Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Golden Child (1986)

    The Golden Child (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) There were a lot of high-concept movies and a lot of fantasy films in the mid-1980s, and The Golden Child looks like a wacky collision between both, with the headline being the presence of then-red-hot Eddie Murphy in the lead role. The plot has something to do with a Los Angeles private detective (Murphy) being tasked with protecting a boy with mystical power from supernatural enemies, both in L.A. and in Tibet. Murphy being Murphy, his character is of the wisecracking variety, only becoming serious about his assignment when there’s no more room for jokes. The far-east mysticism is used to its fullest extent, and I suppose that one of The Golden Child’s biggest comic draws is the clash between black American outsider street smarts and otherworldly eastern mythology thrills. This being said, Murphy does look a bit lost in supernatural adventure, the irreverence of his character often being more irritating than endearing in the early stages of the film. Among supporting actors, we have an early role for Charles Dance (providing an “applause” GIF along the way), and Charlotte Lewis looks amazingly good (although she’s not much of an actress). Some of the special effects are more evocative than convincing. A few moments are amusing. Otherwise, The Golden Child is a product of its time, and it often feels like a cut-rate analogue to Big Trouble in Little China. It’s not that good, somewhat mis-aimed, and doesn’t always use the opportunities it has, and was probably hampered by having a megastar like Murphy in the lead role. Still, its strong genre roots and Murphy’s persona do make it somewhat more memorable than many other comparable films of the time. The Golden Child does have a quirky side as well: how many other movies make a good use of Pepsi product placement as a funny stop-motion dance interlude?

  • Stakeout (1987)

    Stakeout (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2019) Here’s a hypothetical situation to test your skills at being a Hollywood producer. It’s not a hard one. Here you have a pair of actors starring in your movie as stakeout cops: Emilio Estevez (aged 25) and Richard Dreyfuss (aged 40). You also have the rather sexy Madeline Stowe (aged 29) playing a woman who’s being watched by our heroes. Naturally, there’s going to be a romance—that’s a given, not to be put in doubt. The question is this: Would you rather pair up Stowe with Estevez (four years her junior) or with Dreyfuss (eleven years her elder)? Take your time. Don’t cheat. There’s only one answer. But of course, this is Hollywood and at the time Dreyfuss was the biggest actor, so naturally we have a May-July romance going on. So it goes in an industry controlled by older men. Bad casting aside, Stakeout is merely a decent film. Veteran director John Badham’s attempt to combine comedy and action thrills is intermittently successful, although the film is more effective in its action moments that the often-juvenile comedy. The soundtrack is very eighties, but then so is much of the film as a buddy cop movie. There are a number of ethical issues raised by Stakeout’s romance (the word “stalking” is never mentioned, although it should be), but like most police movies of the time it’s far more interested in designating its heroes as beyond reproach than actually exploring those issues. Stakeout remains an entertaining film, but it does have a number of issues that may cause more discomfort than fun.

  • Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2017)

    Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) There are times when I wish we’d be able to take movies, put them in a time capsule and see them a few years down the line once the real-world context calms down a little. Such is it with Sicario: Day of the Soldado, a solid thriller that has the misfortune of espousing a pessimistic view of the world at a time when real-world American politics were primed to make hay with thriller elements. To put it bluntly: the movie opens with immigrants blowing up an American store, blending al-Qaeda threats with cross-border immigration … and was released shortly before a midterm election where illegal immigration was bandied about as a cheap boogeyman. Excerpts of the film even showed up in misinformation “news” segments. Such a movie can’t win in such a politically charged moment. The basic storytelling device of justifying the worst lapses in morals by the presence of a terrifying enemy is a common one in thrillers—and properly handled, it can even be convincing. But there’s something about the blunt-edged way that Soldado makes its point that is not just graceless, but actively seems to be courting a certain viewership that may not make a difference between a screenwriter’s tool and real-world paranoia. It doesn’t help that Soldado never stops to consider the morality of its actions, as our “protagonists” react to the opening provocation by going to a foreign country in order to set up a false-flag operation, kidnapping a child in order to create a gang war. Soldado is up-to-the-moment in terms of technology (the film has a pleasant mechanical heft to its use of vehicles), but it’s also sadly very much of the time in terms of amorality. It’s this callous eagerness to embrace a lack of morality that’s disturbing to viewers: it seems to bring comfort to those who would like to achieve objectives by all means necessary, and cuts a bit too close to disaster these days. I’m actually bothered by the fact that I’m bothered by this, because in many ways Soldado is a solid but unremarkable thriller. While obviously a step down from the first Sicario (which was merciless but self-aware about it), Soldado has some fantastic action sequences, a great ominous soundtrack, a decent turn by Benicio del Toro and a plot that could have worked well had it included some pushback against its own actions. But it doesn’t. Stefano Sollima’s direction is competent without being stellar, and the same goes for the cinematography, action and other technical aspects of the film. It’s decent enough on its own right, but a disappointment compared to the first one, and a borderline-repellent work in today’s context. I would look forward to a re-appreciation in a decade, especially if the United States somehow regains some kind of effective morality by that time.

  • The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

    The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) Following up on Romancing the Stone barely a year later, The Jewel of the Nile once again teams up Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner (and Danny DeVito) for a comedic adventure far away from home. Heading for the Middle East rather than South America, the characters soon find themselves embroiled in a revolution against a despot, and trying to work out their marital issues along the way. This straightforward adventure is powered by Douglas and Turner’s charm, as they bicker and reconcile over the course of the film. While generally tepid, the film does hit a high mark during an escape sequence featuring a land-bound F-16 jet. Perhaps unfortunately, the plot doesn’t do as much as it promises early on in exploring the fantasy/reality frontier that comes naturally by having a novelist in a lead role. In some ways, the film is about rerunning a romance with a bit more information about each other, belying the theory that you shouldn’t make a romantic sequel because everything has been said the first time. In that context, The Jewel of the Nile doesn’t stand by itself, and greatly benefits from having seen Romancing the Stone (a generally stronger film) not too long beforehand. It’s watchable enough, but not a great or even good movie.

  • Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story (2013)

    Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) After a few examples of the genre, I’m getting to realize that authorized documentaries about famous directors are never going to give viewers a solid critical overview of the director’s work. Altman, de Palma, Spielberg and here Eastwood Directs… It costs too much and requires too much work to set up interviews with the directors and their colleagues to actually dare offer something other than a celebration of their work. The disconnect between what is shown on-screen and what there is to say about a director’s work (or his life!) will seldom be as notable as with Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story. It doesn’t take much of a look through the most elementary biography of Eastwood’s life to realize that he’s a fascinating man—a conservative with a past as an extreme womanizer (he recently discovered his eighth child that we know of) and allegations of spousal abuse, a peaceful man with a macho persona, a landmark actor who successfully transitioned to a director, a filmmaker so difficult that he has a Director’s Guild rule named after him, and a director reportedly uninterested in anything more than a few takes. This would be rich material for any objective biography, but it doesn’t take a long time to realize that Eastwood Directs is meant to be a hagiography of Eastwood’s work as a director as told by friends and colleagues. There’s not much of an “untold story” here as the film blends old and new interviews (judging from the film stock). It’s strikingly incomplete: OK, we can accept that it’s going to focus on Eastwood’s work as a director and not on the shambles of his personal life. Still, that doesn’t excuse the complete absence of any discussion about the DGA’s “Eastwood Rule” forbidding actors from firing directors and taking over the film. Any documentary purporting to be about Eastwood directing that doesn’t mention that rule is blatantly dishonest. While the film does have some material in terms of facts and anecdotes (including the actors’ perspective on Eastwood’s famous two-takes-is-all-I-need efficiency as refreshing and a mark of trust in them), this really isn’t an objective, complete or even fair assessment of his work. Writer/director Richard Schickel spends so much time talking about some movies that it quickly becomes nothing but a praise fest for them. Eastwood is great, Eastwood is fantastic, says every one of his friends without mentioning Eastwood’s legendary clashes with directors throughout his career. In other words, I am very, very disappointed by this film—it doesn’t take much to realize that Eastwood is hardly worthy of any lionization, but Eastwood Directs makes backflips in order to avoid saying anything of substance about him. That’s not a documentary—that’s a birthday present.

