Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Once Upon a Time at Christmas (2017)

    Once Upon a Time at Christmas (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) Look, I get it – by mid-December, anyone driven insane by syrupy Christmas store music, inane Christmas movies, the pressure to buy and consume, or the non-negotiable requirements of Christmas family traditions can sour on the holidays. And the impulse to transgress whatever is wholesome in the world is equally strong among horror filmmakers. In that light, Once Upon a Time at Christmas feels like an inevitable production: Down-tempo Christmas tunes provide the soundtrack to serial killers (a psychopathic army veteran and a strip-mall Harley Quinn) rampaging through a small town to the cue of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” –a connection that takes forever for the local police to make. The film seems curiously enamoured of its murderous pair as they pile up the bodies by the dozens and seem unstoppable even in taking on the FBI. This killer-worship goes on right up to the very forgiving conclusion, and as someone who doesn’t react well to stories in which the serial killers are unstoppable or (ick) presented as folk heroes – a curiously unpopular opinion in today’s horror fandom – I was just about ready to fire Once Upon a Time at Christmas into the sun at the fifteen-minute mark. What kept my finger off the launch button was a certain occasional grace in execution – director Paul Tanter may not be working with the best screenplay nor the highest budget, but he occasionally nails a scene, doesn’t let the limits of his production show too much, and does justice to the material when the third quarter of the script gets slightly more interesting. Alas, this comes crashing down once again toward the end as the shortcomings of the screenplay become increasingly vexing, and the conclusion can’t deliver what’s needed for the film to escape its nature as a cheap schlocky disappointment. Once Upon a Time at Christmas is not funny, it’s not scary, and it’s not worth the trouble. I’m ready to go back to the big-city-girl-goes-back-to-her-hometown Christmas rom-coms now. Gladly.

  • Silent Night (2012)

    Silent Night (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) Whether Silent Night is a remake, reboot or legacy sequel of the “classic” slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night is immaterial – it’s still a Christmas-themed slasher, and you know what that means: paper-thin writing, excessive gore, nihilistic humour and straightforward filmmaking. This film doesn’t break the rules, as a psychotic Santa goes around murdering those on his naughty list. Silent Night is really for the hardcore horror fans more than general audiences: it delivers what’s expected in that subgenre, and doesn’t even pretend to be anything more. I suppose that its best audiences are mid-December gorehounds tired of relentless holiday cheer.

  • Susan Slept Here (1954)

    Susan Slept Here (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) On paper, Susan Slept Here sound revolting. After all, the story has a 35-year-old screenwriter fostering, then immediately marrying a 17-year-old-runaway. It gets even woooorse when you realize that star Dick Powell was 50 and Debbie Reynolds was 22 the year the film was released. Even calibrating by 1950s standards, this is far beyond the frontiers of creepy. But everything is in the execution, and excuses can be found in details. For one thing, the film is built to be a comedy examining the age difference between the leads and often acknowledges the repellence of the situation. What’s more, the younger woman is clearly the dominant partner in Susan Slept Here – her desires are what drives the film, and her street-smart personality clearly outshines that of the older, somewhat boring man. This is even reinforced in a dream sequence ballet in which she sees her crush being seduced by a four-armed spider woman and chokes someone to gain the key to her freedom from a cage. If that’s not weird enough, consider that the film is narrated by an Academy Award statuette. Oh, yes, there’s a lot going on here – pretty good dialogue, Powell turning in a swan song of sorts (it was his final film appearance) and Reynolds being very good in a tricky role. The predictable ending will still make everyone uncomfortable, except that “uncomfortable” is still a great deal better than “aghast,” which may have been a possibility had lesser talents had handled Susan Slept Here’s built-in creepiness.

  • Le père Noël est une ordure [Santa Claus Is a Stinker] (1982)

    Le père Noël est une ordure [Santa Claus Is a Stinker] (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) Christmas Eve is an ideal time to revisit French classic comedy Le père Noël est une ordure. After all, the last few weeks have been a relentless assault of holiday cheer, humanist values, peace on Earth and goodwill among all humans – it’s time for something different. The very least you can say about this film is that it’s at the opposite end of the Christmas spirit. Taking place at a suicide hotline on Christmas Eve, it features exceptionally misanthropic characters behaving extremely badly, and this until the very end of the film. It’s probably more offensive and funnier today than it’s ever been, because part of the film’s joy is how bluntly it revels in its hatred for humanity. The humour isn’t sophisticated, but most of it is nasty enough to make even jaded viewers aghast – pure shock comedy. Unlike its markedly inferior American remake Mixed Nuts, it doesn’t even try to blunt the nastiest edges of the narrative. This was my first viewing in decades, but certainly not my first viewing: Le père Noël est une ordure was, somehow, a fixture of French-Canadian television holiday schedules in the mid-to-late 1980s, and seems to still be running strong even today. It’s not going to be for everyone, but it’s refreshingly going for broke in the ways it tries to make viewers laugh, and damn those who may be offended.

