Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Infinitum: Subject Unknown (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) It’s perfectly acceptable to be unsure about liking a film for the longest time, especially as it unfolds. While most movies show their colours early on, others remain on a razor’s edge throughout their duration. Those are often high-concept plot-driven films where the conclusion may have a much more pronounced role in any overall appreciation, or where we’re not completely sure of what’s happening before the big final revelation puts everything back into context. A pure product of the early Covid film era, Infinitum: Subject Unknown looks and feels as if it was shot in mid-2020: It features a handful of actors, and spends the vast majority of its running time focused on a single character moving in deserted landscapes empty of any other human presence. The narrative hook is not bad, as a character wakes up in an attic and tries to understand why she’s alone and why everyone else is missing. Meanwhile, a prologue has Ian MacKellen as some sort of scientist-entrepreneur-philosopher (a performance entirely delivered by videoconference for headliner value – he’s not in the film for more than five minutes) and we sometime cut to observers commenting on the actions of the protagonist. At regular intervals, our protagonist gets too excited and wakes back in the attic, having to redo everything done until then. There are many ways this scenario could have gone (VR, gaming, aliens, and multiverses are just a few explanations that come to mind) but Infinitum: Subject Unknown makes two fatal mistakes in the way it goes about it: First, its naturalistic execution quickly replaces intellectual suspense by tedious boredom. Then it makes some incredibly boneheaded decisions along the way (such as the trapped protagonist meekly poking around the attic, which has both a chair and a window to smash, before simply lying on the floor to sleep) and reruns the same sequences far too often to be effective about it. Then, at the very end, the film falters by not really providing any satisfactory answer to any of its mysteries. Having held on to such an unsatisfactory payoff until the very last moment, Infinitum: Subject Unknown is unsatisfying by design. A steady drip of revelations may have lessened the blow, but then again it becomes clear that our lead character is far too dumb to understand any of it. I applaud the bare-bones low-budget production history of this husband-and-wife film (Tori Butler-Hart stars and co-wrote/produced; Matthew Butler-Hart directs and co-wrote/produced), but since good dialogue costs the same to write and shoot as bad dialogue, would it have killed them to offer something more than a platitude at the end? Hey, I would have been proud to emerge from the lockdown months with a completed movie – but there’s a difference between having one and having one that’s interesting to others.

  • Les amants [The Lovers] (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If you’re looking for the film that originated the famous Supreme-Court-approved “definition” of pornography, “I know it when I see it,” then Les amants should be on your viewing list. (For the record, the writer of that statement, Justice Potter Stewart, meant that the film was not pornography.)  It should also be there because it’s an early effort from French director Louis Malle and it’s a splendid exemplar of French cinema in all of its specific sensibilities. Moving away from the film noir style of his debut film Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, Malle here goes to that old French cinema chestnut: the married woman having an affair to emancipate herself. That recognition that women may find contentment away from inattentive husbands probably fuelled much of the American outrage about the film – seen from a twenty-first century perspective, Les amants has mellowed into an unremarkable drama of adultery, with a short moment of nudity to make it clear they’re not playing pattycakes. The film features Jeanne Moreau in a star-making role and she does deserve the attention she got – she’s at the centre of the film, and her performance spans quite an emotional range. As for the film itself, it’s now far more conventional than it was back then. Some episodes are still amusing (such as the sequence that brings the protagonist in contact with her lover, and then makes it clear that he’s not going away as quickly as she hoped for) and the feel of a French drama taking on matters of happiness, sex and love remains very distinctive. If you don’t know the film’s storied history in the United States, you may find yourself lulled into complacency about the very familiar result. But let’s cut Malle some slack here: Les amants predates almost all of the French Nouvelle Vague, so what was provocative then soon passed into comfortable norms within years of its release.

