Month: October 2022

  • Timecop (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Google Streaming, October 2022) I have dim memories of watching Timecop in the mid-1990s, but few of them include much past the first third, and nothing at all after the first half of the film. Much to my dismay, this is probably going to be what I’ll say about this viewing as well in a few years: For all of the fun and games of the film’s first third, which delves into the criminal (and counter-criminal) uses of time-travel while showing a gently futuristic world, Timecop becomes increasingly generic the longer it goes on, all the way to a generic climactic showdown inside an isolated house. Jean-Claude van Damme does have one of his better roles here (in one of his best movies) as a, well, timecop who goes around apprehending people who go into the past for crimes. Don’t look too deeply into the film’s ideas—they get progressively more ridiculous the longer you think about them. But, for a while, Timecop maintains the façade of a fast-paced Science Fiction thriller. Ron Silver is deliciously slimy as a corrupt politician, while I did like Gloria Reuben in the too-short time she had on-screen. Director Peter Hyams keeps things moving just fast enough that we don’t ask too many of the questions that would puncture the film—in this case, running fast is better than running on cool. (My favourite/worst example is the rocket sled that sends people to the past, but disappears… when it doesn’t slam in a wall that’s there for no good reason.) Anyway—this is not a film for nitpickers: it’s there for fun, for van Damme doing the split to avoid being electrocuted (if you’re looking for a reason, might as well reach for that one) and for a minor mid-1990s vision of a future.

  • Night of the Demon aka Curse of the Demon (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) I haven’t yet seen enough Jacques Tourneur movies to say whether they’re all better than average, but let’s just say that his biggest hits are worth a look, and you can count Night of the Demon among those. What could have been an ambiguous psychological thriller gets the studio-mandated no-ambiguity treatment here, with special effects used to show the titular demon tormenting those who get too close to the truth. Questions of fate and curses weigh heavily here as an American academic in England investigating strange happenings. Will he be cursed by his curiosity? Is the sinister cult leader really after him? The climax, memorable, takes place at a train station. For Tourneur, this feels a lot like the kind of film he was making fifteen years earlier with Val Lewton—it’s got dread, an effective premise and a bit of restraint gloriously thrown aside by some blunt special effects work to show the demon. Even today, Night of the Demon remains quite enjoyable as a return to the bedrock of horror movies.

  • Journal d’un curé de campagne [Diary of a Country Priest] (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube streaming, October 2022) Every Robert Bresson film is a mystery box : Will I like it slightly, or will I hate it with a surprising passion? As it turns out, Journal d’un curé de campagne is a bland entry. I didn’t hate it (already putting it in the upper half of his filmography), but there’s not a lot in there for me to like. The story takes us to rural France, where a new priest does his best to establish his parish despite ambivalence or hostility from the local villagers. As it turns out, our protagonist is sick, and his interactions with the locals veer between matters of sin and theology. As is often the case with Bresson, his minimalist films are consciously emptied of emotion from the actors—the dialogue is shot flatly, and if you’re looking for directorial flourishes then—oh boy are you watching the wrong filmmaker. It’s all rather dull, an impression that comparisons with the later Léon Morin, prêtre would confirm. But then again, Bresson is a specific, perhaps even acquired taste—it’s not a surprise or a dishonor to find out that it just doesn’t work.

  • Bend of the River (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube streaming, October 2022) James Stewart is back on the trail in Bend of the River, once again teaming up with director Anthony Mann to play an imperfect middle-aged man who learns better over the course of the film. I like the idea of a solidly fortysomething protagonist with a bit of personal growth to do, and so here we find him as an ex-outlaw who has settled into being a guide to settlers heading west. His motto is simple: get the people to destination, nothing more. But that intent is tested when the Gold Rush makes it so that his prepaid provisions are no longer available. Suddenly feeling responsible for the fate of a few dozen people, the rest of Bend of the River sees him forming closer bonds with those he took in charge. The vivid colour cinematography helps a lot in ensuring that this film has aged well—the rest being a solid story of easterners heading west, and the caravan required for this kind of (re)settlement. Stewart is exemplary here in his 1950s western phase, playing characters with charm, but not entirely concealing a strong streak for violence. There’s a nicely stripped-down quality to the plot that goes well with shots of unspoiled wilderness—back to basics in many ways. Rock Hudson has a supporting role here, but there’s little to notice him. The film definitely loses points for overt colonialism and the usual kind of racism so prevalent at the time. Still: I don’t particularly enjoy 1950s westerns, but Bend of the River is better than most, and it does feature Stewart at an interesting point in his career.

