Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Great Waltz (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Coming from classic Hollywood’s tradition of biographies as pretext for lavish costume drama, The Great Waltz is nominally about the life of Johann Strauss… which even the film itself acknowledges isn’t meant to be faithfully represented by the film. Taking a more entertaining approach, the film goes for broad and obvious tropes, mixing music, romance and professional success into something meant to be enjoyed on a basic level. A lot more effort has been poured into the sets, music, cinematography and costumes – and the money’s all there to see on the screen, with a few Academy Awards nominations (and one win for cinematography) as a result. A few dance sequences bring the film closer to a musical, or at least as close to a musical as late-1930s MGM could go. It’s amazing that director Julien Duvivier, fresh off the success of romantic drama Pepe le Moko, would go on to “direct” this film, even if a number of film historians are skeptical about his true input. Clearly a prestige production for MGM, The Great Waltz is nonetheless not much of a film once you strip away its lavish presentation – a few good scenes help it stay afloat, but it’s liable to be a film of superficial impressions, leaving very little in memory even a few days later.

  • Samson and Delilah (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (archive.org streaming, May 2022) Director Cecil B. DeMille could be counted upon to deliver quality spectacles throughout most of his career. Samson and Delilah is no exception… as long as you’re willing to be patient, that is. Anticipating the biblical adaptation craze that would dominate the 1950s box-office in an attempt to convince people to watch something other than TV, this colourful adventure goes back to the ancient Middle East to tell us about the Samson and Delilah of legend – he is a strongman without peers; she is a rare beauty with a duplicitous streak. DeMille fans are liable to be disappointed by much of the film, as very obvious studio sets act as unconvincing background to several endless discussions. There’s a lion-wrestling sequence to keep things going, but otherwise much of this biblical epic is talk-talk-talk. Let’s not be overly critical: this is a 1940s film after all – decades before the Hollywood spectacle formula was revised to include a big jolt every twenty minutes. It’s not as if there’s nothing to admire in the interval – after all, Delilah is played by none other than timeless beauty Hedy Lamarr, and Victor Mature incarnates Samson… alongside such notables as George Sanders and Angela Lansbury. And then, well, there’s the temple-shattering climax of the film’s conclusion, in which full-scale sets and big models are used to portray the complete collapse of a Philistine temple. If you’ve been waiting for this long, you deserve the treat at the end of the film. I would not recommend Samson and Delilah as one of DeMille’s best films, though – too talky, too fake, too unbalanced in its structure. But it’s watchable – Lamarr and colour cinematography help a lot – and it offers an interesting object lesson in how Hollywood was ready to go for even bigger spectacles in the years to follow.

  • The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Sometimes, the only way forward is through – having recorded a double-bill of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and its sequel, I knew there was never going to be a better time to watch the second film than right after the first one. I still had the (rather bland) characters well-established in mind, didn’t expect much from the conceit of the magically-fitting pants, and still felt reasonably well-intentioned toward the series. Picking up two or three years after the first film, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 once again goes to the same plot template by splitting up our college-aged characters for the summer, each one going away for a specific kind of wish-fulfillment adventure. Yes, we’re back on Greek Islands, but this time around the other characters go to Turkey for an archeological dig (and grand-maternal revelations); to Vermont for a theatrical workshop; and New York City for, well, ordinary life. It all climaxes in picturesque Greece with all four friends pledging once again to be BFFs – we wouldn’t have it any other way. The pants are almost absent here – it’s all romantic and affective subplots. It generally works well – although I had to laugh when the film clearly affirmed that being an actress was far more desirable than being a good backstage technician. (Guess which one reliably makes the most money…)  Like the first film, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 is not a film made for me, but it’s still quite tolerable to “watch” when doing some cleaning within audio/visual range of the TV. “Bearable” may not seem like much of a compliment, but it is – at least if you also saw the much-worse movies I see on a regular basis.

