Month: October 2022

  • Rancho Notorious (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) When is a western not a western? Maybe when it’s helmed by Fritz Lang, who was best known in the early 1950s for downbeat film noir thrillers that pushed a distinct bleak outlook. Maybe when it’s more focused on psychological drama, as a good man increasingly becomes a villain during his quest for vengeance. Maybe, alas, when it’s studio-bound at a time when any western with a decent budget (especially when filmed in colour) headed out in the country. Yes, Rancho Notorious is not quite your typical western. Adding such stars as Marlene Dietrich and Mel Ferrer adds to the interest of classic Hollywood fans, with Dietrich being particularly interesting vamping it up (successfully) at age 50 while echoing a similar turn in Destry Run Again. Still, the studio-bound nature of the production dulls some of its impact—not so much in dramatic heft, considering that the film is more focused on character drama than landscapes, but in overall credibility. (You can compare it with the largely shot on-location contemporary Bend of the River for contrast.)  Still, the interest here is in seeing Fritz push the envelope of acceptable content with sultry Dietrich moments and some frank dialogue. Add that to the decidedly unheroic degradation of the character and you have a western that remains interesting despite its flaws, which is already more distinct than many other films of the period—and the 1950s had many westerns.

  • DC League of Super-Pets (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) Further evidence that we’ re in the degenerate era of superhero movies can be found in DC League of Super-Pets, an animated film entirely focused on the furry companions of DC’s leading superheroes. Most of the film is from the perspective of Krypto the Super-Dog, often portraying the humans as caricatures in keeping with the narration’s comic tone. It’s straightforward in superheroic terms, albeit the origin story here is evenly distributed among a few animal characters—on both sides of the fight, considering what would happen if neglected animals got superpowers. A rather long list of familiar actors voices the characters, perhaps the most surprising being Keanu Reeves as Batman. The result is not too bad—not exceptional, but something that should keep both the little kids entertained while the adults appreciate the satirical nudges at the familiar superheroes.

  • The Red House (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) Given that I’m easily amused, I’m still smiling at the irony of black-and-white films named after a colour. But that’s roughly the last funny thing about The Red House, a sombre film-noir era horror thriller featuring, yes, a red house but also a grumpy farmer, a plucky boy, a dangerous forest and about as close a femme fatale as a rural thriller can get. Edward G. Robinson, predictably enough, plays the cranky farmer. Convinced by his adoptive daughter to hire some help, he’s not pleased when his overeager helper starts poking around the forest at the edge of the field, and seems determined to stop him from entering. What’s in there? Well, the red house, of course. As for the rest, the film gets us dark secrets, a love quadrangle, a psychotic break and murder before everything is through. It takes a while to get going (the opening act is heavy on atmosphere and not so much on plot) but it’s not bad when it’s in the thick of its own story. Lon McCallister and Judith Anderson are not bad as the young couple in the middle of the story, but a special mention belongs to Julie London, who brings the femme fatale to the farm. That rural turn is what helps The Red House feel fresh in a sea of mansion gothic thrillers and urban film noir of the same period. There’s a lot brewing under the surface of the script as well, and it seems less coy than many contemporaries in setting up a nightmare. Not a bad pick at all.

  • My Sister Eileen (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) You can rank My Sister Eileen as a second tier 1950s musical and few will bat an eye. It’s a colourful Columbia widescreen production featuring none other than Jack Lemmon and Janet Leigh toward the beginning of their careers, then-blacklisted Betty Garrett, seven musical numbers and a comic tone that firmly establishes the film in the lineage of classic musicals. So far so good—but the trouble starts when you start looking for reasons why My Sister Eileen is distinct or worth noticing. Aside from an amusing climactic conga line number and choreography by Bob Fosse (who also gets a small role), the rest of the film struggles to establish itself. Whether it’s a familiar plot (two sisters move to New York, try to make it big—a remake of a previous film, but also very reminiscent of other similar movies), a by-the-numbers development or a visual style that doesn’t go much beyond the competent, this is a pure genre film: It belongs to a genre, understands how it works and executes it competently, but remains notable more as an example of genre than something defining or elevating it to its highest standards. Pure-genre works have the advantage of being well-made and watchable… but they may not stick in mind for a long time.