  • Alligator II: The Mutation (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) It’s slightly impressive (and informative) to see how much director Jon Hess’ Alligator II: The Mutation copies, borrows or steals from its 1980 prequel without really understanding why it worked. If John Sayles ever wants to feel better about himself, he can just watch this sequel and itemize how many plot points of his original script this sequel reuses and botches. Once again, local unscrupulous businessmen dump chemicals who make sewer alligators grow to gigantic size, and it’s up to a renegade police officer to end the menace. There’s a little bit of business about racial discrimination (many of the characters are from the Latino community) but everything in this sequel feels rote and by-the-numbers. It doesn’t rise above the level of a Direct-to-Video monster movie, and it shows its limitations more often than not. I did like some of the matrimonial banter between the protagonist and his wife, but that’s about it—the rest of Alligator II feels incredibly generic even when it steals what made the first film slightly better than the average.

  • Redeeming Love (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) If ever you find yourself wondering what the heck kind of gosh-darned film Redeeming Love is supposed to be, don’t worry: there are plenty of explanations to offer. The biggest piece of the puzzle is that it’s not only an adaptation of a novel, but a novel that explicitly attaches itself to the Christian romance subgenre. As such, it’s prone to tropes that may feel baffling to viewers who aren’t immersed in American Biblical/Christian subculture. The first few moments of the film may lead you to believe that it’s a hard-hitting feminist fable about the exploitation of women during the Gold Rush—but no: suffering is how this subgenre builds character, and the protagonist’s arc is to go from sinner to saint. You may have your doubts about the man who virtuously takes it upon himself to rescue her from the fate as a whorehouse star yet ensures that she can leave at any time—but no, he is the Anti-Manic Anti-Pixie Anti-Dream Anti-Girl but he is the pretext she needs in order to become more virtuous. As Redeeming Love’s episodes accumulate and zig-zag all over the place, a few things will become clearer: The film is dearly in love with itself, for one thing. For another, it should have been a miniseries. Or, for a third, it should have taken far more liberties with the source material. Still, the biggest surprise here is to see that D. J. Caruso co-wrote (with the original author) and directed the film—Caruso is nowhere as bankable or well-known as he was in the late-2000s for directing a few well-received thrillers, and it’s a surprise to see him work in the Christian subgenre. Also surprising, but welcome: Famke Janssen’s deliciously evil performance as a brothel madam, against whom the leads of the film are not even worth mentioning. The technical credentials of the film are pretty good, and Caruso can still capture an image nicely. Unfortunately, Redeeming Love is built on a quicksand foundation—unlikable female lead, objectified male lead, bits and pieces of sexual abuse, incest and pedophilia thrown in the mix for thrills, a tone that shifts every fifteen minutes, and some really weird quirks that make no sense until you find out it’s from the Christian publishing enclave at which point you go—oh, right. Not everything makes sense, but at least there’s an explanation.

  • Circus Kane (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) As far as core-genre horror movies go (those made for horror fans by horror fans, with all the baffling decisions that go with that), Circus Kane has the distinction of being sometimes good in-between much flatter material. It’s almost interesting that a film that lasts a mere 88 minutes can feature no less than three opening sequences before getting to the real meat of the events, as a group of social media influencers are invited to a mysterious house for some kind of contest. Anyone worth their horror-fan creds knows that heads will roll soon enough and indeed that’s where Circus Kane goes—a lurid series of deaths dwindling the number of participants. Coulrophobiacs won’t be pleased to note that most of the deaths are circus-themed, bringing a modicum of interest to an otherwise formulaic film: Killer clown, booby traps and deadly magic tricks are on the menu here, which works better in execution than on paper. Characters, dialogue and banter are not exceptional, but they’re good enough to be more interesting than the usual horror stuff. There’s no doubt that Circus Kane could have been much better—the production isn’t inspired, and it’s easy to point at the film’s choices to opine how it could have been executed more competently. Still, director Christopher Ray seems to have a grasp on the kind of film this is supposed to be. Expectations matter a lot in film reviews, and Circus Kane does a surprisingly good job at lowering them right before (slightly) exceeding them—and I’m not just writing this because the film features a movie blogger targeted for death.

  • Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) The lineage of Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop as a low-end made-for-streaming title is obvious from the get-go—while some of the cinematography is glossy, much of the film lives in this awkward space reserve for films attempting too much on a small budget. It’s also, clearly, the (attempted?) start of a franchise, what with our heroine (Nathalie Cox, adequate) set up as this orphan who grows up, under the tutelage of her loyal butler (Kelsey Grammer, slumming but having fun), to be a mystery-solving detective. To its credit, the film is almost exactly what it presents itself to be: a pleasant small-town non-nonsense British mystery in which the heroine figures the mystery before people get really hurt. Ideal for the prototypical middle-aged audience that doesn’t want too much excitement in their thrillers. “Watchable” is probably where most assessments will land—not spectacular in any way (even the heroine’s deductions are few and slight), absolutely not interested in the supernatural, fairly light on the suspense even when there are gunshots going around. It’s not good, but it’s cozy. [September 2026: Five years later, no further films have been produced in the series.]

  • Rocco e i suoi fratelli [Rocco and his Brothers] (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2022) I’d love to hit Rocco and his Brothers with the same insouciance that I use to dismiss Italian neorealism, except for one thing: If this is a portrayal of reality, then things were downright unbearable in circa-1960s Italy. I kid, but: this is pure melodrama with heightened stakes, whether we’re talking about the family moving from rural south Italy to the urban north, the five (count’em: five!) brothers all with their own distinct personalities, the prostitute that goes for a few of them, the boxing career subplot, or the mean deaths that await some of the characters. Alain Delon may be pretty good as the titular Rocco, but the rest of the film is just one thing after another—barely believable as soap opera material, but here presented as a grand statement. (Yes, I’m aware the film pops up on “1000 movies to see before you die,” lists and that its writer-director Luchino Visconti is acclaimed as a great director. I just don’t care.)  To be fair, I could have predicted this exact reaction about thirty seconds in the film—a black-and-white Italian drama made between 1945 and 1965? Yeah, that’s going into the same bucket, no matter whether it’s neorealist or melodramatic.

  • House of Dark Shadows (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) The problem with spin-off films is that they can feel misguided if you’re coming to them absent the context. House of Dark Shadows, clearly, is a spinoff of the Dark Shadows TV soap opera, made to capitalize on the notoriety of the show and its characters. Stumble upon it cold sometime in the twenty-first century and… why am I supposed to care? Am I supposed to cheer for the vampire? And why does this feel like a bland take on every single vampire cliché? The point of the film was to let loose and tell a story that could not be told on TV with its content restrictions. But in doing so, House of Dark Shadows end up with a very, very, very tired story about a centuries-old vampire seeing his long-lost love reborn in modern times and pursuing a way to be with her. The kind of plot that’s more familiarly done as spoof than straight-faced horror these days. We cannot watch House of Dark Shadows in the same way audiences watched it then, seeing a popular TV character unleashed and working within a horror film setting. To us, Jonathan Frid is one weird pick as a lead actor, but to them he was the hotness crossing over from TV. It probably takes a strong affection for the 1960s soap series to fully appreciate House of Dark Shadows—absent that, it feels like a rehashed story, not particularly well-executed on a small budget.