  • The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) My pre-movie warmup routine for films such as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is simple: I just repeat, “This film is not for you” to myself a few times. It’s really the key to letting go of incompatible expectations. Made for a specific type of audience, this is less a film about magical pants than four subplots patched together, each of them going for a specific kind of teenage wish-fulfillment. The simple structure gets going when four lifelong high-school friends buy a pair of pants that somehow fits each of them perfectly, then vow to send it to each other even through the summer they’re about to spend apart. Then it’s off to the separate subplots until the synthesis of the third act. One sister goes to Greece and falls in love with a young man from an enemy family; one goes to South Carolina and finds out that her remarrying father is the most clueless man alive; one goes to Mexico for nothing of great importance; and the last remains home to film a documentary of sad people like her. Through it all, the pants are hyped as mystical garments able to let them discover and fulfill their destiny. If you’re part of the intended audience, this is really your chance to sit back and enjoy four subplots about early adulthood – a few infuriating moments are there to raise the stakes, but otherwise you know it’s all going to end up well. This being said (and there’s my “this film is not for you” mantra slipping away), anyone approaching this film as a work of magical realism is going to be frustrated – other than the pants fitting everyone, there’s very little about the rest of the film that depends on fantasy. That’s probably not a bad idea – the original novel also used the pants as an excuse for a far more down-to-earth story of friends learning to exist on their own, with some help from each other. It’s ideally suited to teenage girls, or anyone looking for a bit of unchallenging fare. It’s also a decent showcase for the four young actresses in the lead roles – perhaps the most distinctive being America Ferrera, as she’s the one to affirm the magical-pants premise, and because her plot line is more interesting than the others. Otherwise, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is almost exactly what it promises to be: a four-way summer romp, from the spectacle of Greek islands to the reclamation of an estranged father. This film is not for me… but I found it watchable.

  • Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) As far as films made for the American Evangelical communities go, Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 does have an interesting wrinkle going for it: It seems to take an almost tongue-in-cheek approach to its topic matter. Unlike such “classics” as Left Behind (both of them) or the first The Omega Code, this sequel seems to be going for an over-the-top approach that, at the right angle, seems purpose-built for chuckles. Michael York certainly delivers as the anti-Christ antagonist of the film, chewing scenery like delicious sacramental bread. The rest of the credit for a semi-watchable film should go to director Brian Trenchard-Smith, who seems positively gleeful at the means at his disposal. Trenchard-Smith, after all, is an Ozploitation legend with a good sense of humour about his own movies – he openly boasted about his intention in accepting to direct the film: playing with the biggest budget of his career and taking the chance to stage some elaborate expensive action. The result is still a terrible film filled with circa-2000s Evangelical obsessions (European Union, return to the promised land, Vatican put-downs, book of revelations, etc.) but one that does have quite a bit of snark potential. It’s horrifying racist (such as the sequence where the white guy kills an audience of black people), theologically dubious, anachronistic in taking aim at the evil EU, badly plotted and cheaply executed, but it has scope, York in fine form and the occasional bit of surprisingly effective dialogue (“I’ll always have a chance in hell,” says the anti-Christ). Even if Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 remains a bad movie, I have suffered through much, much worse.

  • Ransom! (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) I’ll be honest: My interest in watching this version of Ransom! had more to do with dim-but-positive memories of the 1996 remake and an interest in seeing how film noir it could be than any specific interest in the film itself. Under these expectations, it’s not much of a surprise if the film is a slight disappointment. For one thing it takes forever to get going – the lengthy introduction takes its time in setting up our wealthy hero (Glenn Ford) and his family, then how the situation gets going as his son gets kidnapped. Working with police in ineffectual attempts to talk to the kidnappers is next, with plenty of 1950s procedural details about call-tracing and how kidnapping for ransom usually goes. By the time we get to Ransom!’s most interesting moment – the protagonist taking to the airwaves to offer the ransom as bounty on the kidnappers – there’s scarcely ten minutes left to the film: the kid pops up a few moments later, and then we’re done. For twenty-first century viewers, there’s at least one act missing. It’s notable that the film never shows the kidnappers either – the focus is strictly on the protagonist, his family, police and an errant reporter (a young and darker-haired Leslie Nielsen in his big-screen debut). It may explain things to know that the film was based on an hour-long radio drama – such as why it feels padded even at 102 minutes. Ransom! is not a bad film per se, but it clearly feels like a prototype for the much denser and thrilling 1996 remake.

