Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Borrowers (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Somehow, I hadn’t seen special-effects 1990s kids adventure The Borrowers until now, and while I’m not going to claim that it was a missing piece of my culture, there are a few good moments in there. Drunk on the power of burgeoning CGI, this is a film that clearly has more fun playing with its premise (of small people living in the walls of a house “borrowing” items from normal-sized humans) than making sense of it. The usual kid’s movie clichés are there, from adventurous youths, a venal lawyer seeking inheritance money, and action sequences designed around special effect. It has striking similarities to the near-contemporary Mouse Hunt, even if it’s not as enjoyable as that other film. Viewers may have fun spotting Jim Broadbent, Tom Felton and Hugh Laurie in younger roles. An adaptation of a celebrated series of children’s books, this 1997 version of The Borrowers wasn’t the first nor the last time the story was brought on-screen, and we’ll bet it’s not over yet.

  • The Quarry (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) I waited a very long time for The Quarry to become interesting, and the best I got was a brief blip of entertainment in the fourth-fifth of the film, right before it disintegrated again. Much of the film’s limitations, I suspect, come from a basic mishandling of tone. What could and should have been a tight straightforward modern-western thriller is executed as a ponderous tragedy bordering on homeopathic horror:  The low droning soundtrack, oblique cinematography, dark sets, slow pace and pseudo-gritty visual design all suck any energy out of the film even when it should be visceral and fascinating. I did like Michael Shannon’s performance as a local sheriff trying to get at the bottom of a mysterious murder, and the ironic cat-and-mouse game between him and the guilty party. The finest moments of the film come when the sheriff is clearly sensing something wrong and turning around the answer without necessarily knowing what it is… while the murderer is stuck in his lies and almost goaded by circumstances to confess. Alas, the conclusion wants to try something different and stick the landing of what the final moments could have been. The result is something that had a spark of potential extinguished by mishandled execution. Too much of a bore for an evening’s worth of crime-thriller entertainment—pick something else, because The Quarry is almost designed to annoy you.

  • Cry Macho (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) As Clint Eastwood pushes ninety, what drives him to pick up the camera again at his age, especially when he stars in his own movies? What kind of film justifies that effort when he’s thirty years past retirement age? Cry Macho won’t offer any answer at all, which is an answer by itself. The bare bones of the plot are, well, bare-bones:  an elderly farmhand with a talent for horses is asked by an American businessman to go to Mexico and bring back his son. Finding the son isn’t that hard, but bringing him back is another story, one with a lengthy stop in a small Mexican village where our taciturn hero gets to bond with his young protégé (Eduardo Minett, suffering from Eastwood’s hands-off approach as a director) and a rather sexy widow (Natalia Traven) who’s taken a shine to him despite a 39-year age difference. You can see in here some of Eastwood’s late-career questioning of traditional ideas of masculinity, alongside a privileged portrayal of mentorship not dissimilar to the one in Gran Torino. This being said, the script itself seems almost forgetful in its development—occasionally remembering to throw some conflict in there just to keep things interesting, but not really wanting the bad times to last more than a few minutes. It amounts to an amiable, but rather aimless film: not unentertaining (especially when the action climax of the film is settled by a chicken—yes, it’s an important plot element), but nowhere near what a director counting down his last projects would be expected to deliver. But then again, isn’t the idea of a grand finale a movie contrivance itself? Looking at filmographies of past Hollywood directors, the last few films are often increasingly trivial… and there may be nothing wrong with that.