  • It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)

    It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Generally speaking, the best Christmas movies are both about the typical values of Christmas (family, generosity, kindness) while having other things on the go than simply waiting for December 25. Such is the case with It Happened on Fifth Avenue, a film that doesn’t necessarily revel in the pageantry of the season, but does its best to showcase Christmas values. The story has, over the years, acquired a patina of period-specific characteristics, as veterans returned from WW2 can’t find places to stay due to a housing crisis, and see themselves left on the margins of society even as able-bodied, skilled people. A solution offers itself to the protagonist of our story, as he’s told about a rich man’s mansion left unoccupied while the owner winters over in another state. Two homeless men living in luxury seems like an ideal arrangement until the daughter of the owner shows up and passes herself off as another vagabond. Then the father comes back and also pretends to be a homeless person in his own house… Pretty soon, the film is awash in romance, hidden identities, crucial choices, a makeshift micro-society in an opulent house, and Holiday cheer as Christmas draws closer and closer. Director Roy Del Ruth does a good job keeping everything humming along, which is supported by Don DeFore as the protagonist, and the very cute Gale Storm as the disguised owner’s daughter. While It Happened on Fifth Avenue is not specifically geared toward being an outright comedy and thus suffers from a few lulls, the entire film is quite charming and Christmas-adjacent enough to be worth a look even if you’re burnt out by Christmas Eve. It’s a crowd-pleaser in the most classic sense, and hits its marks no matter when you see it during the year.

  • Spotlight on Christmas aka Starring Christmas (2020)

    Spotlight on Christmas aka Starring Christmas (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) By now, the formulaic nature of Christmas romantic comedies made in the Hallmark/Lifetime tradition is so well-defined that even my local middlebrow radio station had a segment about it. (There was a local connection — my hometown of Ottawa is a major player in the Christmas movie production market considering that there’s usually more snow here than in any other filmmaking centre.) Take an urban career professional, send her back to her hometown in time for Christmas, have her meet a single hunk (bonus points if they were high school sweethearts), have them spend some time together with our urban professional bringing some of her professionalism for a local cause and the rest of the film writes itself. The amazing thing is that even by 2020, the formula is still followed precisely: Spotlight on Christmas distinguishes itself from the pack by making the heroine a famous Hollywood actress, but otherwise sticks to the formula as if it was deathly afraid of any deviation. Given my interest in all things Hollywood (even funhouse distortion of it) and the current December Christmas spirit, I thought I’d give it a chance and see if I had any fun watching it. It must have been the magic of the holidays, because I did – although I have to admit that I left the film playing while doing something else: This is not meant to be dense filmmaking, and the nature of the formula means that you can take five-minute breaks and still follow what was happening perfectly well. Still, the failure mode of Christmas romantic movies is nowhere near that of other genres: They’re upbeat, charming, not meant to be taken seriously and innocuous, even at their worst. The barrier for success is low and the crews working on those films are practised enough that it’s hard to mess up the recipe. Complaining that Spotlight on Christmas is strikingly unrealistic in its portrayal of an actress’ life is completely missing the point, as is any comment saying that their relationship won’t make it past Easter. It’s meant to be a comforting blanket with as few real-life reminders as possible and by that metric, Spotlight on Christmas is neither better nor worse than other movies made in that genre. It’ll rerun for years and be forgotten within days, that second characteristic feeding into the first one. It is exactly what it is.

  • Hip Hop Holiday (2019)

    Hip Hop Holiday (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) One of BET television’s 2019 Christmastime offerings is Hip Hop Holiday, a romantic comedy set during the holidays within the world of Hip-Hop showbiz. Trina Braxton stars as an initially unbearable diva who gets a gradual personality change thanks to the reappearance of an old flame. As is often the case with those bad-girls-redeemed-by-good-men tales (or the gender-flipped reverse), there’s a feeling that everything that made the character interesting is gradually stripped away by the ongoing romance, until, at the end, we’re left with a near-lobotomized version of the person we started with. That’s not being against personality growth in movie narratives – it’s wishing that something more interesting would replace the abrasive hellion that we start with. The same goes for the film in general: while the world of Hip-Hop makes for a decent backdrop to the action, this too gradually disappears throughout the film to focus almost exclusively on the mini-universe of the romantic couple. This doesn’t help Hip Hop Holiday overcome the usual problems with Christmas romances – the foreordained conclusion, slap-dash dialogue, lower production budget and heavy reliance on audience goodwill. Hip Hop Holiday is certainly acceptable (especially as background noise), but there’s nothing here to warrant sustained attention.

