Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Muppet Movie (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, July 2022) Essentially, The Muppet Movie is nothing more than your standard road trip to Hollywood movie, with a green frog gathering friends on his way to fame and fortune. But, of course, plot is the farthest thing away from viewers’ minds as they watch the film: the focus here is on gags, characters and cameos. How has it aged in forty years? Badly in the details, not at all in the aggregate. Much of the material is completely timeless—the Muppets are the Muppets, and there’s bound to be one in the bunch that you like. It does help that the level of humour here remains basic most of the time—time-tested material accessible to multiple generations, never too out-there but often more than the lowest level. Even the meta-fictional material, with a framing device that has the Muppets watching their own movie, is gently introduced. What has not aged so well are the cameos, which often depend on an encyclopedic knowledge of circa-1979 pop culture. Some familiar faces still make an impression (Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, and Orson Welles in a delicious one-line cameo), while others will require some more context (Dom DeLuise, Telly Savalas, Elliott Gould, Bob Hope, etc.) and others are just about obscure by now. Also notable are some of the special effects required to show full-body Muppets interacting with the world. But little of those issues matter when the film by itself is just a warm bath of fun and comfort: The Muppets Movie remains funny all the way to the big-smash ending, and there’s something immensely reassuring knowing that it still finds fans even today.

  • Phenomenon (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, July 2022) The only thing more entertaining than a big-budget film doing things right is a big-budget film doing things… badly. In Phenomenon’s case, it means smashing two movies together, wallowing in weird middle-America notions of intelligence, and going for tragedy when the bag of ideas runs dry. John Travolta stars as a semi-rural everyman who, after seeing a strange light in the sky, suddenly finds himself hyper-intelligent—absorbing knowledge like a sponge, coming up with new theories and inventions, easily mastering multiple disciplines and languages, predicting earthquakes, and eventually developing telekinesis (what?) as a bonus. Despite some egregious shortcuts in describing magical levels of intelligence, the first half of Phenomenon does have its charm in the idea of a world-class genius turning his attention to mundane pursuits of interest to a North California town and its inhabitants. There isn’t a lot of friction in this first half, with caricatural evil government workers out of the picture and no one having turned on the protagonist yet. But the script, sadly, isn’t done—and before long, the usual weird conspiracy theories about the American government rear their head up and our protagonist is kidnapped for study. This doesn’t last a long time, however, and before long the usual amount of anti-intellectualism shows up to teach the protagonist not to get too big for the town’s undersized britches. Still lacking a third act, the film then turns to the ultimate humbling of its protagonist: A fatal tumour turns Phenomenon into an attempted weeper. Except that, by this time, it’s so incoherent, atonal and contrived that it feels as if a good film has been left behind. The treatment of intelligence is (ironically) dumbed down and safely neutered to ensure that audiences don’t feel too bad about a genius running around not solving world hunger. It’s too bad—the first half does have promise, the small-town atmosphere is nicely rendered (until it isn’t) and there’s some decent supporting work from Kyra Sedgwick, Forest Whitaker and Robert Duvall. But the result feels like a big bowl of everything with far too much mawkishness thrown in. How did this go wrong?

  • The Mauritanian (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2022) One fascinating aspect of hitting one’s middle age is a far more personal relationship to history. Having lived through the entire psychotic War on Terror episode of the American government, it’s not as if the infuriating nature of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre (still active as of this writing!) was unknown. In fact, I wasn’t looking forward to The Mauritanian: what could a film about a Gitmo prisoner have to say? Are we going to speedrun through the torture, the futility of most detentions, and the extrajudicial loopholes allowed by the base’s special status? Well, yes: The Mauritanian is based on the real story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was held for fourteen years in Guantanamo Bay and eventually released (after much pressure) to no formal charges. But this depressing story is given fresh interest through a surprisingly compelling execution that brings together an interesting mix of known actors (Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch) and a script that keeps things interesting even when familiar. Rahim is particularly good in a charming trilingual performance: the film would not have worked without a likable actor in the title role, and he makes the most out of his moments. Foster is now firmly typed in power-matriarchal roles, while Woodley seems to be reinventing herself successfully as a character actress—alas, Cumberbatch seems oddly cast in that even his southern-USA accent can’t quite justify why they would cast him in a rather flat role. Still, the film itself holds one’s attention as it goes back and forth between the prisoner and the people working for his release: At a time when the rule of law seems more precarious than ever in the United States, it’s not a bad thing to have a recent example of insurmountable odds from which to draw inspiration. It’s not that good of a film, but at least The Mauritanian overcomes a lot of built-in prejudice against it. It doesn’t feel as much like a rehash of familiar recent history, but approaches solid character-driven drama at times. Alas, one notes that the real-life odyssey of The Mauritanian’s real-world inspiration isn’t over yet—exiled without a passport and separated from his family, he’s still very much still living in the shadow of his Guantanamo Bay detention.