  • Around the World Under the Sea (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) Terrible and yet fascinating, Around the World Under the Sea is perhaps most distinctive for presenting some very good underwater footage at a time when this wasn’t obvious at all—and also, perhaps, for playing into Jacques Cousteau’s romantic notion of the sea as a vast unclaimed frontier. (You know the line: “We know more about the moon than the ocean…”) It features a youthful and vigorous Lloyd Bridges playing the captain of a submarine mission aiming to install earthquake-detecting sensors around the world. Lloyd’s character is presented as heroic (even when he dives down to rescue someone for no good reason, as the real rescue team is right behind him) in a way that fits the film’s unsubtle way of approaching its subject. There’s a surprising amount of tension between the five members of the crew (with David McCallum playing a devious scientist, how could it be otherwise?) and similar straightforwardness in the generic plotting. But the real tension is between the visuals and the substance. For all of the still-remarkable underwater footage, Around the World Under the Sea is saddled with one stock B-movie conflict after another. So much so that the film starts leaning into being a parody at times—probably not, but that suspicion may be the only thing that can make its irritating misogyny any more palatable. The special effects are… uneven, and the plotting can get remarkably dumb at times, especially with so-called scientists as characters. With that kind of weight around its neck, it’s no surprise to find out that Around the World Under the Sea is the kind of B-grade 1960s Science Fiction film that one will respect or take seriously. Yet in that lies some of its appeal—as something too clearly retrograde that it becomes fascinating to watch. Not recommended, but make sure to see it if it’s on the schedule.

  • El espíritu de la colmena [The Spirit of the Beehive] (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) I’m not going to suggest that writer-director Víctor Erice The Spirit of the Beehive is a bad movie, because it’s not. Even in the semi-comatose slumber that the film induced, I could recognize that it’s a skillfully made film, one with some thematic depth that goes beyond booga-booga horror movie stuff. There’s a delicious filiation between this film and the better Guillermo del Toro Spanish-language films (The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth) in that they both focus on kids (presenting events from their point of view), in isolated areas, during a repressive regime, in small subtle touches more than grand horrifying set-pieces. It feels, in many ways, like a much newer film, one that fits with some of the more subtle uses of horror we’ve seen over the past two decades. Not that the 1970s were bereft of subtle horror—but that discussion swiftly takes us to the soporific effect of the film, in which themes and ideas and a subtle touch don’t necessarily lead to a better experience as much as sleep. I had a very hard time getting into The Spirit of the Beehive. I thought that the link with the classic 1931 Frankenstein would be enough to pull me in, but it wasn’t. There’s clearly a political dimension to the film that escaped me—I know about Franco’s regime, but not enough to interpret its influence on the narrative and the period of history it depicts. The pacing is also a significant issue—the film deals in ambiguity, non-conclusions, gauzy cinematography and languid pacing… all of which seems custom-designed to frustrate. I’m still happy I saw The Spirit of the Beehive: I think it’s a minor milestone of world horror cinema. But I don’t think I will willingly sit through it again any time soon.

  • Draft Day (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) Refreshingly enough, Draft Day doesn’t spend a lot of time on the playing field—it’s all about backroom deals and high tension on the day of the NFL Draft. It’s clear that this is a day rife with potential conflict and drama, but the challenge here is in orchestrating a suspenseful presentation and blending all the subplots for maximal impact. In this regard, veteran director Ivan Reitman (for whom this was his final film—a better swan song than many of his previous movies) is able to keep the pieces moving at a brisk pace: Crisp cinematography and a constant sense of forward movement make this film more visually interesting than you’d expect. It also probably has more split-screen phone conversations than all of the other 2010s Hollywood movies put together, with some characters poking out of their side of the screen. (In the film’s showcase move, repeated twice, a character talking on the phone even seems to walk around his interlocutor as the split screen blends their surroundings together.)  An impressive cast also helps: Kevin Costner is his usual brand of stoicism as a hard-headed general manager trying to orchestrate complex transactions. Chadwick Boseman impresses in an early role as a promising prospect. Plenty of other known faces make sometimes-brief appearances. The script is profoundly sports-literate and will often use a mixture of both historical footage and real-life football personalities in cameos. And yet, despite the film studiously presenting football as a religion (and one that doesn’t destroy its players’ brains, oh no), the film feels unusually accessible to those outcasts who don’t really care about the game of football but are looking for some juicy behind-the-scenes drama. It’s unfortunate that the actual script isn’t so sharp on the nuts-and-bolts of the story. Much of the drama is fuelled by one inexplicably dumb trade that needs to be undone, and the idiot ball gets passed around a few times during the film. It’s also quite old-fashioned in some of its plotting choices, not quite pushing the envelope as much as its presentation. Still, I had a much-better time than I expected watching Draft Day: It’s propulsive stuff, pleasantly dramatized (I’m not surprised to find out that many have criticized it as being outlandish by pro football standards) and, frankly, more compulsively watchable than many better movies.

