Author: Christian Sauvé

  • American Dreamz (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) The worst thing you can say about a satire is that it’s toothless. The point of satire is to make a mark, leave an impression and challenge preconceptions. It would be tempting to look at American Dreamz fifteen years later and blame its ineffectiveness on how the world has moved on: the idea of blending terrorism and the American presidency into a reality-TV show sounds almost plausible these days. Nearly every big satirical plank of the movie has been superseded or absorbed. Reality-TV shows? Utterly unremarkable. A terrible president? Much worse awaited those who disliked Bush. Islamic terrorists? Wait until you hear about who invaded the US Capitol! But even if you account for the normalization of its ideas, it turns out that American Dreamz was not that favourably received at the time of its release either. Critics called it limp and unfocused, which remains a fair assessment a decade and a half later. Going for an ensemble cast of characters coming from three very different worlds doesn’t make everything stronger: instead, it dilutes everything into a lumpy soup of ideas loosely developed and badly put together. It doesn’t help that writer-director Paul Weitz takes some terrible shortcuts on his way to the conclusion (including a bomb with instructions so convenient that it can be used by anyone) and doesn’t know when enough is enough: At 107 minutes, it feels much longer and drawn out, with a conclusion meant to be wild but rather feels disconnected. There’s some decent work on the acting front (most notably Hugh Grant playing a deliciously slimy reality-TV host years before he reinvented his career by playing scabrous supporting characters) but everything is held back by an undercooked script that doesn’t seem to have all that much to say beyond pointing at a few things and trying to get us to agree that they’re weird. It certainly played better in 2006 as a thin critique, but today? Not much to see here.

  • The Fallout (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) I was not expecting to appreciate The Fallout all that much, especially when it becomes obvious that the film is about the impact of a school shooting on a typical American teenager. The almost-exclusively American phenomenon of high school shootings would be, in any sane society, a sobering call to action and self-reflection about the many, many aspects of American culture that enable those aberrant phenomena—but the day America decided that it could live with Sandy Hooks was the day I gave up a good chunk of my optimism about American rationality. As a result, I very much dislike anything about high school shootings in movies, and find its use often exploitative and hypocritical. (I seem to be a minority here, though—I’ve now seen two films in three months that start with high school shootings, a cliché fast approaching black-protagonist-shot-down-while-reaching-for-his-cell-phone in cheap theatrics.)  But The Fallout manages to get even reluctant audiences involved, as it charts in sensitive fashion the progressive breakdown of a shooting survivor who insists that she’s fine. Her actions betray her, however: drawing away from her parents, turning to hedonism as a substitute for meaning, engaging in riskier behaviour that would have been out of character before the shooting. It’s all rather well-executed, with a very effective ending that hints at an endless cycle of violence sparing no one. The Fallout remains a small-scale film intensely focused on character. Writer-director Megan Park manages an impressive directing debut, and Jenna Ortega delivers a good performance even under the scrutiny of nearly every single scene of the film. Shailene Woodley shows up in a two-scene supporting role as a likable therapist, but much of the film goes for lesser-known actors and a close-up approach. This is not my kind of film and even less my kind of topic, but I’m suitably impressed at how well it works even in trying circumstances.