  • D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) Hey, I’m old enough to remember seeing D.A.R.Y.L. not just in the late 1980s, but watching it in grade school! The film was considered innocuous and fun enough to show to kids, I guess. Revisiting the film much later does offer a few surprises. In some ways, the film is intensely formulaic—the moment you have a kids-who’s-really-a-robot, and have him be brought back in government custody after a first act free to live in normal suburban America, there’s not much doubt what will happen next. But D.A.R.Y.L. occasionally goes beyond the strict minimum in ensuring decent thrills for its younger target audience. The opening car chase is surprisingly well done for a kid’s film, and using the SR-71 plane as an element of the climax is still something that gets me smiling. The rest of director Simon Wincer’s film, however, is both overly familiar and weirdly written—the usual mix of military super-soldier research, middle-class moral values, cute gags that raise questions that the film isn’t interested in answering, and some tragic moments sandwiched in between the rest. Plus, a lot of wildly convoluted material that feels about as natural as the title acronym (“Data-Analyzing Robotic Youth Lifeform”… yeah). The release of the film predating the introduction of the PG-13 rating means that the film often feels a bit older than its stated PG rating (plus the more freewheeling 1980s factor). Still, it’s not occasional quirks and moments that prevent D.A.R.Y.L. from remaining, even today, a rather innocuous pick for any pre-teen.

  • Polyester (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) As I keep going deeper and older into John Walters’s filmography, I keep waiting for the one film that will make me think, “OK, that’s it—too much.”  After all, I began at the end of his career, with his friendlier, most mainstream films. But so far, so good—and it’s not Polyester that will have me screaming to the exits. A wild parody of 1950s Sirk-style “women’s melodrama” adapted to the early 1980s, this is a film that presents an ideal nuclear family and then does its damnedest to pervert it. The only halfway decent character is the housewife played by Divine—but the more the film goes on, the more the façade of idyllic suburban living shatters and vaporizes. The husband is a philanderer, the son is a serial foot stomper (you read that right), the daughter gets pregnant from her no-good husband and things go downhill from there. A momentary upturn in her fortunes leads to an even wilder conclusion and that’s the film for you. There are a few levels of comedy here—and you can argue that the more absurd moments (such as the dog committing suicide, leaving a note) end up working at odds with the attempted straight-face satire. But really, it means that Polyester plays on several comic registers at once, from the conceptual to the obvious. It’s not that funny, but it’s corrosive enough in its sarcasm to be worth a look—and wonder why such films aren’t being made anymore. There are plenty of oddities here, but Walters’s goal in lampooning middle-class America remains focused. Tab Hunter turns up in a small role that takes advantage of his movie-star good looks. Polyester’s other claim to fame upon release was its use of “odorama” scratch-and-sniff cards. Amazingly enough, thanks to the long-ago benevolence of Paul Riddell, I have one such card in my unlikely possession… and used it for its intended purpose even when it wasn’t a good idea. Having done that, there’s only one more thing to say: bring on more Walters, the loopier the better.

  • House of Gucci (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, July 2022) As much as it’s impressive to see director Ridley Scott still alive, kicking and producing a stream of big-budget films well into his 80s, his track record of late is certainly not unimpeachable—and House of Gucci is the kind of almost-schizophrenic experience that’s enough to make you wonder about basic filmmaking decisions. It often feels as if there are two films here—a romance-turned-tragic set against the world of high fashion, and another comedic film about eccentric characters hamming it up and acting bizarrely when empowered with money and status. The first film features Adam Driver and Lady Gaga; the second has Al Pacino and Jared Leto and they’re edited together without much care for tonal consistency. But the bad decisions also accumulate elsewhere. For some unfathomable reason, the film is colour-graded in heavily desaturated monochrome, resulting in a dull black-white-and-blue cinematography that seems to leech life out of the film even when it’s not supposed to be sombre and serious. Another director would have chosen to film the early puppy-romance sequences in poppy colours and dial it down all the way to the film’s tragic ending. But Scott does whatever Scott wants and what made some sense for All the Money in the World or The Last Duel doesn’t work here. Letting slide the different tonal registers in which the actors seem to be working (or the unexplainable decision to stuff Leto in enough body suit padding and makeup to make him unrecognizable as an older man), the film’s running time at 158 minutes saps energy from the result as well—scenes don’t quite flow across the years of the plot and the film lacks the focus it should have stuck to. I’m not saying it’s a bad film—the story is compelling, the characters are interesting and some performances, such as Gaga, are quite wonderful. But many of House of Gucci’s flaws seem entirely unforced—rather coming from bizarre choices not serving the story… or an elderly director making his own decisions and lording them unchecked over an entire production.

