Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

    Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In Theatres, August 2019) The origin story of Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw sounds like a case study for an ambitious Hollywood studio executive: what if the two biggest stars of your biggest moneymaking franchise start squabbling badly enough that it makes headlines? The obvious answer is to spin off another series to specifically showcase one of the squabbling stars and hope that the box-office keeps churning in. So it is that there’s nary a Vin Diesel to be found in Hobbs & Shaw, as the film feels free to jettison much of the increasingly burdensome “Family” of the main series in favour of focusing on the antagonistic relationship between Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and reformed terrorist Shaw (Jason Statham). This spinoff clearly takes bold leap into science fiction as the antagonist is a cyber-enhanced “Black Superman” as played by the always-incredible Idris Elba. But that’s not the least credible aspect of a film that has its protagonists escape a falling smokestack, pull a flying helicopter by their arm muscles or run down the side of a skyscraper. No, believability and physics aren’t the strong suit of Hobbs & Shaw—in keeping with the original series, this is more about quick quips, demented action sequences, celebrity cameos (including a very funny Ryan Reynolds and an amused Helen Mirren) alongside an exaggerated sense of fun. It generally works—while elements of the third act feel like a step back from the calculated insanity of the previous action sequences, the film as a whole can depend on great lead action icons and a rather cute Vanessa Kirby building on the good reviews she received in Mission Impossible: Fallout. It’s not as good or as involving as much of the mainline series, but Hobbs & Shaw does the trick in between other instalments.

  • Free Willy (1993)

    Free Willy (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2019) I can guarantee you that anyone who was alive and watching TV back in 1993 can tell you all about Free Willy’s climax: Reprinted in posters, every single trailer and most TV reviews of the film is the Big Shot of the film: An Orca jumping over a barrier on its way to freedom. That’s … pretty much the entire film. Marketing strategies for family films do not rely on surprise: they inform parents precisely of what they’re likely to get at the end of the film’s duration, so it’s not as bad as you’d think to reassure everyone, young or not so young, that the Willy will be freed at the end. (Which reminds me of the other reason why the film is still remembered: an endless decades-long snickering over the film’s title.)  For anyone with higher critical standards, director Simon Wincer’s Free Willy is not all that pleasant to watch: clearly aimed at the younger set, it sports a stock teenage protagonist, a cute animal sidekick, cartoonish villains and almost exactly the plot that can be deduced from the poster. It’s executed decently enough for its target audience, but does not hold any surprises or interest to anyone outside of it. Made of that what you will—Free Willy remains a movie made for a very specific audience.

  • They Live (1988)

    They Live (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2019) It’s a shame that writer-director John Carpenter never got to carry his extraordinary peak of creativity beyond the mid-1990s—At a time when genre cinema became wilder and more prevalent, it seems a waste that he never truly enjoyed the infinite capabilities of digital filmmaking or the far more genre-literate audience. Still, he can be proud of having produced something like eight genre masterpieces in the twenty-year period between 1975 and 1995, and They Live is clearly one of his best. Even today, there’s a biting ferociousness to the film’s social criticism, recasting a rigged economic system in a metaphor of alien invasion and exploitation. The metaphor of reading secret alien messages (“Consume!”) with the right viewing equipment is so simple and yet still incredibly effective. Of course, there’s more than just a consumerism critique here: the film works because it features an everyday man (a great casting choice in ex-wrestler Roddy Piper) fighting back against the oppressors. The film probably peaks during the lengthy fight between Piper and Keith David—the third act seems overly familiar, and actually quite conventional when compared to some of the incendiary material that preceded it—I mean, the bank shootout sequence can be incredibly disturbing if it wasn’t for greedy aliens being involved. Great one-liners and a straightforward delivery of satirical material still work well today. They Live is still a classic, and its critique of neoliberal Reaganomics hasn’t been invalidated in the slightest by thirty plus years of perspective. Carpenter could retire on a mere handful of his movies, and They Live makes quite a claim at being among his essentials.

  • Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

    Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2019) There are some odd corners in Francis Ford Coppola’s filmography, and I think that Tucker: The Man and His Dream just may be one of my favourites. Starring Jeff Bridges, this is the story (adapted from real events) of Preston Tucker, who tried launching his automobile company in the late 1940s. The real story is not particularly inspiring on the surface: Tucker manufactured 51 automobiles, got sued for fraud, and died a few years later without having achieved more than an initial success. But in this movie, Hollywood goes to work with its movie magic: Tucker is portrayed as taking on the Big Three automobile manufacturers, his board of directors, skeptics, governments and yellow journalism. He’s portrayed as a crusader for automobile safety, for innovation, even for the very notion of a better future. It ends with a triumphant parade of sorts, as fifty Tuckers are brought in Chicago to demonstrate what he was able to achieve. Even knowing the real story isn’t enough to wipe the smile off our faces while watching this unusually cheerful feature. Tucker: The Man and His Dream was a passion project for Coppola, whose father invested in the company and who spent decades developing the project. His enthusiasm is infectious, as the film easily charms viewers into accepting its premise without question. It helps that the cinematography is a variation of bright colourful vintage nostalgia, everything appearing just a bit shinier and better than usual. It’s enough to make anyone wonder why Coppola didn’t make more feel-good movies.

  • From the Earth to the Moon (1958)

    From the Earth to the Moon (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Oh, what a terrible, terrible disappointment. I should probably come clean right away and admit that Jules Verne’s De la Terre à la Lune is one of my favourite novels. I must have re-read it three or four times at a decade’s interval (which reminds me that I’m overdue for another reread)—a childhood favourite that still works in adulthood due to its mixture of clipped humour and engineering details. In the right hands, it would make a fantastic movie. But From the Earth to the Moon director Byron Haskin did not have the right hands, or if he did, he wasn’t given what was necessary to do the novel justice. My disappointment is so acute that I’m not going to get into the details, but this 1958 version of the story is a dismal shadow of its true potential. It removes the fun and the spectacle of the original novel and replaces it with clichés and bad ideas. Getting rid of Michel Ardan is inexplicable given the theatricality of the character. Inventing “Power X” and cheaply demonstrating it in a boring quarry is a terrible idea. Adding an antagonist is useless. Screwing up the novel’s third act is a travesty. And so on. I’m usually tolerant when it comes to film adaptations and older movies but this is not acceptable. What a waste and what a disappointment. Too bad for George Sanders and Joseph Cotton, who usually do much better. From the Earth to the Moon is not even enjoyable on its own terms, let alone as an adaptation.

  • Mortal Engines (2018)

    Mortal Engines (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) I’m not sure how future movie critics will regard the 2010s, but if I can give hints as an early commentator, I’d suggest poking at the commoditization of wonder. Never have there been as many fantasy movies, and never have they been so unremarkable. We see, on a monthly basis, sights and stories that would have amazed earlier generations of moviegoers limited by a lack of genre awareness and primitive special effects technology. And yet, high-imagination effects-filled movies such as Mortal Engines can come and go without making any significant cultural impact, digested almost instantly by an industry that drives viewers in seats week after week. As someone who read a lot of written Science Fiction, it’s almost incomprehensible how Mortal Engines can be reduced as a mere SFX-heavy movie of the week and be forgotten so soon after. This is, after all, a movie featuring moving cities, running on gigantic threads in a post-apocalyptic landscape and capturing/absorbing/digesting smaller cities along the way. This is a big-scale fantasy adventure, meant to inaugurate a trilogy of movies and wow the socks off its audience. And yet … we’ve been conditioned to watch and move on, looking for the next big thrill. To be fair, let’s not pretend that Mortal Engines is particularly well-packaged. Limited by its literary origins of a script adapted by a book series from Philip Reeve, the film overstuffs its wonders, zig-zags some peculiar paths and doesn’t always make sense once it gets to its cartoonishly evil antagonists. It’s also very YA-flavoured, meaning that it has a hard time distinguishing itself from the YA-dystopia subgenre that crashed so miserably in the mid-2010s (See above for “commodification of wonder”). As a result, Mortal Engines had miserable box-office returns that made it a high-profile failure and cemented that we will never ever get the screen adaptations of the three other books in the series. (Which may be for the better, as a plot summary of those books gets weird in the way that many YA series eventually get.)  Still, if I may be allowed a bit of a contrarian opinion, I really liked maybe half of Mortal Engines. The half that has London-the-city rampaging over the European countryside led by Christian Rivers’s direction. The half with the steampunk inventions coming straight out of the books, the derring-do of the characters, the wall-to-wall special effects, the engaging actors. I suspect that the other half, story-wise, is still too close to the eccentric books to truly flourish as a movie. And that’s really too bad, because generations of filmmakers would have killed to get the means that Mortal Engine squanders to little impact. If the 2020s should head in one direction, it’s calming down with the malleable digital reality of movies and figuring out interesting stories to tell.