  • The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) As of this writing, Al Hirschfeld has been dead for nineteen years (1903–2003!), and it’s a fair bet to say that his status as one of the great American entertainment caricaturists is fading away every year. (I myself have some recognition of his distinctive style, in which a simple line can be so expressive.)  But he’s always going to remain one of the twentieth-century greats through the body of work he leaves behind: From the 1930s to the early 2000s (he started young and never retired), Hirschfeld drew everyone who was anyone on Broadway, which meant caricaturing nearly every single American audio-visual celebrity at one time or another. His style was, in a word, witty—he could both represent and summarize a stage or screen persona in a few evocative lines—and hide the name of his daughter NINA a few times in the drawing as well. It helped that he was instantly recognizable due to his own very specific appearance—his flowing white beard well in evidence. The Line King presents him at the peak of his fame, as a Manhattan showbiz eminence grise respected by everyone. Gushing testimonials from stars having purchased copies of their own caricatures are weaved between an overview of his life throughout its many decades, shots of him at work, descriptions of his working habits, proof of his influence (if the title reminds you something, the film explains how Hirschfeld’s style found its way in the Disney Animation renaissance of the 1990s) and shows him hobnobbing with celebrities at a Broadway premiere. One of the most striking things about Hirschfeld is that he chronicled most of the twentieth century—he met, drew and was celebrated by generations of Hollywood people, and the film remains steadily amazing in showing just how many people he caricatured. His eccentricities are charmingly described, and the overall accumulation of decades of steady work is impressive in itself. Writer-director Susan Warms Dryfoos’s documentary may now push twenty-five years of age, but it still speaks by itself. It’s fun viewing and it clearly acts as an excellent tribute to its subject. (Tangentially: An uncredited music snippet even led me to finally track down one of TCM’s signature jingles prior to its 2021 redesign: The TCM Early Morning Bumper featured Keith Nichol’s Jelly’s Blues.)

  • Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) With a title like Lesbian Vampire Killers, it’s clear that viewers should not expect a gentle, sensitive LGBTQ+ issues movie. It’s brash, crude, violent, and unrepentant in being aimed at younger men… and much of the time, it reaps the benefits of this self-awareness. Clearly a ([Lesbian Vampires] Killers) rather than potentially more interesting (Lesbian [Vampire Killers]) movie, it features two young men unwittingly stepping into a centuries-old prophecy when a break-up and barroom luck bring them to a small English village on the eve of a fateful full moon. What they don’t know is that there’s a coven of lesbian vampires in town, and that they can either be the facilitators of an even greater evil being brought to life, or destroy the threat once and for all. Executed with jokey low-budget energy, Lesbian Vampire Killers is an homage to the old Hammer films, a horror/comedy that leans heavily on the comedy, and the kind of film suited for 12-year-old boys who just discovered the word “lesbian.”  You can rag on much of the film for a while—the limits of the budget often show, the pace has a significant mid-movie lull, and James Corden is exactly as annoying as you imagine him to be as the designated annoying character. But as it happens, I’m still on friendly terms with my 12-year-old past self, and I found the film better than I expected. It’s a B-movie in the purest sense, not concerned by respectability as it places all of its chips on the fun factor. It won’t play equally well—I can understand why some reviewers seemed personally offended by the very existence of the film, while others hailed it as a cute little low-budget horror/comedy. I mean—just look at the title. It almost tells you everything you need to know.

