a clear undercurrent of body horror (as in: absence of bodily autonomy) throughout much of Swallowed, but it seems deployed both for shock, transgression and high drama. The protagonist eventually becomes pregnant and… oh, I’ve said too much already. The plotting gets wilder as it goes on, peeling off evermore-troubling layers to the lead’s shaky mental health. The film thus zig-zags between exploitation and serious issues, never quite committing to horror or to drama. The result, as uncomfortable as it is, ends up being the worst of both worlds: never zany enough to get to the end of its thematic concerns, but not completely comfortable with the strictures of the sober, meticulously art-directed drama it portrays itself to be. Writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis takes a swing and a miss here—much better than not taking a swing at all, but not quite as satisfying as a solid hit could have been.

  • Un parallèle plus tard (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2022) Dreariness and missed opportunities await viewers willing to take a chance on Un parallèle plus tard, a too-dull drama that eschews excitement in favour of navel-gazing. The story gets going once a young computer expert abruptly flees Montréal to seek refuge in his faraway hometown on La Côte Nord—it turns out that his selling information to the mafia probably led to an assassination attempt on a minister. But if that premise sounds promising, temper your expectations: it’s just a way to send an urbane protagonist to a small village at the edge of civilization. Preoccupied by the police asking pointed questions and a painful kidney stone, he spends a few days hanging out with his aunt, greeting old high-school friends and hooking up with his bitter ex-girlfriend. I hope you’re not expecting much more of a plot, because that’s it. Our protagonist suffers from the symbolic kidney stone, but the mafia subplot is studiously minimized the longer the film goes on. Indeed, Un parallèle plus tard goes go on for a surprisingly punishing 90 minutes. Once you’ve seen the admittedly haunting landscape of Northern Quebec, it’s not the mundane interactions of the protagonist with the other characters that makes the film more engaging. We’re probably supposed to feel sorry for the aimless mafia collaborator, but the film doesn’t work out that way—I kept cheering for the kidney stone. Much was made of writer-director-producer Sébastien Landry being able to complete the film without government subsidies (as is often the norm in French Canada) but if you’re going to end up with that kind of result, eh, might as well stay home.

  • Shattered (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Note to film producers tempted to add John Malkovich to a film simply to salvage the result: Malkovich remains merely human, and there’s a limit both to the number of films he can be in, and to the amount of work he can do to save an otherwise poor show. Shattered is a case in point, as not even his hammiest work in a disposable role can quite raise the result’s interest. Not only is the film unable to benefit from what could be called adequate production values, it starts with a terrible idea for a script. Yes, indeed, in this era where we’re getting increasingly conscious of the moral worthlessness of the utterly rich class, we are asked to sympathize with a robotic protagonist (Cameron Monaghan, maybe not acting) whose entire characterization is that he’s a multimillionaire. Taken hostage in his own isolated mountain house by a gold-digging woman (Lilly Krug) working with an accomplice (Frank Grillo! Woo!), he doesn’t show any redeeming quality by himself—alas, the film eventually puts both his ex-wife and his daughter in danger, which happens too late for us to care. Shattered isn’t without its exploitation elements—much of the first half-hour languishes over a naked woman and sex scenes, while the ending gets increasingly bloody and gory. But what’s missing is a reason to care: the protagonist (and his ex-wife, to a lesser extent) are ultra-privileged, the villains are out for filthy lucre and the supporting characters are fodder for kills designed to keep impatient audiences satiated until the blood-soaked finale. Malkovich himself plays an eccentric older man who almost comes in to save the day, but shows up 45 minutes before that would have been appropriate. You can guess what happens to would-be saviours who show up too early. The film, already on shaky ground before his exit, becomes even less interesting after. There are good thrillers to build on the gulf between haves and have-nots—but Shattered isn’t it, and it throws away its best asset as an afterthought.