  • The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)

    The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Jack Black has been experiencing a weird career renaissance lately—from being a critical darling in the 1990s to an overexposed laughingstock in the 2000s–2010s (with the notable exception of School of Rock), he’s now bouncing back in the niche of kids-friendly comedies such as the Goosebumps, Jumanji, Kung-Fu Panda series and now The House with a Clock in its Walls. Older, more restrained, goateed whenever necessary, he’s now able to project some useful menace, nuance and wisdom. While aimed at kids, The House with a Clock in Its Walls is layered enough to be interesting to the entire family, as a young orphan comes to live with an eccentric uncle in a house with many, many secrets. Blending old-school tropes with a modern environment, this is a family comedy that works effectively (in 105 minutes) at creating an intriguing atmosphere. The menace is palpable, but it ultimately results into a family-united dynamic. Cate Blanchett has a minor but satisfying role as a witch, Renée Elise Goldsberry makes an impression as another witch, while director Eli Roth takes a much-needed break from gory horror in order to deliver PG-rated entertainment with some genre savvy. The House with a Clock in Its Walls is not a great movie, but it’s likable enough, spectacular enough and uses Jack Black to great effect. It would be churlish to ask for more.

  • Le samouraï [The Samurai] (1967)

    Le samouraï [The Samurai] (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Some films age more poorly than others because they have been, in a sense, too successful: Whatever set them apart has been so often copied, referenced, improved or badly remade that they are now unremarkable. I feel a lot like this about Le Samouraï, which follows a hired killer with a Spartan lifestyle. Executed with stylish detachment, Le Samouraï offers a blend between making its protagonist as cool as possible (almost effortless when he’s played by Alain Delon) and presenting a deconstruction of that same cool-killer archetype by highlighting how mentally unwell he is. There’s not a whole lot of action to the film, most of the running time being dedicated to navigating a difficult situation between organized crime, the police and the victims. Many of the plot twists, all the way to the conclusion, can be anticipated well in advance: after all, there have been many similar movies in the decades since then, especially in the neo-noir 1990s. Some of my favourite (The Killer) and not-so-favourite (Ghost Dog) films of the period are clearly derived from Le samouraï, the point being that I’ve watched a lot of them and have developed an immune response to attempts at portraying stone-cold killers as cool guys. This being said, I can still recognize a clear artistic intention behind writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville’s intention in presenting the film, even though many will focus on the “cool assassin” tropes rather than the “barely functioning human” ones. Alain Delon, to repeat the obvious, is cooler-than-cool, while Cathy Rosier has a striking presence as a singer and intended victim. Le Samouraï now probably feels far more conceptually basic than it must have been at the time, but it does still score points on where it matters most … the execution.

  • Experiment in Terror (1962)

    Experiment in Terror (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) If you’re looking for a missing link in the evolution of the classic film noir period into modern thrillers, then Experiment in Terror is a revealing example. Visually and tonally it’s definitely a late-period self-aware film noir: harsh black-and-white cinematography, downbeat atmosphere, and a plot that plays with a mixture of civilian victims, mastermind criminal and law-abiding policeman. And yet, at times, it does show the way in which the thriller genre would evolve only a few years later—whether it’s a gratuitously weird and creepy sequence in a mannequin-filled room, or the deliberate codifying of the heroine as vulnerable rather than the more common femme fatale of noir. The result isn’t completely successful—in particular, the film is at least half an hour too long and so dilutes a lot of its early tension created when a bank teller is targeted by a particularly meticulous villain. There are a few too many tangents, and the shifting of the tone from paranoid noir into a more straightforward police action climax is a bit odd. For modern viewers, Experiment in Terror (terrific title, albeit more suggestive of a horror film) is a reminder that director Blake Edwards, while far better known for his slapstick big-budget comedy, also made a number of far more serious thrillers. Despite its flaws, the film does remain a successful suspense film, perhaps more in its first hour than its second … but I’ll take it all.