  • Kiss the Cook (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2022) I’ve written enough positive reviews of made-for-TV food-based romantic comedies that criticizing Kiss the Cook may feel like an inconsistency, but hear me out: Indulgence is the main ingredient in the appreciation of such low-budget, low-imagination, low-daring films as those. You either buy into it or you don’t. The films seldom make much of a case for themselves, so closely do they follow structural formulas, innocuous characters, trite details and unchallenging ideas. In Kiss the Cook, for instance, a food blogger is asked to collaborate with a disgraced chef to put together a cookbook, while her ex-boyfriend (a food critic who—no surprise—was the one responsible for the chef’s restaurant closing) tries to rekindle their relationship. Their mismatched pairing is a pretext for conventional romance, while cuter actors in supporting roles also have their own thing going on. (Typically for such films, lead actress Erica Deutschman is blandly pretty, while the usual best friend/sounding board is played by the far more attractive Katy Breier.)  This is all very ordinary so far… so why my frowny face? Well, the script does itself no favours by playing right into contemporary inanity without any hint of ironic distance. In the opening moments, a likes-obsessed heroine has trouble connecting to other people in her life due to her obsessive monitoring of viewing statistics, and the film never calls her out on it beyond meek requests from friends to put her phone away. A publisher spouts audience-engagement-through-influencer propaganda as if it was something with real-world relevance, and, above all, the cookbook is seen as the measure of fame and immortality. Later on, a book is rushed to production in what feels like hours, which will be hilarious to anyone with real-world publishing experience. (Not to mention having a very relaxed attitude toward consent of what goes into a book, not to mention suspiciously convenient timing when it comes to livestreams.)  All of those—especially the romantic fairy-tale portrayal of publishing—are contrivances subservient to the romantic comedy goals of the film—and no one is expected to start questioning the modern hegemony of attention capitalism through films such as Kiss the Cook. But here’s the thing: when films ask for so much indulgence, it shouldn’t be a surprise if a few false notes end up destroying (or rather preventing) such indulgence, making the entire thing fall on itself by a hollow construction. If there’s no substance, a puff of hot air can blow it all away… no matter how cute and romantic it’s all supposed to be.

  • Scener ur ett äktenskap [Scenes from a Marriage] (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) When discussing Ingman Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, saying, “I’m glad that’s over” has a few distinct meanings. For one thing, it’s a measure of my relief in making my way through Bergman’s filmography—he may be revered as a filmmaker, but I have a hard time liking most of his films so the closer I get to completing his filmography the closer I get to never having to watch any of his films ever again. For another, it’s a commentary on the film itself, as it flips the usual romantic comedy structure (a long courtship leading to marriage and happiness) to a romantic tragedy (beginning with a happy marriage, then disintegrating into a divorce and an inconclusive aftermath). It’s such a sad story that, by the time it’s done, we are well past the point where we’re done. (Although Bergman does keep his options open by having the ex-spouses have affairs long after their divorce.)  Finally, perhaps more importantly, it’s a commentary on the pacing and cinematographic nature of the film: adapted from a six-episode TV series, it’s shot on grainy 16 mm film with near-constant claustrophobic closeups, and perhaps more importantly, lasts a mind-numbing two hours and 49 minutes of intimate conversations charting the end of a formerly happy relationship. Scenes from a Marriage is famous in film circles for inspiring many imitators (some of them nominated for Academy Awards, such as the recent Marriage Story) and it’s true that we’re not watching it in the same way now as then—divorce is far more common than in the mid-1970s, and so are stories about them. The film does have moments of interest—Liv Ullman is a compelling presence no matter the context, and the film’s slow pace allows it to build dramatic intensity. But I like what I like or (more to the point), don’t like what I don’t like: I can’t imagine volunteering to watch Scenes from a Marriage again without substantial rewards. In other words: Well, I’m glad it’s over.

  • Why Did I Get Married? (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, February 2022) There’s something admirable Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?, as it looks at factors threatening the marriage of four middle-class couples when they head to an isolated cabin to reflect on the state of their relationships. This is one of Perry’s first straight-up dramas without the Madea crutch, and there’s a sense that he’s really giving a serious go at romantic drama. Placing the four couples in the pressure-cooker of a mountain retreat right before a major snowstorm may not be an original plot device, but it has the merit of raising the film’s tension and promising a dramatic arc in the finest theatrical tradition. Unfortunately, Perry’s blunt-force approach does him no favour, and the problems start early on with four heavy-handed scenes that don’t present characterization as much as caricature. There’s no way to get emotionally invested in a couple whose husband is callous enough to make his overweight wife drive the trip he’s taking on a plane (while enjoying the company of her single attractive friend), or to completely believe in a character going on a verbal rampage aboard a crowded train. (There are also other issues whenever you ask yourself why four couples living close together would take four different ways to get to the same destination, but digging too deeply in the film does no one any favours.)  The writing is uneven, and few of the actors (including Perry in a dramatic turn) are gifted enough to rise above the material—except perhaps Jill Scott in the film’s richest character. The lack of subtlety means that much of the film plays like a dramatic exercise more than a story, and Tyler fumbles the last half of the film by having characters leave the cabin and time-skip forward to resolve (or not) their issues—breaking the spatial and chronological unity of the piece. The film’s got enough heart to warrant watching to the end, but it’s often a rough road—although that’s a near-constant for most Perry films even if you’re predisposed to like them.