  • Lorelei (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) The only thing better than a film that doesn’t go where you expect it to is a film that delivers a humane message in a genre that doesn’t often have them. In Lorelei’s opening minutes, viewers may think they’re in familiar territory as a tough guy (a credible Pablo Schreiber) is released from prison after a fifteen-year stint, and gradually labours to re-integrate into the community. If you’ve seen ex-con films before, you know the scenes: A less-than-sympathetic parole officer, old criminal acquaintances welcoming him back, a quick physical get-together with an old girlfriend (Jena Malone), a hard-headed boss reluctantly willing to give a chance to a parolee, but on the condition that if they make one mistake, then they’re out. The stakes are raised but not altered once our protagonist moves in with his ex/new girlfriend and starts taking care of her kids. At that point, we think we know where Lorelei is going: the temptation of an easy buck, a shady enterprise, a slight mistake, the cops closing in on someone who now has much to lose… but that’s not at all what happens. Our protagonist, despite a tough exterior and some mistakes along the way, proves to be quite a good step-father. The third act gets going when she leaves him with the kids, taking the film in a most unusual territory. The mini quest that forms the bulk of the film’s last minutes ends on a touch of grace that elevates the rest of a rather gritty working-class drama. The atmosphere of people living at the edge of poverty is rendered well, even if the script and dialogue can be rough at times. Still, Lorelei becomes quite a bit better than what you could expect from its opening minutes. It’s a modest success for writer-director Sabrina Doyle, and it’s going to be interesting to see what she does next.

  • The Harder They Fall (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, May 2022) I compile my lists of films to see from various sources, so you won’t be surprised to learn that the NAACP Image Awards are on my radar, and that seeing The Harder They Fall became a priority when it won this year’s award for Outstanding Motion Picture. It did not disappoint: A predominantly-black cast western directed with style and energy, it’s fun to watch even in its excesses. Pleasantly militant (as per the opening title cards: “While the events of this story are fictional… These. People. Existed.”), it peers at history to resuscitate black historical Western figures and has them go on an adventure as explosive as anything else in the genre. The ensemble cast is nothing short of terrific, with notables such as Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz, Regina King, Delroy Lindo and Lakeith Stanfield holding their own on-screen. While the story is standard action western material, it’s given a kick in the pants thanks to writer-director Jeymes Samuel’s aggressive style, an incredible modern soundtrack, and several touches of well-placed humour. (The visit to “a white town” is visually very funny.)  A terrific sense of cool permeates everything in the film, as if every scene had been optimized to get viewers primed for more. Where The Harder They Fall loses me somewhat is in the excessive amount of violence and gore, none of it essential to the impact of the film and in fact even detrimental to it – I think the film could have been a more accessible PG-13 by removing the needless blood. Still, there’s no denying the appeal of the result – including a terrific hand-to-hand fight sequence featuring Beetz and King. It’s sure-fire entertainment for audiences willing to tolerate its gratuitous violence. The final shot promises a sequel – I’ll be there.

  • Seven Years Bad Luck (1921)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Here’s a fun discovery for anyone who thinks they’ve rounded up silent-era comedy through the Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd trio. Seven Years Bad Luck is the Hollywood debut of notable French comedian Max Linder, who here re-creates several of his routines for the American public. Quite a lot of it still works well a hundred years later – the opening mirror routine alone clearly anticipates the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, his dandy character feels like the one Keaton would develop in a few films, and there’s a lot more after that. The film is a lot of fun (and at barely more than an hour, scarcely outstays its welcome) and ranks somewhere near mid-tier Keaton in terms of laughs. (It’s also in the public domain now, so there’s no excuse not to see it from its Wikipedia page.)  Reading about Linder explains why he remains a bit obscure – predating Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd, he is their rough acknowledged inspiration… but his Hollywood career was short-lived and he committed suicide only a few years later. He has resurfaced as a notable silent-era comedian, but his work largely remains the province of connoisseurs. Seven Years Bad Luck is not only notable as a milestone in the history of movie comedy, it’s -more importantly- still quite fun to watch.