  • Fade to Black (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) As a certified cinephile, Fade to Black has some appeal: it’s hard not to be impressed by its copious references to classic cinema built into the themes, scenes and even climax of this horror film featuring a psychotic cinephile as its lead character. Pushing movie geekery to its homicidal conclusion, the narrative tracks a lonely, bullied film nerd as he turns evil and starts murdering his tormentors in ways that owe much to past movies. The film begins in a film distribution warehouse and ends at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, to give you an idea of how profoundly enmeshed it is with the reality of Los Angeles film geekery. Having a Marilyn Monroe look-alike (Linda Kerridge) is also a stoke of good fortune for the film. Unfortunately, I’m not quite as taken by the end result as I wanted to be. Part of it is that Fade to Black takes on the structure of a slasher, with a succession of gruesome murders packaged in sequences flavoured in a specific old-school movie style. Having a psychotic film enthusiast as a protagonist is integral to the story, but there’s a sense that the target is obvious, and that writer-director Vernon Zimmerman takes advantage of maybe half the possibilities at his disposal. (But there may be budgetary reasons for that.)  Some of the film’s episodes are very contrived, in keeping with its premise, but a few moments clearly go overboard and make the result feel more artificial than expected. The cheap dark early-1980s cinematography isn’t to the film’s advantage either, but that’s to be expected as well. I did like the result more than I like most slashers, but it’s clearly working at a disadvantage most of the time. At least Fade to Black gives a few down-to-the-ground glimpses at the non-glamorous side of the LA film business. There’s an opportunity there for a contemporary reimagining.

  • Shaft’s Big Score! (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) The original Shaft was a defining moment in Blaxploitation’s history, but it’s useful to remember that it was put together on a threadbare budget – producers weren’t sure that there was such a thing as a market for black-cast thrillers, and director Gordon Parks had to stretch his production money to make it look good. One year later, with Shaft’s Big Score!, it was obvious that there was money to be made from the character, and this sequel visibly has more money to play with – all the way to a climax involving a warehouse and an exploding helicopter. (Alas, even quadrupling the budget couldn’t get Isaac Hayes back to score the sequel.)  Parks being freer to execute his vision, the cinematography is more impressive as well – wide-scoped, more frequently outdoors, not quite as grimy as the first film. The flip side of that more assured approach, however, is that the rough-hewn charm of the original is lessened, along with its novelty: Shaft is an established quality here, and he behaves as if everyone is expecting more of the same from him. I’m curiously ambivalent about Shaft’s Big Score! – as someone who found the original film more scattered, gritty and unpolished than its reputation suggests, I appreciate the better production values of the sequel… but can’t deny its mechanical impression.

  • Living with the Dead (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) By the time some movies show up on French-Canadian TV, a lot of the context around them has been removed, changed or evolved beyond initial intentions. This is not necessarily a bad thing: The steamroller effect of presenting everything as just another TV guide entry is like a bulldozer flattening preconceptions about what’s a prestige big-budget release, a direct-to-streaming cheap production or something even stranger. For Living with the Dead, for instance, it pops up on a horror-dedicated channel as a single staggering four-hour-long film, with a cast including well-known names such as Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Ladd, Jack Palance and Queen Latifah (in an admittedly early role). What this obscures is that it began life as a two-part made-for-network-TV film, with some marquee names in small quick roles. As such, it does present a different kind of experience than a quick 90-minute horror film, and one that works to the film’s advantage in many ways. Adapted from a “true story,” Living with the Dead follows a man as he realizes that he can see and communicate with the ghosts of dead people, and tell the future from touching other (living) people. Far from immediately focusing on the horrific potential, the film is at its best and most distinctive in how it presents this ability as comforting – a way to warn, to make things right with the living, to resolve long-standing questions. The made-for-TV slow pacing of the story is most appropriate to those early and middle segments of the film, with overlapping episodes that don’t necessarily rush from one plot point to another – this isn’t structured along a familiar three-act pattern. Of course, that doesn’t make for much drama over the long-term, and that’s how a much grimmer story of child abduction keeps brewing throughout the film, finally becoming the dominant plotline in the last half-hour of the show. While the length of the result will prove overpowering if you’re expecting a short and snappy horror film, the result is not bad if you approach it with the right expectations. Danson is better than usual (especially at that time in his filmography) in a non-comedic role, while Steenburgen is just as compelling as usual as a police detective. Horror fans can tune out for much of Living with the Dead and have their attention snap back by the end. A better-than-average “made-for-TV” movie, especially if you can make your peace with the running time.

  • Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) Now here’s a weird one – a very low-budget science fiction film blending semi-philosophical themes with stoner comedy and elementary thriller elements. We begin in a dorm room, where an absurdly intelligent young man wakes up next to a naked and equally brainy young woman. So far so good – except when it looks as if they’re the last remaining people on campus, that it becomes clear that the young man is trying to escape Earth, that the young woman has unresolved issues echoing from her past as a devout Catholic, and that men-in-black “agents” are after them with unfriendly intentions. Clearly put together with twine and good intentions, Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime is a film that seems to have one set (the dorm room), access to a campus for some early-morning location shooting, and one green screen used for everything else. Half the cast of six are also producers or writers-directors (Jonathan T. Baker and Bo D.) Most of the film is a running dialogue between Lexie Lowell and Jeff Kenny, as the film plays with science fiction tropes in decidedly irreverent terms, clearly stemming from a tradition of stoner comedies more than anything else. A strange fog permeates the cinematography (it may be a digitally-added fog, and this is not an exaggeration), which reflects the aimless, sometimes amiable way the film goes about telling its story, moving from the dorm room to a car and then again to the dorm room in time for the universe-saving climax. Scatological humour becomes as important as digressions about the nature of time, multiverses, religion and quantum physics – while sitting on the toilet to save the universe. It’s cheap, incoherent, and probably not as clever as it thinks it is and yet Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime does make for interesting viewing. It’s got an endearing DIY energy to it, some rough 1980s-style charm and a willingness to go down some strange pathways, despite having only a faction of the means required to do justice to its vision. Lowell looks cute in thigh-high white stockings and makes a great straight-woman to the wild antics of her on-screen partner, while Kenny looks as if he digested everything from Young Einstein to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to Real Genius in his quest to play a stoner genius. This is not a movie for everyone, but if you happen to be on or around the same strange vibe as its creators, then there’s a chance you’ll keep watching just to see where it’s going. (The answer, a Russian rap video, is not at all what was expected.)  Putting on my (retired) Science Fiction movie critic’s hat, I find that Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime is one more good example of how SF tropes are making their way not just in the mainstream, but in other subcultures that are ready to put their own spin on them. The result is a fascinating cross-hybridization of themes and approaches. At least for some viewers.

  • Goodbye Again (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) There is a lot in Goodbye Again that I like, so it would make sense that I’d like it all, right? Take middle-aged Ingrid Bergman (a beauty at any age) as a Frenchwoman, a prime-era Yves Montand as her philandering boyfriend, a young and not-yet-typecast Anthony Perkins as her younger lover, the atmosphere of early-1960s Paris, Classic Hollywood Francophilia and, logically, the film should be at least the sum of its parts. Alas… Goodbye Again, while not a bad movie, does aim for a very specific kind of romantic drama, gender-flipping familiar tropes to show a woman hesitating between an age-appropriate but unfaithful partner and a much younger one. It’s not a bad premise (and there’s certainly an appreciative audience for such can’t-win situations) but the execution can be trying at times – the situation is clear early but the film continues to trample that familiar ground until it ends. The mood is glum, which marks a contrast with the rather free-wheeling atmosphere of Paris as depicted in the film (with none other than Diahann Carroll showing up briefly as a nightclub singer). Black-and-while cinematography, while the norm for such character-based dramas at the time, also takes away from what should be a colourful setting. Perkins is a bit too perky to be fully believable, even if Bergman is her irreproachable self and Montand is up to his usual standards, especially in playing a cad. So, I remain only half-satisfied by Goodbye Again and its inevitable downbeat ending – it gets what it goes for, but what it goes for is not as impressive as what it could have gone for.

  • House of Good and Evil (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) From the get-go, House of Good and Evil has a cheap-and-fast feeling that doesn’t bode well: As an urban couple moves to the countryside to save their marriage after a miscarriage and some domestic violence, the film’s accidental cinematography and harsh images don’t set an auspicious tone. Neither do the various dumb character decisions that only make sense in contrived horror movies. (So, there’s a mysterious locked door – yeah, the realtor will be back at the end of the week with the key. No worries.)  Then the horror ramps up, as there’s no electricity and no phone (probably no water either) and the house has a separate apartment with apparently no one answering the door to their new landlords – why would anyone but the protagonists of a horror film want to live there? Here’s a hint: don’t get too attached to the characters or to the concept of an objective reality, because the film eventually gets to a point of trickery mocking much of the middle act. It doesn’t add much. In fact, thanks to Blu de Golyer’s script, the film ends with an impression of pointlessness – having explained how much of the story was in the protagonist’s head, the revelation doesn’t really add anything to the result. It just makes it feel even cheaper and dumber than it already felt. I’m always a sucker for a good haunted-house story, but the operative word here is “sucker” – sometimes you get a good movie, and sometimes you get suckered into disappointment. In that scheme, clearly, House of Good and Evil is not a good movie.