  • Dune: Part One (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, January 2022) All right, let’s put a few cards on the table. I last read Frank Herbert’s Dune about a quarter-century ago, but I still think it’s one of the greatest Science Fiction novels ever written—a wonderful blend of space opera elements, strong atmosphere, great characterization and grander-than-life ideas. I haven’t seen the 2000 miniseries, but I really liked the glimpses we got from Jorodowsky’s Dune and I’m curiously partial to the wild baroque approach of David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune, which I revisited last year and found much more enjoyable than expected—not to mention its quasi-iconic elements. My expectations for Denis Villeneuve’s new version were high—I really enjoy the fact that a French Canadian is the reigning king of Hollywood Science Fiction, and while I don’t necessarily love all of his earlier films, they’re easy to respect. Is he the right choice for Dune, however? I’m not sure. Oh, I liked this Dune: Part One all right—it’s immensely respectful of the original, fleshes out some of the things glossed upon during Lynch’s version, is so slickly directed as to be wonderful and manages some great casting coups. My initial disappointment at how it only adapted the first part of the novel was mollified by how the film’s success led to the greenlighting of the second half. On the other hand, this Part One does have a number of built-in issues. Some of them may disappear in time, once Part Two is here and delivers on all promises. Until then, however, we’re stuck not only with the first half of a story but an austere, slow-moving first half. Villeneuve’s approach is not wild and baroque: it’s ponderous, massive, more concerned with awe than pacing. It’s an approach all right, but there were a number of times that I found myself missing the wilder style of the 1984 version. (Ironically, this Dune is dumber when it does give in to the grandiose—its ornithopters make no sense at all.)  As much as I’d like to like it, I’m stuck waiting for the second half to make up my mind. I did like a lot of the casting—Timothée Chalamet grew on me as the protagonist, which is more than I can say about Rebecca Ferguson. But Oscar Isaac, John Brolin, Dave Bautista, Jason Momoa and Javier Bardem all make for great characters. Sharon Duncan-Brewster gender-flips a rather dull role into an interesting character, and I guess we’ll get a lot more Zendaya in the next instalment. I’m not entirely happy with the pacing: the already laborious task of presenting a complex new universe is further slowed down by a slow pace, something that becomes increasingly irritating in the last act of the film, as what should have been a climax (the attack and exile) is drawn out into a too-long half hour meant to set up even more of the material. (It’s also a sequence that sees many of the most compelling and diverse characters die so that our duller Caucasian protagonist survives.)  Still, generally speaking, I am cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Part Two based on this incomplete Part One—much of the groundwork is done, and now we’re ready to see the day where “the eyes of the galaxy turned toward Arrakis.” (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, May 2024) A second viewing of this Part One in close proximity with Part Two leaves me with one conclusion: I do respect Part One better now that I’ve seen its conclusion, but I don’t like it much more. Villeneuve’s epic style is synonymous with interminable (something that the last half-hour of Part One highlights all too well), and his iconography isn’t particularly memorable—especially if you compare it to the Lynch version. Oh, he does understand and execute the novel better than any version so far, but there’s clearly little concision to it. Even individual shots are easily twice as long as they need to be. But now that both parts of the film are out, don’t watch one without the other. Set aside the five hours and watch both—you’ll be awed, but maybe not as entertained as you’d like.

  • Jalsaghar [The Music Room] (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) A constant theme in my reviews of Satyajit Ray’s filmography is that I have a hard time connecting to his movies. When I do (as in The Big City), I’m more surprised than anything else. The rest of the time, I’m left more admiring his writing-directing skills than actually enjoying the result. The Music Room feels like typical Ray to me—I like a lot of bits and pieces, I respect how it’s pulled together but I’m left more bored than anything else. There is certainly a kernel of a good idea in its central character—a local lord whose fortune and glory days are not just gone, but whose appetite for culture is dilapidating his wealth even faster. Living in palatial surroundings falling apart, he spares no expenses on his passion: live music. What I anticipated being an issue with The Music Room, its musical numbers, instead ended up being one of its biggest strengths: a cinematic capture of classic Indian music, meaning something western viewers such as myself have very little exposure to. I wasn’t enthusiastic about the first number, but by the last one I was regarding them as highlights. The rest of The Music Room is typical Ray: slow-paced, steeped in Indian culture, not particularly interested in happily-ever-after (or even plotting, for that matter) and with black-and-white cinematography that only hints at the rich colours of its surroundings. None of that is a slam against what he does best—but it’s not necessarily something I care about. But now, at least, I’ve added one more Ray film to my database and can see what the fuss is about.

  • The Mummy (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) There have been four “official” movies called The Mummy in the past century, all three of the recent ones trying to ape the original 1932 Universal Monsters version. The success of those remakes has been variable—I’m still inordinately fond of the 1999 Brendan Fraser version starring the lovely Rachel Weisz, but the 2017 Dark Universe one was a big disappointment. The 1959 Hammer-produced one was the last remaining on my list, but as it turns out, it’s just as variable (and unfaithful to the original) as the other ones. As with most Hammer remakes of the Universal movies, The Mummy has a charm of its own—early Technicolor cinematography, with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee headlining the cast. It’s dated but not unpleasantly so, and it takes a lot of liberties with the source material. Some of it works—it’s fun to have a slightly more action-packed finale—while some of it doesn’t: an aspect of the original film that many remakes miss is the strength of the romantic component of the film, and I feel as if this one held off a long time before introducing the heroine, who’s the spitting image of the Mummy’s beloved. Still, this take on The Mummy feels one-of-a-piece with the rest of the classic Hammer horror films: not particularly good, but enjoyable on its own terms and having a distinct personality compared to the original or later remakes.