  • Always Leave Them Laughing (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) As someone with a higher-than-average interest in stand-up comedy and its backstage drama, I could appreciate the good hook in Always Leave Them Laughing’s premise—following a second-rate comedian with a propensity for stealing jokes and wives from other comedians on tour. Milton Berle stars, which is the kind of thing that will also appeal to those with an interest in American comedy history—while relatively forgotten today, Berle was sometimes touted as America’s foremost comedian around 1950 (check his reverential appearance in 1960’s Let’s Make Love) and the film clearly plays on that additional context for casting. It’s probably why the film can feel so free to lambaste its character as a bit of a hack, and play with the darkness behind the performer (or at least as much as it could in 1949—this isn’t a warts-and-all portrait at all, just a mild amount of backstage drama to go with the comic routines). Berle is in his element when on a stage, but perhaps not so much a good romantic lead whenever the lovely Virginia Mayo or Ruth Roman are on-screen. There are also a few pacing issues, and comparing Always Leave Them Laughing to later films truly digging into the comedy backstage can be disappointing. But at least you get the sight of Berle in his prime, captured on film for posterity.

  • Love Hard (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2022) While I can complain at length about Netflix’s turn away from licensed content toward many less-than-impressive “original” productions, the one thing that I do like about this new direction is the way it seems to be single-handedly keeping up the mid-budget romantic comedy. This once-staple of Hollywood circa 1990s–2000s did not thrive well in the era of multiplex spectacle and that’s too bad—despite a strong formula, romantic comedies offer likable entertainment value, fun turns for young actors, and sometimes even witty scripts. New romantic comedies have retreated even further into the realm of the comforting formula on Hallmark and Lifetime channels (often Christmas-themed), leaving an opening for slightly-more-complex material. It’s useless to pretend that Love Hard is ambitious filmmaking—after all, it takes place around Christmas, features an urban heroine travelling to a small town, and its resolution is never, ever in doubt. But compared to Hallmark Christmas romances… yes, it tries something more. It proposes as a romantic lead the unconventional Jimmy O. Yang, proposes a far more conventionally attractive man as a rival, goes fishing back to Cyrano de Bergerac for inspiration, and goes on tangents that aren’t to be found in the more efficiently straightforward made-for-TV equivalents. While there’s nothing radically new here, the film occasionally scores a few highlights, whether it’s a pro-consent take on “Baby, it’s cold outside,” discussions comparing Love Actually with Die Hard as exemplary Christmas films (hence the title of this one), some unusually forthright material about the male lead’s reasons for catfishing, and some eccentric supporting characters. Nothing here is revolutionary (and little of the plot survives a critical examination), but there is a pleasant self-awareness to it that results in a romantic comedy for slightly jaded (but not cynical) romantic comedy fans. I happen to be in that group, so I got my time’s worth here—and if Netflix wants to keep cranking up the same kind of slightly-more-complex romantic comedy until Hollywood comes to its senses, then all the better.

  • Evilenko (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) Oh yuck. Combining a serial-killer character study with dreary post-Soviet atmosphere, Evilenko is an ordeal in more ways than one. Malcolm McDowell does have a good turn as a schoolteacher-turned-psychopath here, his specific skills at playing twisted becoming even more useful as the film dives deeper into non-realistic material from hypnosis to dream sequences. Otherwise, though, this is an ugly film in form and content. The bleak landscape of post-Communist Russia is cold and monochrome, while writer-director David Grieco twists real terrible events into even more terrible heavily fictionalized material. More disturbing than gory, Evilenko certainly feels very, very unpleasant. See it for McDowell if you must, but must you?