  • The Woman in the Window (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, May 2022) I’m probably overdosing on domestic thrillers at the moment, because I didn’t feel much except annoyance at The Woman in the Window. If you’re familiar with the subgenre, you already know the basics: a woman, alone, possibly drunk, almost certainly dysfunctional in some way, mysterious events, paranoia, certitude that someone is in danger, eventual threat to self. Fill in the blanks yourself. On paper, The Woman in the Window is promising: Amy Adams is rarely less than compelling, and having her surrounded by such notables as Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Julianne Moore and Jennifer Jason Leigh is promising enough: Adding Joe Wright as director and Tracy Letts as screenwriter seems to be merely gilding the lily. And yet, and yet… the film lands with a thud. Oh, no, Adams plays an agoraphobic drunk who grows convinced she’s just seen a murder and, zzz…. Yeah, there’s no investment here. It’s a by-the-numbers exercise, with more dumb screenwriting tricks than is tolerable for a formulaic product such as this one. Everything about the film screams contrivances, artificiality and convenience. The early moments of the film take forever to get to where the story begins, and the final “twist” is laughable. As a result, The Woman in the Window feels dull-witted, laboriously executed and far less than rewarding in its impact. It gets worse once you dig into the film’s production and find out that the best-selling novel on which it’s based was written by a serial liar, fabulist and plagiarist, that the film’s first cut got disastrous reactions from test audiences and that most reviews were still not all that impressed (how bad was that first cut?). I suspect that The Woman in the Window will nonetheless annoy other viewers less than it annoyed me – a combination of decent actors, top-notch technical credentials and pandemic-friendly premise may outweigh jaded objections. Furthermore, I also suspect that the over-familiarity of the film may play as comforting material to audiences wanting safe expected thrills. If that’s you, well, there’s The Woman in the Window to stare at.

  • The Dig (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, May 2022) British but not necessarily well-mannered to a fault, director Simon Stone‘s The Dig juices up the true story of the Sutton Hoo major archeological discovery on a British estate into a tale of jurisdictional infighting, jealousy and passionate affairs. It’s an odd mix indeed, and I’m still not sure whether it works except on the most basic of terms. Part of my doubt has to do with an ultra-niche topic matter, and how it’s being sexed-up (by way of the novel on which the film is adapted) to include drama where there wasn’t in the first place. It does not help that the film is slow-paced to a fault: at 112 minutes, it spends a lot of time on establishing shots and building romantic tension. It’s hard to be against the result – heaven knows we could use more cerebrally-minded films that don’t go from one action sequence to another – but I would be exaggerating if I said that I’m all that enthusiastic about the result. Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes and Lily James are cute, though: They dig, they find, they argue, they fill back the hole – cue the end title cards explaining what happened next. All right, then.

  • The Dark Past (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) It’s perfectly understandable to have mixed feelings about The Dark Past – a film that most impresses with a novel approach, but then shows the limits of that approach. In what feels like a stage-bound noir, much of the film revolves around a hostage situation in which a dangerous criminal threatens a college psychology professor and his family at their isolated cabin. The most noteworthy bit of cast is obviously a young William Holden as the villain (!), facing off against the older Lee J. Cobb. The novelty of this film’s approach is in its reliance on psychiatry as a way out of the conflict – throughout the film, our protagonist develops his understanding of the villain’s psychology (including a few nightmares rendered in stylish negative image) and then, as a climax, performs a quick analytical session. Alas, this is where the film hits a hard limit – Hollywood oblige, a few minutes of discussions lead the villain to realize the errors of his ways, and the protagonist to declare, “He’s cured!’” — a declaration that even non-professionals will find problematic in the twenty-first century. But the film gets the happy ending it was looking for, all the way back to a framing device that feels like nothing more than propaganda for police psychiatrists. As I said – it’s fine to be impressed by The Dark Past’s willingness to reach for something other than a big climactic shoot-out, and not be impressed by the slap-dash way it’s executed.