  • The Guilty (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, February 2022) I have a remarkable fondness for high-concept thrillers, and in remaking a Danish 2018 thriller for an American audience, The Guilty certainly has something cool up in its sleeve: a suspense story almost entirely seen through the eyes and ears of a 911 response officer. The story gets going once our protagonist (an effective Jake Gyllenhaal, once again teaming up with director Antoine Fuqua) gets a phone call: a woman has been kidnapped, she’s being driven aboard a white van and she’s terrified to talk. Using all the means at his disposal (and not just the conventional ones), our hero with a dark past slowly gets to the bottom of the story and finds one big twist waiting for him. This isn’t the first 911 thriller (2013’s The Call, with Halle Berry, is perhaps the best known of the others), but this one remains surprisingly rigorous in its intention to never leave the 911 call centre. There are only a handful of actors appearing on-screen, with the rest of the action playing out in voices and brief flashes of imagination. The Guilty tries to reach for something bigger than an abduction story later on, as the protagonist’s dark past is tied up to larger questions about police abuse, but in the end the film remains a tight 90 minutes claustrophobic exercise. It’s clearly a COVID-shot film (production notes state that the director was able to keep on directing the 11-day shoot despite being sick, by using a remote production location and plenty of video monitors), reflecting the isolation and remoteness of other people during that specific period in time—not to mention the apocalyptic environment of Los Angeles being surrounded by wildfires. Its effectiveness does have its limits, though: the plot is a bit thin, with the big twist being predictable and the protagonist’s background problems being perfunctory. Still, The Guilty is not a bad pick—and Gyllenhaal must have enjoyed the change to stretch some acting muscles during a relatively short and intense shoot.

  • Blood Gnome (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2022) As someone who watches a lot of movies, high and low, it’s confounding to hear arguments about “worst movies of the year” when talking about big-budget, technically competent movies with a well-known cast. Sure, it’s fun to pile on when big projects go awry, and there’s not denying that some of them aren’t very good. But “worst movie of the year”? For that you just have to go digging into low-budget tripe made for non-theatrical distribution channels. Something much like Blood Gnome, for instance, which looks as if it was filmed in a series of garages with people with more mercenary intentions than talent. Writer-director John Lechago combines an invisible murderous gnome creature with the Los Angeles BDSM scene as his angle for Blood Gnome, but the result is terrible no matter how you look at it. Muddily shot will full-framing of actors to ensure that we don’t focus too much on the threadbare sets, Blood Gnome is trash and at least has an awareness of it. The script’s awfulness is not helped by some terrible production values. While the BDSM angle desperately wants to be good for cheap titillation, the best it can do is briefly feature pin-up model Julie Strain as a dominatrix—the rest of it plays with the subculture at a very superficial level. The rest of the film isn’t much better, and anyone looking to get some cheap thrills out of the result is going to be best-served by looking anywhere else. The monsters are mean-spirited enough to go beyond simply killing BDSM enthusiasts to cyberbullying the protagonist in mildly amusing early-2000s chat applications. I’ll give one meagre compliment to Blood Gnome: as ugly and awful as it is, there’s enough dumb stuff in there to keep anyone’s attention. That may be the faintest compliment possible, but you’d be surprised at how many other movies (many of them low-budget horror) can’t even achieve that level of engagement. Oh yes—there’s much worse than Blood Gnome out there if you want to talk about the worst movies of the year…

  • Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) There’s no shame in admitting that I was primed for Manhattan Melodrama. With a cast like Clarke Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy, how could it be otherwise? Even the rough plot summary seems interesting, as it sets up Powell and Clarke as playing childhood friends growing up on opposite sides of the law, and Loy complicating everything. But the execution of the film feels oddly lacking. Sure, Powell is up to his usual suave persona playing an umpteenth role as a lawyer. Yes, Loy is cute and Gable does what Gable became famous for. But compared to their other performances, there’s no spark in Manhattan Melodrama—although it’s worth noting that, at the time, it was a significant film for all three: It was part of Gable’s ascension to superstardom throughout the decade, solidified Powell’s increasingly heroic persona and was the first of fourteen films that Powell and Loy made together. The success of the film at the time was considerable, helped along by the public knowledge that notorious gangster John Dillinger was shot right after coming out of a screening of the film. This all helps the film be interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily make it all that good or entertaining. Manhattan Melodrama is watchable enough, all right, but modern viewers may get hung up on the truthful “melodrama” of the title, as the ending gets more and more convoluted in its moral choices.