  • Not with My Wife, You Don’t! (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) The makers of Not with My Wife, You Don’t! clearly intended to make a comedy. Some of this intent makes it to the finish line. After all, it’s hard to miss completely when you’ve got a semi-manic Tony Curtis butting heads with George C. Scott over who’s going to seduce the lovely Virna Lisi. The film’s initially jumbled chronology goes to the Korean War to give us a look at the first such conflict (won by Curtis’ protagonist) before skipping to the mid-1960s where Scott’s character comes back from the dead to create an adulterous triangle. (The film doesn’t quite have the romantic antagonist sleep with the wife, but that’s merely some lingering Production Code reflexes—the suggestion of an affair is very explicit.)  The best part of the film is seeing Curtis go through the ordeal as a meticulous planning officer (one who knows everything and can get anything) seeing his wife walk away and getting embroiled in various complications. There are some good moments here: a pleasant mid-1960s pop-optimism, a refreshingly silly military farce (complete with rather good colour footage of mid-1960s Air Force planes—including one air show shot that had me gasping) and Curtis is in fine form in a role ideally suited for his persona. Writer-director Norman Panama is inordinately fond of fake-outs (most notably at the beginning and the end of the film). Alas, this comes with a few warnings:  Far too long at nearly two hours, Not with My Wife, You Don’t! sometimes gets bogged down, suffers from baffling misogyny, and a plot that doesn’t without amazingly bone-headed choices. There are also some substantial pacing issues here—a far-too-long prologue that can’t figure out it’s not the main plot, an overdrawn arctic-posting sequence, a far-too-long aerial race from London to Italy that squeezes the comic lemon dry, and a few drawn-out scenes belabouring the same point. As a result, the film often appears mystifying: it’s funny but not as funny as it thinks it is, and some judicious editing at the script stage would have helped. Still, it’s hard to be all that disappointed at a movie that has been almost forgotten today and pops up as a bit of a hidden gem. Not that expensive of a gem, but still a production with decent actors, big-budget means and nice moments here and there. Approach Not with My Wife, You Don’t! with the right expectations (as in—don’t expect it to be a classic comedy) and it just may surprise you. But it could have been better.

  • Invaders from Mars (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) I have long learned to take the promise of a strong crew with some leeway—film history is littered with great writer-director-producer combos that simply didn’t spark, and you can add Invaders from Mars to that list. It’s easy to get excited with some of the names involved here—Tobe Hooper as the director (back when his name wasn’t necessarily a guarantee of disappointment—this film would be a turning point), Dan O’Bannon co-writing the script, Stan Winston and John Dykstra on special effects… plus being produced by Cannon Pictures, again at a time when the company was in the middle of what we now recognize as the 1980s genre corpus. But Invaders from Mars is, from its early moments, not as much a disappointment as a film consciously made for kids. (But was it?)  The very familiar plot elements are the kinds of things that work really well if this is one of the first movies you see, but are irritating to anyone with some film literacy. As the film boldly rediscovers the basic blocks of horror/science fiction (via an alien invasion of a small town as discovered by the teenage protagonist—cue the clichés), it just becomes increasingly tiresome. Hooper’s execution is nothing more than fair, making the entire thing unremarkable in the end. I realize that we’re at the point in Invaders from Mars’ history where the film is more likely to be a fond childhood memory than something that fans actively champion, and that happens—not everything survives as well two generations later. That too, along with a healthy skepticism about creators’ ability to knock it out of the park every time, is part of being a seasoned film fan.