  • Haunted Trail (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) It’s possible for a film to be unusual without being original, and if Haunted Trail claims its distinction by featuring a nearly-all-black cast in a classic slasher formula, the film itself quickly becomes tedious once you get over the racial distinction. The thin plot has to do with a bunch of college “friends” heading over to a haunted trail, then being ironically killed one by one, as the fake horrors of the trail end up being all too fatal. A too-large ensemble cast is designed for gradual whittling, not helped along by some rather unremarkable acting even from attractive leads. Where the film works is in its effective cinematography on what is reportedly a low budget: even from the first few moments, there are some slick visuals here that help create the foreboding atmosphere that is a strict minimum for such horror films. But watch out, because these images don’t necessarily cohere into a sustained suspense film: hampered by its low budget, Haunted Trail struggles with effective staging or editing, the nice shots seldom coming together into an absorbing whole. Some terrible screenwriting isn’t forgiven by a semi-comedic tone that isn’t sustained by the film’s conclusion or even much of its duration. Suffice to say that even as black comedians will dismiss dumb white characters in slasher movies (as mentioned in the film!), these specific characters don’t do any better. Indeed, by the time one decides to go back because of a missing earring, you either choose to believe it’s a joke… or fume at how stupid this is getting. A conclusion meant to be shocking merely peters out in a lame motive and slap-dash coda that ignores the number of consequences about to fall on the escaping murderer. I wanted Haunted Trail to be fun and entertaining—I have a huge soft spot for low-budget black-cast movies broadcast on BET, wanted to see what director Robin Givens could do with a horror film, and some of the actresses look terrific. But even a truckload of indulgence (and, to be fair, a few laughs) is not enough to save Haunted Trail from its inherent problems. Come on, filmmakers—do better than this.

  • Our Daily Bread (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) King Vidor is one of my favourite directors of the late-silent/early sound film era, and he certainly ends up in the top three once you remove comedies from the equation. While I have a hard time getting into straight-up drama films of the era, his humanistic, cinematically ambitious approach makes his movies easy to admire even a hundred years later. But that’s not necessarily a guarantee of success, and while watching Our Daily Bread, I found myself concluding that the Vidor touch wasn’t universally successful. I suspect that there’s an important element of setting at play: while Vidor’s other films took on urban characters (The Crowd) or wartime drama (The Big Parade), Our Daily Bread accompanies its urban protagonist to the farm in order to present a tale of hardscrabble survival in the face of a drought. That’s… not necessarily as interesting as spending time on the trenches or in 1920s Manhattan. While the film eventually culminates into a large-scale interesting event (the manual digging of a very long ditch to bring water to the withering crops), much of the film is spent in misery along with its characters trying to figure out how to survive. Vidor’s work here as a writer-director is not necessarily inferior—his humanistic touch remains comforting, as does his interest in collective action in the face of adversity. Our Daily Bread is interesting as a depiction of its time and the ways American society was playing along with different models of living during the Great Depression, but I found myself underwhelmed by the result—perhaps as a result of coming in with too-high expectations seeing Vidor’s name in the credits.

  • Jeopardy (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) There’s much to say about solid thrillers featuring well-known actors. While they may fade into obscurity, they remain satisfying entertainment pieces, especially if you’re not expecting all that much from the result. All Barbara Stanwyck devotees will eventually make their way to Jeopardy, a genre suspense film that manages to add just enough dramatic complexity to a straightforward race-against-the-clock thriller. It begins innocently enough, as an ordinary American family (mom, dad, son) heads over to Baja California for their holidays. After quite a bit of throat-clearing and scene-setting (probably a by-product of the original story coming from a 22-minute radio play), the thrills begin in earnest once Dad gets his leg stuck underneath an unmovable piece of timber… on a beach… as the tide is rising. It’s up to Mom to get help, except that (in the kinds of contrivances that only make sense in genre thrillers) the only person available to help is an escaped convict who has already demonstrated his ability to kill. Will she convince him to help? Will they make it back to the beach before the tide rises? And what will be the cost? Well-known genre suspense director John Sturges was still in the ascendant phase of his career when he completed Jeopardy, and his work here heralds the long string of successes he would later have. Stanwyck has what looks like an inglorious role as a typical 1950s housewife largely dependent on her husband (that “car driving” scene… eek) but she makes it work, especially as the film suggests increasingly darker trade-offs necessary in getting the help of the escaped killer. That last element adds a nice patina of dramatic weight to the more conventional rescue plot, and it’s what makes Jeopardy more surprising than you’d expect. No, it’s not going to be a film that will often be mentioned in contemporary discussions. But as an example of a rough-and-tumble thriller, it’s surprisingly watchable and just substantial enough to impress.