  • Caged— Le prede umane aka Caged Women (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2022) There’s an entire category of, shall we say, more lurid films that doesn’t warrant any critical discussion, and Caged Women is very, very close to the frontier that separates those films from those worth a review. In fact, that may be its most distinctive feature. A self-aware “women in prison” film, Caged Woman doesn’t show any shame in overtly playing with the codes of the genre. The beautiful protagonist spending most of her time in various states of undress; the lengthy soft-core sex scenes; the inevitable lesbian sex contrasted with the ugly rape scenes; the evil wardens; the fact that it’s taking place in some other country is invariably portrayed as primitive and corrupt. The plot could fit on a napkin—By my count, the first fifteen minutes of the film merely serve to show the heroine travelling alone in a tropical country, taking a ridiculously drawn-out shower, meeting a man at the bar and having cinematic sex with him. Fifteen minutes. You can imagine how the rest of the film’s 90 minutes goes. Trumped-up drug charges? Check. Female guard being more sadistic than the men? Check. Fighting between female inmates? Check. More showers or firehose-spraying scenes? Check. Sadistic wardens selling the female prisoners in prostitution for male clients? Check. Prisoners being used as prey in a barbaric hunt? Check. A helicopter being used as a means of escape? Check. Even sticking to non-lurid cinema, there have been many women-in-prison movies like Caged Women—most of them ugly, gory and dispiriting. What sets Caged Women apart—and makes it just a tiny bit more likable as far as I’m concerned—is that it’s not really that interested in the violent aspect of women-in-prison films. Yes, there’s a bad rape sequence and some violence toward the end, but it’s not as ugly as many other films. (Yes, I know that’s a terrible statement to make—but I’m comparing exploitation films to each other, not making a grander statement.)  Caged Women wisely puts the focus on erotic voyeurism rather than out-and-out violence and horror like many other films: writer-director Leandro Lucchetti seems to delight in the naked women and gets through the violence in a perfunctory way, which is how it should be if you have to have violence in women-in-prison film. Pilar Orive is beautiful as the protagonist, and the cinematography sometimes shows intentions of being more than just a shlock-fest. None of these make Caged Women worth watching—even in avoiding the very bottom of the barrel, it remains cheap, exploitative and nonsensical. The scene in which two sweaty female prisoners put in a heat box end up licking the sweat off each other to survive is, ahem, too dumb for mere words. But if we’re going to do some authentic film criticism around here, it’s important to tease apart the less-awful from the truly vile, and if Caged Women does remain an unrecommendable piece of exploitation, it’s important to note that there’s much worse out there. (Note for the completists: The version I watched is the uncut French-language one.)

  • Forever, Darling (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) By all rights, Forever, Darling should be a much better film than it is. Put together by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez after the success of The Long, Long Trailer, the film was clearly meant to capitalize on the success of the pair during I Love Lucy, being shot during the summer hiatus of the show and showing the couple in the lead roles. Even the premise—what with a guardian angel trying to help our character go through marital troubles—is rich in possibilities. It’s even funnier when James Mason, playing the angel, is also revealed to be playing James Mason—the angel taking the appearance of each person’s, ahem, “favourite movie actor.”  (It’s just as funny to learn that while Mason was a sex-symbol at the time, the first pick for the role was Cary Grant… except that he was unaffordable.)  We’ve got Ball in fine form here, wide-eyed expressions of disbelief and surprise doing much of the comedic heavy lifting. But even with all of that put together, the script barely pokes at the comic implications of the premise, and its subservient-wife message has aged very poorly even for an innocuous 1950s comedy about a couple learning to get along. Even a spirited third act set in the wilds of a camping trip fails to gather much traction. Audiences at the time agreed—the film was a commercial bust, which stopped any further Ball/Arnez films from going forward. Too bad in many ways…