  • End of Days, Inc. (2015)

    End of Days, Inc. (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) You can find the quirkiest films on Canadian cable TV channels: Canadian Content requirements mean that there’s a government-mandated place for small made-in-Canada movies that otherwise wouldn’t stand a chance in another environment. Not all of those films are good, but some are intriguing and ultimately that’s where End of Days, Inc. lands. To be fair, the beginning of the film is better than its conclusion, are we’re introduced to a strange office in which the workers are tricked in working one last night and gradually realize that their impending closure is going to mean the end of the world … and not in a hyperbolic sense. The film works on a small budget with lesser-known actors, and it’s useful to have a tolerance for second (or even third)-rate filmmaking in order to watch the result. The office setting means that there are only a few sets for the entire film, and a cast not much bigger than two handfuls. Much of End of Days, Inc.’s big joke lies in opposing the routine boring nature of office work with the apocalyptic consequences of what they’re doing, but once you’ve gotten over that revelation, the film falls prey to one of the oldest pitfalls in the book: it doesn’t know where to go from there. The characters aren’t vivid enough to compensate for the aimless, easy plotting, and the actors aren’t strong enough to give life to their characters beyond the script. There’s a decent atmospheric feel to the set design, which goes back to decades-ago office furniture for charm. Jennifer Liao’s directing is competent without being inventive enough to wring the most style out of the script she’s been given—but I’d be curious to see what she does next. This being said, I don’t regret seeing End of Days, Inc.: It’s quirky enough to be different, even if it doesn’t quite hit its targets. I’ll willingly watch a few more of those CanCon schedule fillers—not that I have a choice, really.

  • Liste Noire [Black List] (1995)

    Liste Noire [Black List] (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2019) When it comes to Liste Noire, I definitely have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was one of Québec’s mid-1990s attempts to ape the conventions of American-style judicial thrillers. Rather than endlessly talking around the proverbial dinner table like far too many French-Canadian movies do, Liste Noire quickly gets to the heart of its noir premise: A prostitute engineers her own arrest, and then delivers a secret list of names to a Québec High Court judge, implicating other high-ranking judges. The ensuing portrait of the backroom dealing between judges is definitely cynical, showing them as even more corrupt than the average person. Québec big-screen legend Michel Côté is quite good in a thankless role, playing the new judge with the list who soon has to deal with death threats and attempts on his life. It’s all pretty jazzy material for a thriller, and now-renowned director Jean-Marc Vallée manages his big-screen debut with some intensity. The sharp (but dated) 1990s edge is now strikingly neon and noir, with a suitably jaundiced view and sympathies on the side of prostitutes rather than judges. But then there’s the ending. If you stopped watching the film three-quarter of the way through, you would probably have a nagging feeling about where it was all going … but no proof of the insanity in store in the film’s big twist. Alas, the nagging doubt is soon realized and the film self-destructs in a violent final burst of ludicrousness and bad plotting. Some movies are improved by twist endings while others are weakened by them, and Liste Noire definitely belongs to the second category. Ultimately, it makes the movie difficult to take seriously once all is wrapped up. Too bad, because there’s roughly four fifths of a great suspense thriller in here.