  • Valley of the Sun (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) There aren’t many straight-up dramas in Lucille Ball’s filmography and even fewer westerns – so if you find yourself asking why you’re watching as unremarkable a western as Valley of the Sun, tell yourself that this is it – Ball’s only Western. She is, predictably, somewhat wasted here – while the film does have elements of comedy that allow her to find a footing, the film isn’t built to her specifications and that shows. There are more interesting ideas to find in the film’s ususually-progressive-for-1942 treatment of its Native American characters – although there was a limit to how much credence a 1942 film could give to their revindications. A bit of action makes the film go by faster, but Valley of the Sun still feels long at 78 minutes. Some genre films tend to be for fans, and so it will take seasoned western aficionados to get the most out of this one.

  • Forty Little Mothers (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) An awkward mixture of genres stops Forty Little Mothers from being completely successful, but it’s still worth a look. Much of the film rests on the shoulder of Eddie Cantor, in a far more dramatic vein than his earlier, lighter roles: Here, he plays a down-on-his-luck schoolteacher who finds an abandoned baby and decides to raise it himself rather than give it to an orphanage. That would be enough material for an entire drama, but then he gets a job at an all-girl school and has to content both with resentful schoolgirls (mad that he replaced their favourite teacher, and trying their best to get him fired) and hiding the baby from the school administrators, since he’s a boarder. The drama, fortunately, gets less overpowering when the girls become his biggest allies in raising the kid, and Forty Little Mothers goes for a more comic approach in its later half. Fortunately, it all ends well for everyone – including the baby and its mother. It’s regrettable that the film stuck so much to the drama, because director Busby Berkeley (best known for his musical choreography) is on firmer footing when shooting comedy. There’s quite a bit of delightful material involving the headmistress and her assistant, with a few glances and chuckles suggesting much naughtier material right under the surface. Alas, this was six years in the pre-Code era, and so the potential for something much more enjoyable remains unrealized. If you think you spot Veronica Lake and Virginia O’Brien in the background, you’re not wrong – MGM went deep in its roster of ingenues to fill up those forty schoolgirl roles. Too bad that Forty Little Mothers, as presented, seems a bit scattered between heart-wrenching drama and much lighter comedy – the film’s tone goes from one end of the spectrum to another, at the expense of a unified comic approach.

  • They Made Me a Criminal (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) You won’t find that many drama films in director Busby Berkeley’s filmography – the man who defined kaleidoscopic dance routines in the 1930s was best used in musicals and light-hearted fare, but by 1939 his time at Warner Brothers was nearly up, and movie musicals were on the way out. As a result, he ended up directing drama They Made Me a Criminal in which a boxer, convinced he’d killed a man, goes in self-exile in the desert — where he finds redemption, romance, and purpose. It’s not that much of a plot (and this being before noir’s heyday, there’s a surprising restraint in dwelling on the fatalism of the character’s fate) but the film moves effectively even when it’s not that memorable. They Made Me a Criminal is perhaps more interesting behind the scenes as a film of beginnings and endings – an ending for Berkeley, who would move to MGM and find renewed success in the new glossy colour musicals that were about to define the studio’s glory days; and beginnings for the Dead End Kids that litter this film, since they would go on to become the East Side Kids and then the Bowery Boys. (Although this film won’t make converts to their brand of humour and malapropisms.)  There are many, many ways in which this film could have been better – leaning on the grimness of the story or conversely highlighting its humanistic aspect, or taking out the insufferable kids – but They Made Me a Criminal is not that unpleasant to watch. John Garfield gives plenty of dramatic energy to a role that could have been underwritten, and the time spent in the desert marks a change of pace if you’re jaded about the urban landscapes of 1930s Warners crime movies.