  • The House on Sorority Row (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) The year is 1982, the genre is slasher, and the setting is a sorority row. Do I really need to write the rest of the review? 1982 was the peak slasher year, and of all the slashers released that year, The House on Sorority Row was certainly one of them. Maybe the most average. Maybe the one that combined the most cliché elements of the genre together. You can probably watch it and not remember a single stupid thing about it the next day. It is a bit less gory than most, but it veers in a weird direction as the young women show remarkable cruelty to their (admittedly overbearing) house mother. The plotting doesn’t make sense, but the film tries to go for studied atmosphere at times, with writer-director Mark Rosman remixing a few memorable moments and styles from previous horror films. Still, it remains a slasher very much in the vein of what was popular in 1982 and there are so many of those films kicking around. If you’re a fan, it’s probably part of the canon. If you already despise slashers, The House on Sorority Row won’t do anything to change your mind.

  • Kin (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) There’s something both endearing and frustrating in Kin by design, and how you react to it may depend on your attitude toward genre films. It’s both a Science Fiction film and a coming-of-age travelogue, with a fuzzy ending that doesn’t make a lot of sense on its own but sets up later instalments that, as of this writing, look increasingly unlikely. At first, it’s interesting to follow a young black man from a bad Detroit neighbourhood as he discovers a weapon that’s clearly far beyond current technology. Ignoring every single mob movie ever made, he picks up the weapon. MEANWHILE (as in: not related to anything else, but it’s that kind of film), his older brother gets out of jail and into an argument with a small-time crime boss (the once-ubiquitous, now-disappeared James Franco) that escalates, forcing a road trip. The forced exile is a great way for the brothers to bond, visit a strip club, meet a sex-worker-with-a-heart-of-gold who wants to settle down, and remain unaware of the criminal gang members tracking them across the country. (There’s something odd about a 14-year-old protagonist visiting a strip club and waving a terrifying weapon around, but that’s modern America for you.) If you’re thinking, “Wait, what’s this family/crime story doing in what began as a science-fiction film?”, just wait—the alien weapon becomes plot-relevant again when the mobsters finally track them down. That’s when the film regains its action/SF/thriller groove, with the SF element escalating all the way to a temporal intrusion and a somewhat silly revelation. The intruders refuse to elaborate further and retreat just in time for the closing credits, dangling a far more interesting film as potential sequel. One of Kin’s many assets is the number of familiar names in supporting roles—starting with Zoe Kravitz as a stripper, but also including Franco, Dennis Quaid and Michael B. Jordan in a short climactic role. Names, however, aren’t enough to save a production that probably had noble intentions (as in: let’s bring those crazy Science Fiction gadgets in a realistic crime road movie) but ends up tonally jumbled, and more disappointing than anything else when it hints at a much more expansive sequel. Said sequel will most likely never happen, considering that the film was a commercial bomb upon release, and it’s been five years without an update. I can talk about the fun of slingshot ending in Science Fiction all day long, but Kin hasn’t earned the right to one after being in low-budget low-octane mode nearly all the way until the conclusion. If you’re a non-genre fan stumbling upon Kin for its family road move aspect, then you may be pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of SF devices in a modern-day narrative. But let’s face it: Kin was made and marketed to SF genre audiences who are far more likely to be bored by the mundane middle third of the film, and find the SF elements too little too late to make the result any better.

  • Outpost (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) With something like fifteen years’ worth of examples to go on, it’s amazing how such a can’t-miss concept as “Nazi Zombies” can, most of the time, actually miss. Videogames seem to do OK by presenting antagonists that are doubly worth shooting dead, but movies (with rare exceptions such as Dead Snow 2 and Overlord) generally don’t do much with the concept. It probably doesn’t help that most movies that do run with undead fascists tend to be on the lower end of the budget scale—you’ll notice that the exceptions I mention had decent budgets for genre films. Anyway—my point being that Outpost, even if it dates from the beginning of the Nazi zombie craze (even predating the first Dead Snow), is another one of those films that fumbles the ball it picked for itself. Here, a team of mercenaries is sent to investigate an isolated bunker in Eastern Europe, where they discover strange Nazi scientific experiments and a mysterious murderous force. You know where this is going and indeed this is where Outpost goes (and it’s where Overlord would also go, generally speaking). Its lack of originality is probably worse now than it was back then, considering fifteen years’ worth of iterations of the “zany Nazi super-science bunker” premise. It doesn’t really lead anywhere either—the nihilistic ending is only good for shrugs. There are occasional moments where you can imagine a much-better film out of the ideas, the atmosphere and suspenseful moments. But director Steve Barker’s Outpost is bland once it all wraps up—and its refusal to play this for any kind of comedic value is both deliberate and counterproductive. Fans of the genre may enjoy an early take on the subgenre, but that’s it.