  • Secrets & Lies (1996)

    Secrets & Lies (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) Sometimes, it’s not a bad idea to let go of genre thrills and simply take in a story about ordinary people in dramatic circumstances. The Oscar-nominated Secrets & Lies is seldom a flashy film: it’s not about movie stars (even in the ensemble casting), but a solid working-class family drama about a child given up for adoption coming back in her mother’s life decades later. With a secret like that, you can expect some dramatic theatrics and the film certainly delivers that in its suspenseful third act. Still, much of the film’s best moments are found along the way, most notably during an intensely emotional seven-minute scene shot in a single take by director Mike Leigh. Timothy Spall and Marianne Jean-Baptiste are easy to like as the most well-adjusted characters in a dysfunctional family, but it’s Brenda Blethyn who gets the strongest role here, especially during the aforementioned one-shot scene. While a bit long at nearly two hours and a half (the ex-proprietor subplot seems notably less interesting), Secrets & Lies ends up far more interesting than expected, especially thanks to a third act in which the secrets and lies finally give way to the truth.

  • Pale Rider (1985)

    Pale Rider (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2019) In some ways, Pale Rider can be seen as a typical stranger-cleans-town western, what with lead Clint Eastwood playing a mysterious stranger coming to a remote mountain town to get rid of the rapacious mining tycoon that has assaulted the citizenry. But there are enough hints (in the film’s title, or the end of the prologue, or the stranger’s lack of backstory, or his near-magical shooting ability) to suggest that this is a quasi-supernatural Eastwood western along the lines of High Plains Drifter. Whether you’ll enjoy the results will depend more on your appreciation for the realistic part of the film than its more supernatural or religious implications—at least it’s considerably less creepy than High Plains Drifter. Still, Eastwood has made a truckload of westerns featuring more or less the same character, and anyone can be (un) forgiven if they have trouble telling them apart. It’s competently executed, obviously relying on Eastwood’s iconic portrayal as a man of few words—although there are a few odd moments in which producer/director/star Eastwood gets to pat himself on the back by having nearly every female character (including the teenager) throw themselves at him. (He, of course, refuses—but it’s the thought that counts.) Pale Rider may have a few symbolic and religious aspirations, but much of it remains the same old western: generic but not bad. Eastwood fans, obviously, will get a lot more out of it.

  • Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler [Dr. Mabuse the Gambler] (1922)

    Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler [Dr. Mabuse the Gambler] (1922)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) If you’re a visual kind of person, let me offer you a metaphor for movie history that looks a lot like a Science Fiction megapolis with layers and layers of levels built upon each other. Current movies are at the surface where the sun shines and people live, but everything is built upon a foundation and as you go deeper underground, racing back toward the bedrock that is the invention of cinema, you start discovering foundational layers that once were very important even if they may not be readily accessible these days. That’s largely how I feel about writer/director Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, an unwieldy, overlong and slightly exasperating film that nonetheless puts together many prototypical elements of modern super-villain movies. Put simply, this is a film about a criminal mastermind who, thanks to his exceptional skills at disguises and psychology and a team of collaborators, can hypnotize or coerce other people in doing what he wants … and what he wants is usually money or chaos. You can clearly see the origins of modern supervillains here, especially as the film makes a conscious effort to set the story in Germany’s complex post-war industrial society—and as is often the case with 1920s–1930s German cinema, it’s hard to avoid the chill of knowing what’s coming next for the country. Visually, there’s also quite a bit of foundational work to be seen here. In Lang’s hands, the film shows a glimpse of what would become the German impressionistic style, through some primitive special effects and moody directing. Good performances, car chases and explosions round off a film that often does feel far more modern than its true age. But there’s a price for all of this, and that price is time. Coming from the silent movie era where storytelling techniques were still being developed, audiences weren’t all as cinematically literate and there was little expectation of efficiency, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler lasts a staggering 268 minutes—or roughly four hours and a half. It’s not just the objective length (modern miniseries regularly exceed that), as much as the feeling that it’s very, unbearably long. Thanks to title cards and lack of concision, everything literally takes at least twice as long as a similar film made today. My patience was sorely tested: I can’t swear that my attention was constant throughout the film. I can’t even swear that I did not press the skip-forward-30-seconds button (without loss of comprehension) a few times. And while I certainly recognize this first Mabuse film as an essential part of cinema history, I’m certainly not recommending it for casual viewing. Unless you have something like five hours to spare.