  • Being the Ricardos (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, April 2022) Nobody ever sees the same movie. No, I’m not questioning the permanence of films as objects or artifacts – no spooky Mandela Effect theories from me. But even in considering unchangeable spools of celluloid or digital files with certified checksums, no viewer brings the exact same set of knowledge, assumptions and expectations to any viewing of any film. Even a second viewing can be a radically different experience. Maybe you’ve seen Being the Ricardos without any knowledge of Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz and I Love Lucy. Or maybe, like me, you have approached it with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of 1940s Hollywood after the full eight-hour TCM podcast on Ball’s life. I don’t seriously believe that too much knowledge can be a bad thing, but it certainly colours the viewing experience in a different way – both appreciative and irritated. Writer-director Aaron Sorkin goes for a compressed biographical snapshot here – picking a specific date in the life of the Ball/Arnaz couple, and turbocharging it with as much drama as could be plausibly inserted in the specific time-frame, even if a few years have to be collapsed in order to do so. We find ourselves on the set of I Love Lucy during a particularly eventful week in which Ball is accused of Communist activities, in which she has to confront Arnaz about his infidelities, and in which she must announce to everyone that she’s pregnant at a time when such things were unmentionable on TV. A rather weak framing device (by actors pretending they’re the real older people we follow in flashbacks) provides historical material and context. Let’s get something out of the way first: Neither Nicole Kidman nor Javier Bardem are much of a match for the real-life Lucille ball or Desi Arnaz: They can certainly act, but the film is not going for close physical resemblance (which is also true for Nina Arianda and J. K. Simmons in supporting roles). Also, Being the Ricardos is definitely, almost obstinately, determined not to make its audience laugh. Aside from brief black-and-white staging of a few of the show’s moments, it doesn’t really try to convey Ball’s gift for comedy as much as her keen understanding of how comedy works. A justifiable choice if you assume that people are familiar with the show (still funny in reruns seventy years later!) or that it doesn’t want to expose Kidman to the task of being as funny as Ball, but it’s still an eyebrow raiser. Sorkin would rather focus on the drama of being Lucille Ball when the cameras aren’t rolling – her professionalism in analyzing what’s funny or not, her sometimes-curt manners, and her complex relationship with Arnaz even through his infidelities. (It’s a measure of the film’s unorthodox touch that it resists the easy impulse of making Arnaz the out-and-out villain for cheating on her – although Bardem’s considerable charisma has a lot to do with that.)  As a big Classic Hollywood buff, I was very impressed by much of the period detail – all the way to having someone play Ann Miller’s legs (and namechecking her on the set of Too Many Girls). On the other hand, I was also able to spot a few details that were strikingly out of place (that anachronistic Stromboli poster bothered me a lot, even if I can guess the thematic reason for showing it). Still, compared to many “snapshot biographies,” Being the Ricardos gets the basics right, shoehorns its references rather gracefully, and does mix its elements well. Sorkin’s dialogue isn’t quite as showy as usual, and I’m always up for more Alia Shawkat. I would have changed a few elements of the climax, but I’m generally happy at how it all turned out despite a few unusual choices, and how much of a rather good homage it is to the Ball/Arnaz couple. But my reading of the film is likely to be very different from yours.

  • Mr. Stitch (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s an intriguing experimental aspect to the first half of Mr. Stitch that makes it feel more interesting than most other direct-to-video 1990s Science Fiction films: we’re in a white room, looking at a protagonist visibly (if implausibly) stitched together from dozens of other people, with a rather impressive make-up job to sell the patchwork effect. Wil Wheaton plays the creature as it tries to understand what it is, and rebels against its creators before they terminate the experiment. Coming from high-concept writer-director-producer Roger Avary, Mr. Stitch looks more ambitious than usual, even if some of the mid-1990s digital special effects are less than convincing. Rutger Hauer plays the mandatory mad scientist leading the project, while Nia Peeples is the just-as-mandatory kind-hearted scientist who helps the protagonist. Unfortunately, the mandatory elements soon overwhelm the unusual approach of the film’s first half, while flashbacks become more numerous, the action moves outside the white cell and we’re back to a far more conventional film. Eventually more bland than bad, Mr. Stitch struggles to have anything interesting to say once it gets going – although seeing Ron Perlman in a supporting role as an earnest, soft-spoken scientist is a fun piece of casting, considering the rest of Perlman’s filmography. Like many, many low-end movies, Mr. Stitch becomes less distinctive the longer it goes on, with contrived yet cliché plotting taking over whatever strengths it may have at first. As a Frankenstein take-off, it’s better than many – but it’s still limited by increasingly convenient screenwriting tricks. Digging into the film’s production history reveals that it was affected by creative differences between Avery and Hauer and a project inception that may or may not have been a pilot for a TV series. Whatever the source of the problems, the result lives on – and it remains disappointing.