  • Friend Request (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2022) Aw yes—it took me a while to get used to it, but there’s nothing quite like a schlocky BET thriller like Friend Request to unwind after a hard day. The mixture of in-your-face plotting, familiar story arcs, neutered naughtiness and good-looking actresses is not what we’d call elevated cinema, but it’s fun enough in small doses. I’m on a mission to watch them all. So it is that Friend Request plays along incredibly familiar lines to BET viewers: The successful married career man who’s more-than-tempted by infidelity, and ends up paying a big price for it. I’ve just described roughly a third of their lineup if you allow for some gender-flipping, but as long as we get a scene of the temptress in lingerie, we’re all good. The mixture of low-end production values with over-the-top dramatic content is always good for a few chuckles, even if the result ends up generic enough that it’s difficult to write a review that doesn’t simply copy assessments of similar films. The overdone plotting leads to a conclusion that’s more comic than thrilling, but that’s part of the fun as well. I got exactly what I expected from director Roger M. Bobb’s Friend Request, which wasn’t much… but at least exact.

  • Antlers (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Despite my contrarian nature, how much of the discourse about cultural appropriation have I really internalized? I had a surprising answer in watching Antlers. For many, the film will come with high expectations by dint of pedigree—after all, it’s produced by Guillermo del Toro and David S. Goyer. Not that those producing credits mean a lot when both seem to produce 2–3 titles a year in addition to their own movies. A far more sobering name pops up as a director: Scott Cooper, a former actor who has built a filmography of respectable but glum and overly serious genre work. This should be a warning about Antlers, because what shows up on-screen is almost entirely devoid of wonder, humour and entertainment: it’s a super-serious horror film delving into the legend of Wendigo possession, with some impressively gory special effects in depicting the transformation of a human victim into their monstrous form. And this is where I have surprising issues with the movie. I’m not going to seriously propose that the wendigo myth should be reserved for First Nations or Native American creators—especially not the weirdly Xenomorph-inspired overdone variant shown in Antlers (heck, even Wikipedia points out that antlers are not part of the original Wendigo legend). Nor will I quibble too much about a Pacific Northwestern-set story taking on a myth from First Nations located much further east. But I will point out that there is something incredibly wasteful in having a story dealing with a monster as a metaphor for childhood abuse generational trauma and not having First Nation or Native American characters. The metaphor is right there—why not use it? Granted, I have seen more First Nations horror movies than the average bear (it’s practically mandated viewing here in Canada), but there’s something so misguided in Antlers that, when combined with the film’s sombre and plodding atmosphere, that I didn’t get much enjoyment out of the result. I do like seeing Keri Russell (not so much Jesse Plemons, even if I’m warming up to him), but Antlers could have been much, much better with just a slight realignment of protagonists and casting. (Graham Greene barely shows up.) Otherwise, it remains a monster film that goes out of its way to be as un-fun, restrained and solemn as possible, while not really digging into the so-called elevated horror (read; socially conscious) potential that it had. Guillermo! Sell the rights for a Canadian remake right now!

  • Dangerous (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) There are a few interesting ideas bouncing around Dangerous, and more than a few dashes of welcome dark humour—but the entire thing stubbornly refuses to become enjoyable. The film at least gets an acknowledgement for playing around with the idea of a dangerous, jaded assassin figure—by having him being in frequent phone therapy with his psychiatrist (a relatively enjoyable Mel Gibson, literally phoning in his performance safely isolated from the rest of the case) and showing him trying to get away from the psychopathic thrill of killing. But the film doesn’t really have any use for a pacifist: not when he’s got to protect his estranged family against a bunch of bloodthirsty mercenaries. The isolated Pacific northwestern location in which the film takes place has a whopper of a secret, but all of this is window-dressing to a coolly efficient killer killing even more despicable killers. It’s unfortunate, then, that for the film’s occasional inventions (including a hidden WW2-era Japanese submarine!), it really can’t bring itself to anything more than a low-budget straight-to-streaming effort. (Yes, I know Dangerous was released in theatres. I’m just saying it should not have been.)  The action is murky and dull, most of the dialogues are pedestrian (exception made of the psychologist patter, but you’d have to work overtime to mess those up), the set designs are cheap and David Hackl’s tightly enclosed direction seems to make things look even worse. For a cast of relatively known names in the B-movie space, Dangerous wastes a lot of talent—Scott Eastwood is bland and generic, Famke Janssen doesn’t have much to do and Tyrese Gibson doesn’t have an outlet for his usual glibness. A lot is left on the table here, but the script should have understood from the get-go that if you’re building an action thriller, you’re building pure entertainment—the rest comes after, once you’ve figured out the basic structure of the thing. Dangerous doesn’t have even that—it’s just a bunch of ideas thrown in a sack, and inelegantly executed.