  • USS Christmas (2020)

    USS Christmas (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) The Hallmark Christmas movie behemoth leers toward the American military-entertainment complex in USS Christmas, a transposition of the brand’s usual serving of holiday romance to a military setting. The plot has to do with a journalist taking a tiger cruise, encountering a mysteriously seductive Grinch (it’s his call name) and digging into a romantic mystery in the ship’s archives. While the aircraft carrier makes for a more intriguing than usual backdrop to the romance, the film pretty much plays to expectations. If you’ve seen a Hallmark Christmas romance movie, you‘ll be right at ease here – the intent is comfort, not surprise or shock. Alas, this also means that the film gets away with the usual problems of the brand: cute-but-not-sexy leads, mismatched chemistry, outrageous plot holes and, specific to USS Christmas, a very long list of inaccuracies from mismatch between stock footage and shooting location to being fuzzy about service distinction, to the characters simply not acting like officers would. (Thanks to a very well-informed American audience, there are long and hilariously detailed lists of the film’s mistakes.) Whether USS Christmas works will depend on your expectations. Just want something to throw on the TV while wrapping gifts? That’ll do. Expecting anything more? Skip to the next film, any next film.

  • To All a Goodnight (1980)

    To All a Goodnight (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) As a representative example of the golden age of slashers and an explanation as to why the subgenre crashed and burnt two years later, To All a Goodnight makes for an eloquent demonstration. Classic to the point of feeling like a grotesque carnival of clichés, it sees a group of girls isolated in a boarding school during the Christmas Break, having sex with their sneaky boyfriends and being brutally murdered (along with said boyfriends) by someone in a Santa suit. If you’re looking for the most average slasher, it’s hard to do better: the film is cleanly structured as a slasher with regularly scheduled kills no matter if they make sense or not; a whodunit that’s not really surprising (although there’s an additional fillip that presages many such twists in future films); and matter-of-fact direction by David Hess. Everything that one can hate about slashers, from rampant misogyny to cheap narrative to terrible dialogue to excessive levels of violence, can be found here – conversely, fans of the form may find just enough here to make them happy for an evening. To All a Goodnight (good title, though!) is not the best, not the worst, but as a mediocre example of 1980s slashers, it’s exactly what it tries to be.

  • Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

    Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) I’ll go easy on remakes if the director of the original is the one remaking it, and here we have Pocketful of Miracles, Frank Capra’s remake of his own 1933 romantic comedy Lady for a Day. The story of a mob boss transforming a street vendor into a society madam for the purpose of impressing her marrying daughter remains the same, but some aspects of the film have been upgraded – the colour cinematography is easier to take in for modern audiences, and the camera has a greater degree of freedom here than in the early 1930s. The acting talent here is also quite a bit better: It’s hard to argue against Bette Davis as the Pollyannaed street vendor, and the cast (which also had Glenn Ford and then-girlfriend Hope Lange) includes an early appearance by Peter Falk and a screen debut for Ann-Margret as the vendor’s daughter. Still, it’s not hard to prefer the original version: Capra’s early enthusiasm is not reflected in the more workmanlike execution of the remake (which would end up being his last film) and the story, even as a conscious 1930s period piece, seems to fit more closely in Depression-era America than the early-1960s. This remake is also far too long for its own good at a staggering 137 minutes. Still, if that’s going to be Capra’s swan song, then it’s not a bad one: Pocketful of Miracles still manages to exhibit the writer-director’s faith in the ordinary Americans and his compassionate touch.

  • Capharnaüm (2018)

    Capharnaüm (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2020) If you’re wondering what’s the barest minimum “recommended” review I can give, I suppose it would look a lot like this take on Capharnaüm – a strong film that I did not enjoy watching and have no intention to ever watch again. Taking up deep into the misery of children surviving at the bottom of the slums of Beirut, it follows the hardscrabble life of a hardened 12-year-old living on the streets and trying to take care of even younger children. There is a cinematic plot of sorts, having to do with the young man wanting to sue his parents for neglect, but the heart of the film is in the near-documentary footage shot in abominably poor conditions, describing the daily reality of a nightmarish existence. Writer-director Nadine Labaki doesn’t quite control the high-level construction of her film, but certainly lets the images speak for themselves in creating an atmosphere and establishing character. But Capharnaüm is absolutely not entertaining to watch – more like a harrowing two-hour documentary than a piece of narrative fiction. I can certainly understand why it got the acclaim it received (all the way to an Oscar nomination) but I had a hard time making it to the end, and can go live a happier life now that I don’t have to do so again.