  • The In-Laws (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) As far as buddy comedies go, The In-Laws makes a lot out of the elements at its disposal. The key to this is casting, of course: Alan Alda is not bad as a dentist who gets swept into the machinations of his new daughter-in-law’s father, but the spotlight here goes to Peter Falk as the other man, a CIA agent who may or may not be running rogue after being kicked out of the agency for recklessness. There’s a nice straight-man / wild-card dynamic at play, but more remarkably, a steady escalation of comedy as their adventures get wilder and further away from our dentist-protagonist’s comfort zone. Director Arthur Hiller makes the most out of Andrew Bergman’s script, but the actors are up to the task set out before them. The comedy still works pretty well, with Falk driving most of it but Alda getting the laughs by reacting (badly) to it all. Don’t worry – The In-Laws ends well. There was a remake in the 2000s that didn’t work so well, so don’t let that affect your intention of seeing the original.

  • Gold (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) I can’t be the only viewer left uneasy by Gold. It is, after all, a thriller that takes place in South Africa during the Apartheid years, with Roger Moore and other white characters having a jolly good time… and the sole black character sacrificing himself for them. Harrumph. There is, to be fair, an interesting hook to it all – rapacious, psychopathic owners of a gold mine engineering a major disaster (i.e.: drilling into a water reservoir, flooding the mine) in order to boost profits or something like that. The owners are British; the mine is in South Africa and at its best Gold offers a quasi-documentary circa-1974 look at gold mining, going deep on footage that details the mine’s operations without contributing much to the plot. Meanwhile, we have Moore playing an engineer with a shady past (more an attempt at pumping up a character than setting up anything that happens on-screen) who, being a Roger Moore character, is debonair enough to seduce the wife of a superior – but that’s OK, since he’s one of the psychopathic executives out to sacrifice lives for profit. The South African scenery is quite beautiful (especially once the characters fly around the countryside) but there are are many unexamined assumptions in Gold when it comes to black majority portrayal, or even the protagonist’s morality. Much of it probably stems from the control that the apartheid regime imposed on film productions at the time – anything that did not reflect well on the South African regime simply did not get approval to shoot in the country. Some of it probably stems from Moore’s weight as a leading man: newly minted as James Bond, probably central to the film’s financing, it made sense to give him a likable cad role and not ask too many questions. It doesn’t help that much of Gold is low-octane as far as thrills and suspense are concerned: despite the ticking time bomb of deliberate sabotage by the owners, the film is more amiable than urgent. There’s one unexpectedly fun scene involving a small airplane making a difficult landing, but the film then loses itself in an overdrawn underground sequence that leads to a bitter (black) sacrifice and more roses for our impeccable (white) protagonist. Gold, despite some unusual potential, hasn’t aged very well – and as a period piece, it acts more like a reminder of what has thankfully been deemed unacceptable.