  • Without Remorse (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, July 2022) Only the barest essentials of Tom Clancy’s 1993 novel Without Remorse have made it to its belated screen adaptation. Other than a revenge story featuring a special-forces Marine and some character names, the rest is something else. The period has been reset from the 1970s to the 2020s (albeit with an attitude that screams 2000s war-on-terror hysteria), with the story updated from a revenge-for-the-prostitute simple crime thriller to a man-avenging-pregnant-wife deal with a much bigger conspiracy jammed as a large-scope plot. Considering that I didn’t think as much of Clancy’s novel as his other efforts, this could have been a good thing. Indeed, at times, Without Remorse does hit upon a few effective moments. It’s hard to dislike Michael B. Jordan in whatever he chooses to play (and since Without Remorse is intended to launch a new action franchise, who can fault him for agreeing to such a project?) and he’s just as intense and effective here, with the acting chops to sustain his character as more than just an action protagonist. The film occasionally stages its showpiece action sequences rather well—there’s an “interrogated in a burning car” sequence that doesn’t make much sense but still works well, and the same also goes for an underwater sequence following a plane crash. Still, there’s an overly familiar quality to the rest of the film, which seems content to riff on decades-old melodies without doing much to update them—even in bringing the action forward to the present. But then again, this film was in development for almost thirty years, through a bewildering number of familiar stars, screenwriters and directors. Best-case scenario—Without Remorse will lead to a better sequel. But isn’t it annoying to characterize a disappointing film as perhaps, maybe, something that will lead to something better?

  • Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, July 2022) There’s a good reason why, in the remarkable pantheon of 1980s spoof comedies, Amazon Women on the Moon barely gets any attention compared to Airplane!, Top Secret!, or Hot Shots!—or even compared to the more directly comparable Kentucky Fried Movie—it’s uneven, clunky and frequently laborious. A sketch comedy trying to ape late-night channel hopping, its most sustained element is a parody of 1950s science-fiction films interspaced by ads, trailers, snippets and other material coming from a brainstorm between the film’s five directors (including Joe Dante and John Landis) and two credited writers. I first saw this a long time ago—at least if I go by the moments that were predictable or familiar to me—but can’t guarantee I watched it from beginning to end. Not that it matters, because the sketch comedy means that (save from “Amazon Women on the Moon” segments and a man zapped into his television set) there are very few callbacks or buildups from one segment to another. From a twenty-first century perspective, the film is clearly of its era—and that means quite a bit of sexism (including a number whose sole lame joke is a woman doing everyday tasks in the nude), ironic racism (“Blacks without soul”) and very familiar stereotypes played for easy laughs. Some numbers have gone from satire to reality in the interval (such as a telephone number where the woman vets her new date—old-hat stuff at an age of social media), while others feel more solidly comic now. It’s probably no accident if the film is at its most reliably funny when satirizing older material than the mid-1980s—the “Amazon Women on the Moon” segments are much funnier if you have seen such 1950s SF films as Queen of Outer Space, and the segments riffing off Reefer Madness or The Invisible Man are somehow funnier than the then-contemporary segments. (Although the revelation of Jack the Ripper’s true identity is the film’s most absurd laugh.) There’s an impressive roster of actors at play here—from people with enduring fame (Michelle Pfeiffer, Joe Pantoliano, Rosanna Arquette, Carrie Fisher) to 1980s references (Paul Bartel, Steve Guttenberg, Griffin Dunne) and older stars (Steve Allen and the rest of the roasters). Star power isn’t much of a substitute for real laughs, but it does elevate the film above its strict and disappointing minutes-to-chuckles ratio. Uneven by design but disappointing in general, Amazon Women on the Moon is a time capsule of 1980s comedy that doesn’t compare to much better examples of the spoof comedy form.

  • Tight Spot (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Ginger Rogers is not usually associated with film noir, but like many actresses active during the 1940s–1950s, her filmography does include at least one related title. She’s the lead in Tight Spot, a film that makes more sense the more you know about the organized-crime trials of the early 1950s, where some witnesses had an unfortunate tendency of dying before testifying and when gangster moll Virginia Hill left an indelible impression on the national psyche after her appearance in front of the Kefauver Committee. But even if you’re not aware of this, Tight Spot still has some appeal. Much of the action is focused on a hotel suite where Rogers, playing a high-value witness, is cajoled by police (led by a character played by Edward G. Robinson) in agreeing to testify against a mob boss. But the big complication is the crooked cop (Brian Keith) in their midst, weighing his growing attraction to the witness against orders from the mob to facilitate her murder. Part of the film is familiar, but it works rather well—and you can’t underestimate the interest in seeing Rogers go for a hard-boiled moll with a smart mouth. A good leading cast, combined with a fun script and some efficient direction from Phil Karlson, combine to make Tight Spot a decent-enough thriller of the noir era—not perfect (it could have been a bit snappier in the middle) and maybe a bit too sparse in its characters, but still something worth watching to the end.