  • Up in Smoke (1978)

    Up in Smoke (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) It’s easy to dismiss Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke as merely a stoner movie (and it is!), but as the opening credit sequence shows, there’s some cinematographic cleverness behind the film—the film shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed by the hazy excesses or laziness of some of its successors. Loosely plotted but definitely evocative of the late-1970s California stoner scene, it’s a film that’s bound to be far less transgressive today (what with the stuff being legal or at least decriminalized widely) and also far less striking—after all, an entire subgenre followed. Still, Up in Smoke remains surprisingly funny even for straight-edge reviewers such as myself: the goofy, amiable tone still works wonders, and it’s not afraid to get completely absurd at times. The stick-it-to-the-man ethos is charmingly dated, and the two protagonists’ basic desires (including consensual flirting with nearly every available female character) remain likable. Despite the scattershot nature of the plot that goes from run-in with the law to smuggling “fiberweed” to a battle of the bands, there’s a pleasant craziness to the results. I found myself laughing far more often than I expected considering the almost infinite distance between myself and the stoner lifestyle. It certainly helps that leads Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are so effortlessly likable.  As a movie buff, there are fascinating comparisons to make between the amiable stupidity of Up in Smoke and the aggressive, often-violent nature of some later examples of the stoner genre such as Pineapple Express and American Ultra. All things being equal, I’d rather hang out with the mellow Cheech and Chong than their degenerate successors.

  • The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)

    The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Sometimes, the best-intentioned projects mutate into a monstrous parody of themselves, and we know this about the 1962 version of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because there is another version to compare it to: The 1920s original version of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In this case, we can see the worthwhile intention in updating a WW1 story about a family torn by war to a post-WW2 setting. Director Vincente Minnelli, already familiar with the logistical demands of musical movies, should have been an ideal taskmaster for a sweeping multi-year epic involving a large family over two continents. And yet, watching the remake of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the entire thing falls flat. As satisfying as it can be to see Nazis getting what they deserve, whether it’s a slap or a bullet, there’s not a whole lot to the film. Much of it seems to be discussions rather than actions, weighed down by interminable dialogues. Sure, it’s great to have Glenn Ford here, except that neither the role nor the style of the film does him many favours. The sets are fantastic, mind you—but there’s a strange detachment to the entire film, as if it was consciously holding back from getting into the thick of the action. At least Yvette Mimieux is there to add some interest: her character is the best that the film has to offer. The rest is ponderous, slow, far too well-mannered even for an expensive early-1960s colour production. Historically, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is often remembered for having been one of the films (along with a colour remake of Cimarron which was actually decent enough) that hastened MGM’s decline into the 1960s. That’s a far heavier burden that this disappointing film should bear, but you can see in it the Hollywood studio malaise that was starting to exasperate moviegoers in the 1960s and would later lead to the rejuvenated New Hollywood.

  • Un chien Andalou (1929)

    Un chien Andalou (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, July 2019) Often mentioned as a classic of surrealism, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s Un chien Andalou can be a tough watch. It starts on the single most unpleasant note imaginable, with a succession of two shots suggesting a woman’s eye being cut open with a straight razor. (If you look closely at the second shot, you can see it’s a dead farm animal’s eye, but most people don’t look that closely … and it’s not much of an improvement.)  Old-school surrealism was extremely violent by design, and the following scenes certainly give into that tradition what with ants drawling out of a hole in a man’s hand, someone getting hit by a car, amputation, a disappeared mouth and so on. Do not try to make sense of the film, which -at best—follows a twisted kind of dream logic and at worse is just trying to get a rise out of an audience craving narrative. Some of it can be very funny (such as the title cards boldly announcing things like “Sixteen years later” without it having any sort of bearing) and some of it quite horrifying. Un chien Andalou does feel like a far more modern film than a 1929 title, mostly due to pre-Code levels of eroticism and ultra-violence. Paradoxically, it’s a large part (aside from the pedigree of the creators) why it’s still worth a (well prepared) look today. At least it’s barely more than twenty minutes long, meaning that it will soon be over even if you don’t enjoy it.

  • Mister Roberts (1955)