  • The Big Lift (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) History often repeats itself. As the saying goes, “Amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics” and as I write this, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has clearly shown the quasi-amateurish limitations of the once-fabled Red Army in ensuring its own supply lines, while Ukraine is supported by a sophisticated supply of weapons and disciplined efforts. But this isn’t the first time the West has bested the Bear in logistical matters, and The Big Lift does a competent job at taking us back to one such time: the Berlin blockade of 1948–1950. This oft-forgotten piece of Cold War history gets increasingly fascinating the more you read about it: In the aftermath of WW2 and the division of Germany between the winners, the Soviets tried a power play and blocked all terrestrial routes to Berlin (which was then far behind the Iron Curtain separating West and East Germany). The allies, unwilling to give up Berlin to the Soviets, decided to flex their airlift capabilities instead. For more than 18 months, every single piece of food and merchandise that made its way inside Berlin was carried by plane – at such a staggering pace that, at the height of the airlift operation, a plane was landing in Berlin every thirty seconds. It saved Berlin from being absorbed in East Germany, and proved that the West could hold its own supply lines. The Big Lift, which began production during the blockade, is an echo of the WW2 military propaganda film in more ways than one: taking a real-life situation and shooting as much documentary footage as possible, it then inserted a fictional storyline in-between the footage, and clearly affirmed America as the better choice. It half-works, in that the opening half-hour of the film as orchestrated by director George Seaton, is a mesmerizing immersion in the reality of the times, showing the real bombed-out Berlin and hair-raising footage of planes flying low above the rooftops of the city. Real military personnel are shown going through the mechanics of the airlift, and there’s some real tension to the task being proposed in order to keep Berlin supplied. It’s later on that the film loses much of its interest, as we go to more fictional situations, romantic tension, Constitution-tapping American boosterism and a lessened focus on the blockade. The tension and interest rise again later on as the difficulties of maintaining an airlift in a period of heavy fog are explored, but the conclusion misses some kind of bigger climax – probably not helped along by the film being completed as the blockage was tentatively lifted. As a way to get back to a specific period of time, The Big Lift is not bad, but it loses itself once it strays away from that urgency. I would not be surprised to see a remake, especially as the historical facts find relevance to current events. Don’t mess with the West when it comes to consumption!

  • Baby Doll (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I’m not sure how many Tennessee Williams-inspired 1950s black-and-white dramas I still have to watch, but Baby Doll isn’t going to become one of my favourite Williams adaptations. Much of my reluctance comes from a refusal to engage with a story in which nearly everyone is nasty to everyone else all the time. That gets old, and I’m on the market for more uplifting material at the moment. The story takes us in deep rural Mississippi, where two feuding cotton farmers take escalating means toward each other – one burns the other’s field down, which is met by the other farmer seducing the first farmer’s teenage bride. But don’t feel too sorry for her given the bad treatment she gives to her husband and the overall nastiness of the film. As with other Williams-inspired dramas, Baby Doll was a bit of a sensation back in the 1950s – the topic matter went beyond what was considered acceptable, and having a teenage actress parade in a babydoll nightgown (legend has it that the film named the clothing) while the narrative repeatedly insisted on the seduction of the childlike character had authorities in a moral tizzy. (I suspect it would be even worse today.) Director Elia Kazan handles everything with his usual touch, allowing the three main actors — Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach—to bite into the dramatic material. Baby Doll is a drama all right, but it may take a specific frame of mind to get the most out of it.

  • Keys to the City (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) My reaction in watching the first few moments of Keys to the City on BET Channel was one of surprise – a political movie about a mayoral campaign? On my trashy-thriller BET? What’s the catch? I thought I was getting a better handle on the film once it revealed that our likable young protagonist was running against his own father – aha, family drama! But that merely completed the log-line of the film: it didn’t quite reveal what the story was really about. That comes maybe 20–30 minutes in the film, as our mayoral candidate gets involved with a campaign staffer with underlying issues. What could have been interpreted as a kinda-cute romantic obsession with the protagonist eventually reveals itself to be a violent lust for revenge, and that’s when we finally recognize Keys to the City as the kind of film we love to watch on BET – a slightly unhinged thriller that doesn’t really care about plausibility as long as the basic components of suspense are in place. Once you figure that out, the rest of the film becomes more entertaining. This isn’t about politics (especially at the most surface level) as much as it’s about family drama and a psychotic stalker – very familiar territory for BET channel. Kamal Angelo Bolden stars as the political hopeful, with Isaiah Washington as the mentor/opponent and the attractive Felisha Cooper as the romantic threat. Writer-director Tangie B. Moore gets the plot pieces moving slowly, but eventually works the film to a frenzied pitch of insanity right in time for the over-the-top finale, complete with an extra twist revelation that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but works within the wild context of the film. Slightly better-than-average-for-BET production values make the film acceptable to watch on a technical level. Keys to the City isn’t meant to be serious, respectable or particularly refined – the antagonist is crazy for the sake of being crazy and while that’s fun, it’s not exactly the kind of thing that elevates the material. I don’t care all that much, though: the BET Channel brand of films (whether they’re made exclusively for the channel, or put in regular rotation) is about fun thrillers not to be taken seriously, and I got that in spades here… even if it kept me guessing for a few delicious minutes.