  • Guilty Hands (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) High melodrama and overacting make Guilty Hands an evergreen not-that-guilty pleasure. Lionel Barrymore stars as a lawyer who uses his knowledge of crime to build the perfect murder against a womanizing friend who plans on marrying his daughter. If that feels a bit over-the-top, you haven’t seen the film’s conclusion yet. But I have already said too much. Still, this film moves quickly at less than 70 minutes, features the wonderful Kay Francis, and gets some fun out of classic mystery movie clichés. There is plenty of irony in having a trusted lawyer investigate a murder he himself committed, and Barrymore runs with that idea. The Pre-Code nature of the film means that it’s a bit wild in the corners of the dialogue, and it’s willing to entertain at least some moral ambiguity for its characters. It’s not particularly stylish (although director W. S. Van Dyke moves his camera more often than you’d think for an early-1930s film), but that’s not a problem considering the emphasis on plot and characters. Movie mysteries had a great decade in the 1930s, not so much for the best films of the subgenre, but because there were a lot of them, and many now-obscure films of the era such as Guilty Hands played the game very well.

  • Putney Swope (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) You could watch Putney Swope without any information about its production, and probably be able to guess the exact year of its release just by its atmosphere. A ferocious satire of the advertising world blended with some pointed racial commentary, counter-culture boosterism, corporate satire, joyful transgression and a few laugh-out-loud moments, Putney Swope only could have been made in 1969—at the giddy cusp of New Hollywood, flirting with the much-vaunted Summer of Love. Written and directed by Robert Downey Sr (a far more subversive figure than his better-known son), it imagines the then-radical notion of a black man somehow (through fairly funny circumstances) ending up as the chairman of the board of an advertising agency. Thoroughly changing the organization to reflect counter-cultural principles and implementing a nearly-all-black employee roster, he then goes on to face public disapproval. But from a cinematic perspective, it’s also an excuse for Downey to showcase hilariously inappropriate advertisements (presented in colour, even if the rest of the film is in black-and-white) satirizing various aspects of late-1960s American society. The ending is incendiary, torching that most sacred of American values: cold hard cash. If you like lead actor Arnold Johnson’s deep and commanding voice in the film, you should know that it was dubbed by Downey himself to cover the actor’s inability to remember lines. The film itself is, by nature, scattered and low-budget—and what was funny in 1969 from a counter-cultural white filmmaker, especially along racial lines, is not necessarily what is acceptable today. But that’s part of the charm of the film: Putney Swopes is a machine gun of satire, nose-tweaking and attempts to offend: some of it is bound to reach a target even today. I haven’t always been particularly impressed by Downey’s other movies, but Putney Swope is a solid hit and it remains effective today even if it’s definitely of its time.

  • Night Watch (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) I don’t completely like Night Watch, but I have to admit that it has an interesting twist up its sleeve, some nice atmosphere and an excellent lead actress. At first glance, it feels like your standard darkly-lit dirty 1970s thriller: There’s a woman alone in a large house, she’s not in the best of mental states, and she starts seeing things that may or may not be real. Elizabeth Taylor, looking wonderful, plays the recently widowed woman and does a fine job panicking throughout most of the film, calling the police with reports of neighbourhood murders that prove to be imaginary. If Night Watch has one big problem, it’s that it’s repetitive for much of its first two thirds: the protagonist lurks through the big house, sees something, panics, screams her head off and frantically tells everyone that there’s MURDER out there. They calm her down, suggest that she takes a deep breath, and repeat. There are plot reasons for this, but it doesn’t make Night Watch (in its uniformly glum cinematography) any less grating. Still, the film keeps a lot in store during its final minutes, including a plausible explanation for its repetitive nature. If you start the film and aren’t impressed, tough it out until the end—otherwise you’ll miss half the fun. Taylor gets a good showcase as a gothic thriller protagonist, and the film ends on a high note. Night Watch is not quite as tight or suspenseful as it could have been, but it has survived far better than many similar films of the era.