  • And now for Something Completely Different (1971)

    And now for Something Completely Different (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) My budding theory that I don’t actually like Monty Python all that much gets a shot in the arm with And now for Something Completely Different, a classic collection of Python sketches that, seen as a middle-aged man rather than a college student (which is when I first encountered Python), seems wildly uneven. One of the first things that struck me about the film is how violent some of the sketches can be, and how it serves to dissipate the comic atmosphere of the film. As the backstory goes, the film re-created sketches from the group’s TV show, aiming to package the humour for an American audience. Alas, the budget’s limits are often evident, and the very nature of a sketch movie means that it’s going to be uneven from beginning to end. There are some classic sketches here—the “nudge-nudge” one, “The Funniest Joke in the World”, “The Dead Parrot”, and so on, although not all of them have aged gracefully: “The Lumberjack Song”, for instance, feels cheaply transphobic now. I had perhaps more fun with lesser-known sketches: “Hell’s Grannies” and “Upper-Class Twit of the Year”, in particular, got a few grins out of me. Of course, laughter may not be the comedy group’s intention as much as absurdity and eeriness. Still, I’m holding on to my theory that sometime in the past twenty-five years, I’ve lost whatever made me think that Monty Python was funny.

  • Waiting to Exhale (1995)

    Waiting to Exhale (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) While Waiting to Exhale isn’t that significant a movie in film history, it still plays so often on cable that it wore me down. I gave up and finally recorded it, although not out of exasperation. My intentions in watching it were not noble at all: Whitney Houston, Lela Rochon, Loretta Devine and Angela Basset headlining the film? I’ll watch that. An episodic story focusing on four women’s attempt to find love in spite of bad partners, Waiting to Exhale also features the directorial debut of Forest Whitaker, who imbues the film with odd stylistic choices that, perhaps unfortunately, precisely date the movie to the mid-1990s. Still, the movie itself is quite a bit of fun to watch. Our heroines don’t take cheating and romantic disappointment very well: in the film’s most memorable sequence, one sets fire to her cheating husband’s car, his clothes inside. While the episodic nature of Waiting to Exhale means that it has high and low points, the acting talent brought together here remains notable. Angela Basset, in particular, is at her best here with a powerhouse performance. The all-black casting is so successful in that by the time a white woman shows up (as a romantic rival, no less) late in the movie, the effect is definitely jarring. Among the male cast, Dennis Haysbert and Wesley Snipes have good roles, but viewers should be forewarned that this is not a movie in which men get the most admirable characters—this is female empowerment, and much of Waiting to Exhale’s success can be found in how completely and solidly it makes viewers (even white men such as myself) identify with the four black women protagonists.

  • Silver Streak (1976)

    Silver Streak (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2019) There are some classical comedy pairings out there, and the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor was one of them—while they made four movies together, the last one was reportedly a dud, and only the first two are acknowledged hits. Silver Streak is the first of their four movies, and it’s still a good watch today, even as it reflects another time. This blend of comedy and thrills features Wilder as a meek book editor travelling by train from Los Angeles to Chicago. Of course, stuff happens and before long he’s trying to piece together a murder mystery in between being thrown off the train and collaborating with a petty criminal to get back on it. Despite Pryor and Wilder’s comic chemistry (only they could make the blackface sequence work without being offensive) and the lighthearted nature of the film, Silver Streak arguably works better as a semi-Hitchockian thriller. The structure of the film itself is amusing: as we settle down for a comfortable train-bound mystery, our protagonist spends as much time off the train than on it, and Pryor joins the movie only midway through. Obviously shot in Canada (as per the train livery), it’s a comedy with some impressive physical action staging along the way, all the way to its destructive climax. Wilder’s quirky charm works well in grounding the film, allowing Pryor to get away with more outrageous dialogue. While Silver Streak is not quite polished (in a way so typical of mid-1970s production) and occasionally feels scattered between different genres, it pulls itself together in time for the finale and leaves viewers happy for having seen it.