  • Don Juan DeMarco (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Marlon Brando is one of those actors that, absent historical context, is almost entirely baffling to modern audiences. Much of his admirable mystique is based on his first few years, his good looks and his raw acting technique. On the Waterfront; A Streetcar Named Desire; no problem. But then his legacy became far more complicated—famously eccentric to the point of self-destructiveness, he often harmed movies through idiosyncratic choices (not always on-screen—listen to Francis Ford Coppola to learn how he rescued Apocalypse Now from Brando) or was reigned into delivering good performances through a strong director (again, Coppola, and the first two The Godfather films). The rest of his career? It feels like a miracle he even starred in films. Last Tango in Paris alone is unwatchable largely because of the creepy Brando factor. I’m skipping over a lot (and frankly, I don’t care, because I don’t like Brando) but the point is: Don Juan DeMarco is one weird movie somehow starring Brando. It may not be quite as weird as his self-parody in The Freshman, or maybe it is, considering that his role in Don Juan DeMarco isn’t an homage to himself. Anyway: it’s a bizarre role because it’s such a slight film. Brando plays a psychiatrist who gets interested in the delusions of a young man (Johnny Depp, and that’s another layer of weird) who claims to be the world’s greatest lover. The details make no sense, but we viewers have seen enough of those movies to know what’s going to happen next—the young man will be a traumatic wreck coping with terrible events through a legend that will be based on a few truths. It’s not as if the film has any big mysteries to unlock, or even mild surprises—this is strictly familiar material. Nor are Brando and Depp the only noteworthy casting choice, with Faye Dunaway popping up as the psychologist’s wife, and Selena with a short sequence that hinted at much potential she had before dying so tragically young. But perhaps the weirdest thing about Don Juan DeMarco is that it works—Brando does well in a relatively unchallenging story. He’s rather likable, and brings this likability to the rest of the film. Depp also does well in a comparatively more difficult role, and from a contemporary perspective it’s worth noting how young he feels here. (Most actors stick to a persona that evolves through time, but fewer take on as radically different roles through their careers as Depp continues to do.)  It ends on an entirely predictable but rather pleasant note—and even if Don Juan DeMarco remains a minor film, it features Brando being unusually approachable. In a career characterized by weirdness, Brando’s most bizarre turn may be playing the ordinary.

  • Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Ugh. Almost terrible. Actually, wait: Almost terrible and overly familiar, as if sticking to a formula was even worse when you can’t even execute it competently. Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor starts, continues and concludes like what feels like hundreds of horror movies: There’s a laboratory, there’s the accidental escape of a monstrous alien creature, there are the innocent civilians trying to survive and (obviously) plenty of death sequences until the monster is defeated (OR IS IT?!?!??)  Metamorphosis follows the usual plot progression in excruciating detail, with most viewers well ahead of the script for a few minutes (if not maybe all the minutes). Shoddily written and directed by Glenn Takajian, it’s a strictly mercenary low-budget effort. If it earns slightly more than the absolute bottom grade, it’s because of a handful of stop-motion special effects shots toward the end, and an overall atmosphere that’s more campy than awful—it’s not completely glum either, so it does have that over some other darker-than-black horror films out there. I mean: I recall at least three people surviving, which is three more than many worse movies. Those who enjoy so-bad-they’re-good movies may get a kick out of it, but even then, they will have to admit the considerable lulls in the action as characters walk down the same corridor thirty times while explaining and reiterating the basics of the plot. I would rather watch something half-good than something just-above-terrible.

  • Doraibu mai kâ [Drive my Car] (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Considering my muted reaction to Oscar-winning Drive my Car, I was about to begin my review by saying that hype killed this film, but that’s not entirely true—it’s closer to the truth that pacing killed this film, because it unaccountably goes on for a staggering three hours (well, 179 minutes, but one more minute won’t make much of a difference). We’re not talking about a densely plotted action-filled three hours either, as the film moodily focuses around a theatre director brooding about the death of his adulterous wife, and then meets her lover while working on another production. There’s not a whole lot more to that except being driven around by a young woman, but writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi goes for subtle, incremental character moments every chance he gets, and the result (especially in subtitled Japanese) will test the patience of most viewers. The question being, “It’s a well-made movie, but is it that good?” is likely to be more pressing knowing that the film walked away with an Academy Award. (The obvious wisecrack is to wonder whether there’s a more stupefyingly boring category than the Foreign-Language Academy Award—and I say that as a proud French-Canadian able to claim multiple nominees and one winner in that category.)  Drive my Car is for fans of slow, meandering, not necessarily story-driven cinema. It’s about character moments and subtle moments—this warning being given, you figure out the rest.