    Mister Roberts (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) There’s a very odd quality to Mister Roberts that makes itself known early on, as this “war movie” remains behind the front lines, spending its time with the crew of a supply ship that never gets close to the front. The forced comedy of the first few scenes feels amazingly close to the anarchic spirit of 1970’s MASH at times, with sailor goofing off in between their war effort, characters intentionally shirking their duties (most notably Jack Lemmon) and the title character (Henry Fonda) trying to shield his crew from an irascible captain (James Cagney). The main cast is intriguing, but the rhythm of the film feels forced, making jokes that remain unfunny and multiplying the episodes that don’t amount to much. The material is there for an examination of men at-war-but-not-at-war, but Mister Roberts, perhaps shackled by source material (it was first a novel and then a Broadway play), seems split between rambling dialogues, incongruous voiceovers and mildly annoying characters. It does feel like a film out of time, more at ease in the anti-war movies of the 1970s than the still-triumphant mood of 1950s WW2 films. (I’m actually amazed that the film got the full cooperation of the US Navy for location shooting.)  Mister Roberts’ plot does get better as the film advances, but it leads to a tragic conclusion that feels at odds with the rest of the film.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, April 2021) Revisiting Mister Roberts two years later but with better knowledge of the main actors involved does give a different perspective on the entire film. Jack Lemmon in an early role, going up against a mid-career Henry Fonda, a late-career turn from James Cagney and William Powell’s last screen role. It’s the kind of cast that makes the film worth viewing no matter what. Mister Roberts does play with tone at times, delving into absurdity and then coming back to some kind of funny realism only to plunge into wistful drama a few seconds before the end. I kept thinking about MASH in seeing the way the film takes an almost-affectionate look at men coping with war (or their decidedly unheroic role in it) by cracking jokes until they sound insane. (Interestingly enough, the last moments of the film sound like a paean for those smart enough not to be a hero, which is a kind of attitude we wouldn’t often see in Hollywood movies until the 1970s.)  In some ways, this kind of tonal yo-yo makes the second viewing a more interesting experience – we know what to expect and when to expect it, and to take in the sketches that make up much of the film’s running time. Still, there’s no denying that the draw here is the cast . Lemmon is already comfortable in his semi-manic persona, while Powell couldn’t be more at ease, dignified and funny as the ship’s doctor. Meanwhile, Fonda and Robinson are up to themselves here – matching established personas to strong roles. Some movies don’t pack as big of a punch the second time around, but Mister Roberts feels like a better film the second time around.

  • Cimarron (1960)

    Cimarron (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) The original 1931 Cimarron is sometimes held up as one of the worst Best Movie Oscar-winners, and that’s both untrue and unfair—while the plot is scattered, it does begin with the anthology-worthy Oklahoma Land Rush sequence, grandiose and spectacular. Since the 1960 remake of Cimarron doesn’t have the Oscar-winning pedigree of the original, I watched it with an overriding curiosity—would it manage to top the original’s Land Rush sequence? Would it fix the original film’s third-act plot problems? It begins unpromisingly, spending too much time setting up its characters prior to the Land Rush. But the showcase Land Rush caps off the first act and present a credible colourful recreation of the event, complete with hundreds of horses and carriage wagons crossing the frontier in a mad dash. Many bone-crushing accidents quickly follow. Much of the original plot remains intact, save for a good number of improvements to the characterization and what feels like a snappier pacing. Alas, Cimarron—once again—seems overpowered by its charismatic male lead, here played by Glenn Ford. Ford’s character is likable, decisive, admirable … and completely steals the spotlight away from Maria Schell’s character, which is too bad because, as in the 1933 film, her character is the film’s protagonist as her husband increasingly disappears from the story, leaving her to pick up the task of colonizing the west. This remake does improve upon the original in several ways—including a far more nuanced portrait of Native Americans, a much better visual portrayal of a city’s development over twenty-five years, and a more satisfying end for the hero—but it does remain in the same generally unsatisfying league, somehow missing the extra spark that could have made the movie that much better. The problem may be a far too slavish attitude toward the original material, which doesn’t quite work as-is on-screen. No matter the reason, this Cimarron is, by virtue of colour cinematography and a snappier pacing, a bit more accessible than the original … but it could have been quite a bit better.

  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

    Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) I approached this 1939 version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips tentatively, perhaps even dismissively. After all, I had already seen and not cared much for the 1969 musical remake—why should I feel any different about the original? But as it turns out, this is a classic case of the remake being considerably inferior to the original. Goodbye, Mr. Chips is far more effective played as straight drama, without songs getting in the way. It’s much shorter, focuses on the genial atmosphere of an English school whose founding predates the discovery of the American continent, gets a bit more leeway to feature its characters and feels more naturalistic in the way it throws tragedies and successes at the lead character. Much of the difference between the two movies is in execution, since the plots are virtually identical. But execution matters, as are the people chosen to execute. Robert Donat couldn’t be better here as the titular Mr. Chips, a teacher moving through decades in the span of two hours, from new teacher to elderly headmaster. Alongside him, Greer Garson in her screen debut is as likable as she should be—the romantic sequences between her and Donat are quite enjoyable. Toward the end, the film obviously reaches for the handkerchiefs as we get to leave a sympathetic character we’ve just met. Built to be inspiring and generally successful at its task, this 1939 version of Goodbye Mr. Chips remains the definitive version of the story.