  • Cash McCall (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) It’s easy to look at 1960 romantic comedy Cash McCall with a jaundiced eye. After all, several things don’t quite work here, or look considerably worse sixty years later. Having a protagonist being an unrepentant capitalist, a corporate raider and a serial womanizer might not be in-tune with these more sensitive times (although everything about the character of Cash McCall seems designed to make him a role model for a certain kind of young man), and even if you can buy into the character thanks to James Garner’s considerable charm, the film itself seems stuck in an awkward moment of transition between 1950s Technicolor musicals and more self-aware 1960s sardonic comedies. There is some satirical humour through McCall’s lines, but the film itself constantly seems to be missing better opportunities. It works, but only adequately: Garner is fine but not exceptional, Natalie Wood is cute without being as beautiful as elsewhere, the script is amusing without being funny and the story follows the expected beats without really going beyond the strict minimum. I did enjoy the minutiae of made-believe business—McCall calling himself amoral but acting like a progressive’s idea of a good-guy millionaire, the complex machinations that really support nothing but nice sentiments, and the throwback to a business culture that took hold in post-WW2 America: all fun, but we’re clearly still in Hollywood fantasy rather than the truly amoral cut-throat world of business. I won’t accept for a moment that 1960 was any less jaundiced about the world of business: there’s a long list of 1950s films dealing with capitalism with wit and ferocity. In comparison to them, Cash McCall feels lacking: a trifle that had the potential to be more than that.

  • The Ring (1927)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) My quest to delve deeper and deeper in Alfred Hitchcock’s silent filmography is now hitting diminishing returns—While I can appreciate what he’s trying to do in The Ring (his fourth movie) in capturing the energy of boxing well before other directors refined the techniques, the rest of the film isn’t so special. Romantic melodrama surrounds the boxing sequences, all weighted down by silent drama’s usually turgid pacing and dialogue cards interrupting the flow. Props have to be given to the man himself, though: The Ring remains the only film officially written and directed by Hitchcock—later on he would remain a dominant creative influence on his films, but would credit a screenwriter for dialogue, story and structure. The Ring, however, did not have much dialogue, and the young Hitchcock was in a milieu he understood well (being a regular boxing fan at the time). The result is mildly interesting for Hitchcock fans, but it’s a bit of a slog outside boxing sequences—or even the boxing sequences themselves if you’re not a fan.

  • The Hucksters (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) I’m hardly the first one to make the link, but there’s still something delicious about watching The Hucksters and seeing Clark Gable play Mad Men’s Don Draper more than a decade before the 1960s. Here, Gable is a capable marketing executive who, returning from WW2, starts from the very bottom and works his way up the corporate chain, encountering romance, difficult clients, promotional opportunities, a trip from Radio City to Hollywood, and ultimately a crisis of conscience. (So, well, not like Don Draper.)  Along the way, we get a look at the men of the radio advertising industry at the end of the 1940s, and a bit of sharp satire along the way thanks to the novel from which the film was adapted. While Gable is easily ten years too old for his character, he remains his usual suave scoundrel here, and he’s supported by noteworthy performances from Sydney Greenstreet, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner and Adolphe Menjou. Time has been kind to The Hucksters—it was a commercial and critical disappointment upon release in no small part due to inflated expectations and heightened marketing: but twenty-first century viewers are free to approach the film as “just another classical Hollywood film” and be pleasantly surprised at the result.