  • X aka X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2022) What’s interesting in a film like X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is how what was clearly meant as a sensational film can become creaky compared to modern production standards… and yet still have something unnerving to it. A favourite of the pulp sci-fi era and still one of Roger Corman’s better-known productions, this is a Science Fiction tragedy about a scientist inventing a serum to allow him to go beyond the limits of human perceptions, testing it on himself and progressively losing control of his senses. The point here isn’t the classic tale of hubris and conceptual breakthrough (although it goes light on the breakthrough and heavy on the increasing horrors) as much as the episodes along the way, shifting the tale into slightly different subgenres along the way. There’s nothing subtle or even credible here—I was particularly amused at a casino’s inaction when a man wearing wraparound glasses comes by, wins at cards and says something like, “They can’t stop me from playing!”  Well, no, any casino in the real world would have kicked you out a long time ago. Another sequence set at a typically early-1960s party goes through amazing convolutions in order to portray the protagonist’s perspective of everyone appearing naked… without showing anything too risqué. It’s all part of the fun, although I was primed from Stephen King’s Dance Macabre to expect a much more hard-hitting ending. (As King writes, “I have heard rumors—they may or may not be true—that the final line of dialogue was cut from the film as too horrifying. If true, it was the only possible capper for what has already happened. According to the rumor, Milland screams: I can still see!” but I had forgotten that it was King’s hearsay rather than what was in the film.)  There have been numerous attempts to remake the film since its first release, and it’s obvious why: there’s a kernel of a great idea here that could support quite a bit of drama and spectacular special effects, not to mention better episodes of the protagonist seeing beyond human senses. I’m not normally a fan of remakes, but if anyone wants to have another go at X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, then I wish them the best.

  • The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Let’s face it: William Powell had such a great presence playing suave amateur detectives that there’s no limit to the number of similar films he could have done without annoying audiences. Every Powell fan is aware of his career-best turn in The Thin Man and its sequels; nearly every fan is also aware of his two turns as Philo Vance. But The Ex-Mrs. Bradford is a bit more obscure, and that probably qualifies it as a hidden gem of sorts for anyone simply wanting more of detective Powell. The murder-mystery plot is both convoluted and strikingly ludicrous, but that’s not the point—the point is watching Powell doing what he did best (clearly beloved by the writers and directors for doing do) and interacting with Jean Arthur as she plays his ex-wife cunningly working through a plan to re-marry him. Their interplay is decent, and their characters are clearly from that tradition of 1930s mysteries fast-talking couples. Like many films of the time and genre, it packs a lot in its 82 minutes, and remains just as delightful today as it was then—no, The Ex-Mrs. Bradford is not a Thin Man film, but even a slightly-less good copy of The Thin Man is still quite a good time.

  • Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Documentaries starring elderly actors or filmmakers reflecting on their careers are essentially a subgenre by now, and they have to be approached with very specific expectations. Forget about getting the full story, let alone the true story: At their ages, with their reputations, stars sitting down to talk about their careers want a monologue rather than an interview. They will present semi-fictional takes on their lives and careers, impose later conclusions on their earlier actions and generally come out of it having delivered a performance about themselves. Leslie Caron is no exception, as her rather chaotic career is described throughout The Reluctant Star. Going between her native France, Hollywood and London, she never regained the superstardom of her first few years (it’s hard to top early years featuring An American in Paris and Gigi), but says she was happy about that… hence the title. You have to take those statements with a grain of salt, though, as she expresses frustration at being unable to act in more French films. But even as a hagiography, it’s still an interesting portrait. Caron had a very different career than her contemporaries, finding a living through lower-profile dramatic roles in three moviemaking centres but never pursuing or recapturing early stardom. She still comes across as a lively, wise presence with much to say. It’s amusing to see some of my favourite films of hers not getting much attention (namely Fanny and Father Goose), and some of her own favourites being far less known to the general public. In the end, authorized hagiography or not, it’s just a delight for The Reluctant Star to have captured her thoughts. Let print biographers tackle the inner workings of her psychology and the less-admirable aspects of her life, if any—here she describes herself in her own words, and that’s interesting enough.

  • Angel and the Badman (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) I am not a John Wayne fan, so I’m seeing his films more out of cinematic history duty than anything else. Angel and the Badman is best known for three very different things these days. First: it marked Wayne’s first film as a producer, meaning that we can get a better idea here of what he really wanted to do, or what he really wanted to play. Second: The film is in the public domain, which means that you can watch it from its Wikipedia page and so it remains more popular than similar westerns due to its wide availability. The third aspect is the most interesting. Rather than make a bog-standard western with the expected gunfights and horse chases, Wayne here plays in a far less action-driven, more romantic kind of western. The story of a wounded gunfighter slowly being nursed back to health by two dedicated women, Angel and the Badman doesn’t feel like a standard western and that very much works to its advantage. While Wayne doesn’t make much of a romantic protagonist (admittedly a major point against the film), it does offer a change of pace from his usual characters… or, rather, as much of a change as possible with Wayne’s limited range. Given the limitations of the lead actor, that makes Angel and the Badman more of an interesting film than a good one. But I’ll take it—My opinion of Wayne’s persona being as low as it is, anything even slightly different is usually a step up.