  • 15 février 1839 [February 15, 1839] (2001)

    15 février 1839 [February 15, 1839] (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) As the legend goes, 15 février 1839 is the movie that the lowest-common-denominator comedy Elvis Gratton 2 paid for: Writer/director Pierre Falardeau wanted to make this historical drama but couldn’t scrape together the financing for the project considering its unrepentant separatist viewpoint, and made an audience-friendly film to gather the money to help finance the production of his more serious film. Despite my own objections to Falardeau’s political views, I have to admit that this slightly redeems Elvis Gratton 2. Oh, there is no doubt that 15 février 1839 is a hard-core separatist movie. It studies a politically charged moment in Canadian history, builds an argument about the illegitimacy of English-Canadian rule over Québec and makes martyrs out of its French-speaking characters killed by les anglais. It takes place in a prison over 24 hours, as participants in the failed 1937–1938 rebellion are awaiting execution by hanging. The conclusion being forgone, what remains are scenes examining characters as they face their own impending death. The political argument remains central—as the characters explain why British rule over Québec is illegitimate, they spout the same arguments that twentieth century indépendantistes would re-use to justify the separation movement. But the political argument isn’t the only thing about 15 février 1839, and the film’s finest moments are when we’re back to the characters saying goodbye to the world, talking to their spouses, discussing with their Anglophone jailers and so on. Luc Picard is very good in the leading role, with some assistance by Sylvie Drapeau and Falardeau collaborator Julien Poulin. No matter his ideological conviction, Falardeau directs well and manages some good moments along the way—the execution itself is shot with grace and dignity. I expected the worst from 15 février 1839 and actually got something tolerable, which is more than I would have expected.

  • Dead Ringers (1988)

    Dead Ringers (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) I’m not sure whether it’s a disappointment or a compliment to say “Wow, that wasn’t as unpleasant as I expected” at the end of writer/director David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. I suppose that it depends on what you think of Cronenberg’s movies and his reputation as a master of body horror. What seems like faint praise can be interpreted as disappointment if you hold the view that Cronenberg movies should be as extreme as possible, then go back to praise considering that Cronenberg’s reputation is such that he creates a sense of dread even before we start watching the movie, preparing our imaginations to all sorts of terrors yet to be experienced and perhaps more effective than if they had been shown on the screen. Of course, “not as unpleasant as I expected” is a relative term and jaded Cronenberg viewers will interpret it differently than more mainstream audiences—Dead Ringers remains a movie with sexual deception, torture-like gynecological tools (ick!), drug abuse, fatally codependent relationships, evisceration and a body count. “Not as unpleasant as I expected” may simply mean that we’ve been spared horrors such as a fifteen-minute one-shot of the film’s most sordid business. Everyone’s mileage will vary. Jeremy Irons stars as twins working as gynecologists and is suitably creepy in his dual roles, while Geneviève Bujold plays the unusual client that divides them. Dead Ringers’ sense of unease is displayed early on and never dispels, although it does prepare us for horrors more extreme than what we actually see. (For once, the female character escapes unscathed—and may even unwittingly deliver the killing blow.) It may not be as crazily imaginative as Cronenberg’s most unhinged movies such as Scanners and Videodrome, but it’s slicker, better controlled and probably a bit cleverer in the way it plays with unease rather than outright disgust. This being said, I suspect that Dead Ringers is more effective for viewers who think they know what to expect than relative newcomers to Cronenberg, and that male viewers will have more muted reactions than female ones.