  • Dumbo (2019)

    Dumbo (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney+ Streaming, December 2020) Et tu, Burton? What dubious privilege it is to see the brightest minds of our generation enslaved in service of The Mouse’s insatiable pursuit of profit, pilfering its back catalogue for inspiration as if originality was blasphemous. The latest victim is Tim Burton, whose “imagination” (as falsely claimed in the trailer) is servile to the recreation of Dumbo’s familiar story. To be fair, it’s easy to understand what could attract him to such a project: the thought of recreating a 1920s circus in big-budget glory must have been irresistible, and playing into such a classic sandbox must have had its appeal. Part of Dumbo does work: the visual polish of the production is lovely, and there’s some occasional cuteness to the CGI Dumbo. The actors also do decent work (Michael Keaton and Danny Devito, in particular), but the heart of the film is missing – an overstuffed script takes away from the linear simplicity of what could have been, and it takes forever for the film to get somewhere interesting. I suppose there’s something meta-ironic (or something) in having the film explicitly talk about the commodification of wonder in search of ever-greater profit. Not that it worked – like many of the latest Disney live-action adaptations, Dumbo barely made any money considering the magnitude of the investment. Not that we’re any closer to an end to them – the end game is probably to offer a live-action equivalent to the entire animated catalogue on Disney+. It will keep going as long as Disney exists as a for-profit entity.

  • A Christmas Carol (1984)

    A Christmas Carol (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Surprisingly, some of the best depictions of Scrooge and the classic Dickens story A Christmas Carol have come by way of television movies – the 1999 Patrick Stewart one, for instance, or even this 1984 George C. Scott version. While visible shot on a smaller budget and with a simpler visual style, this version succeeds based on performances (Scott being a leading one), atmosphere and a certain straightforwardness at only 100 minutes running time. Quite faithful to the original, its deviations are few and acceptable – it sticks to the smallest amount of fantasy possible to tell the story, and director Clive Donner finds a balance between establishing atmosphere and being efficient about the narrative. If you’re in the mood for an efficient, old-school presentation of a classic, this version of A Christmas Carol is it – it still feels modern enough to be easily watchable (something that’s not always true of the black-and-white versions, alas) while sticking close enough to the foundation to avoid the distinctiveness of other versions.

  • La morte viene dallo spazio [The Day the Sky Exploded] (1958)

    La morte viene dallo spazio [The Day the Sky Exploded] (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) In my travels as an apprentice Science Fiction film historian, there are wonders that cannot be enjoyed. Such is the case with The Day the Sky Exploded, which has the dual distinction of being the first Italian Science Fiction film, and the first film directed by later legend of Italian cinema Mario Bava. I did like the techno-thrillerish premise of targeting asteroids heading for Earth, but the execution here is bargain-basement clearance value – ramshackle sets, unconvincing actors, plenty of stock footage and an atrocious script, even in translation. So let’s file The Day the Sky Exploded under “historically important, otherwise unbearable” and move on.

  • Remember the Night (1940)

    Remember the Night (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) It’s hard to go wrong with Preston Sturges, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, even if Remember the Night is a portent of better things to come for all of them. An incredible contrivance is at the heart of the story – a District Attorney taking an accused shoplifter with him on a long car trip to spend Christmas with his parents. It’s a splendid excuse for a romantic comedy, though – with Stanwyck as the corrupt temptress and MacMurray as the letter-perfect officer of the law, working at tempering their differences and gradually falling in love along the way. (Their climactic kiss takes place in front of Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side.) This was the last film exclusively penned by Sturges before he took up directing (Mitchell Leisen directed this one), and it’s filled with great moments, good dialogue, clever plotting and well-sketched characters. Remember the Night manages the impressive trick of being both archetypical enough to summarize quickly, and has a stuffed plot to make the moment-to-moment watching of the film engaging enough. It’s both a Christmas film and something that can be watched any other month of the year: when it’s funny, it’s very funny, and when it’s romantic, it’s very romantic. And yet, all three major players here would go on to bigger and better successes, sometimes even with each other – Stanwyck and Sturges in The Lady Eve, Stanwyck and MacMurray in Double Indemnity, and, of course, Sturges by himself with an extraordinary series of films over the following few years.