  • 10 Rillington Place (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Everything about 10 Rillington Place is terrible and uncomfortable, and you may use this as a recommendation if you want. Telling us about the real-life crime story of a serial killer at work in post-war England, this film has the unfortunate characteristic of coming from the early-1970s… meaning that when it gets dark, it gets really dark in look and subject matter. I could continue describing it, but it’s just going to get more and more depressing. The historical facts are bad enough: the killer looked like a kindly older man pretending to be a doctor, but he was really a serial killer necrophile who counted his wife among his victims and disposed of the corpses of his victims in his garden, or stuffing them into the walls of the flat he was living in. Awful stuff, but it doesn’t stop there, as an innocent neighbour was framed by the killer, accused of some of the crimes and hanged by the British judicial system before the truth was revealed. If that dry recitation of facts isn’t dispiriting enough, consider that 10 Rillington Place itself pulls few punches, and revels in the grimy, damp realism of its presentation. You may want to take a shower at the end of it… if you make it to the end, that is, because it just gets worse and worse the longer it goes on, with a written epilogue barely bringing some closure to the entire awful affair. This true-crime story makes few concessions to good taste, restraint or genre elements—it feels as terrible as the real story was. Richard Attenborough will surprise a few twenty-first century viewers by his portrayal of the killer, with John Hurt playing the patsy unjustly hanged for the murders. 10 Rillington Place is certainly not a terrible film, but if you’re already refractory to early-1970s cinema for its deep and unrelenting grimness, this is not the film that’s going to change your mind.

  • Nothing in Common (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Tom Hanks did many small disposable 1980s comedies before becoming America’s favourite everyday man, and while Nothing in Common is really not one of his best-remembered ones, it does have two or three elements worth highlighting. The first is most obvious in the first half of this disjointed film, as he plays a fast-talking adman who’s got exactly the kind of life he wants: an upward career, a fast pace, a devoted crew of employees, a different woman every night, a jeep, fancy vacations, etc. Hanks is a delight, as he jokingly rampages throughout his office, negotiates horizontally with a client’s daughter, and seemingly has the world on a string. But such characters aren’t meant to stay like that in American cinema, and so the first cracks in his perfect life appear once his parents separate, his dad falls ill, he learns quite a lot about his parents’ dysfunctional relationship and his newest client gets skittery. Nothing in Common has a clear inflection point that makes it feel like two different films in one—a silly comedy at first and then (predictably) a more heartfelt film about a father/son relationship through hard times. While the increasingly serious result is not going to everyone’s liking, you can see why such a role would interest the young Hanks and how it shows, in a microcosm, the arc of his career as a whole—first as a comedian, then as a more serious actor. The problem with Nothing in Common isn’t necessarily its shift from the comic to the dramatic—it’s that once all is said and done, it feels as if everyone was enjoying themselves far more in the first half, pushing it perhaps too far into fun considering the inevitable let-down of the second half. There’s nothing subtle about the opening moments, but then the last few scenes all deal in small victories, textured arrangements and going back to the basics that the protagonist cheerfully ignored at first. That’s traditional and respectable, but unsatisfying by design. It would be easy to say that the two halves of Nothing in Common have too little in common.

  • River’s Edge (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) When I ask you to picture a “1980s teenage film,” you probably have an impression in mind that’s half-John Hugues romantic high school comedy and half-Porky’s sex comedies. That misguided impression is probably the single best thing you can bring into River’s Edge, because it highlights that it’s a film at the polar opposite. Inspired by a terrible true-crime story, it’s about bored and apathetic small-town teenagers who barely react when one of their own murders his girlfriend and leaves her near a river. One of them (played by Keanu Reeves in an early role, fortunately the closest that the film has to a hero) has enough sense to understand that this is wrong and reports it to the authorities… which leads teenagers to talk about betrayal and snitching. At the opposite side of this narrow moral coin, Crispin Glover plays a much darker teenager who actively plots to hide the murder, protect the killer and punish the snitch. (As that wasn’t enough, there’s an even younger character who’s even darker, but there’s a limit to how much terrible things I can fit in a paragraph-long review.)  No, River’s Edge isn’t your standard 1980s teenage film, and it’s worth noting that it seems to be inhabiting a singularly joyless version of our world where nihilism is key and nothing really matters. Drugs and hedonism define the characters in the absence of anything worthwhile. (In related news, Dennis Hopper plays a supporting character with a surprisingly important plot function.) River’s Edge is still impressively dark and hasn’t aged all that badly if you’re the kind of person who believes that teenagers are (and, apparently, will forever remain) dangerous feral creatures. It’s no fun at all to watch and there’s a weight to the result that will linger long after the credits roll. Just understand that you’re not going into a typical 1980s teen movie film with this one.

  • Mockingbird (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) I thought I was reasonably aware of the Blumhouse film catalogue, so it was a small surprise to see their logo pop up at the beginning of the lesser-known Mockingbird. There’s a reason for that. Two of them, in fact: After enjoying some early success with overperforming horror hits, Blumhouse expanded just a bit too fast in the early 2010s, and the quality of the results suffered, leading to lengthy delays before some movies were quietly dumped through streaming services rather than theatrical releases. Mockingbird was one of those, and it doesn’t take a long time to realize that it’s not particularly good. As a matte of fact, the longer you watch it, the worse it becomes. The premise itself doesn’t make sense, as three groups of people are gifted a video camera on their doorsteps and immediately start filming everything before being shown that they will die if they don’t keep filming and obey. But it gets worse with a lazily-justified setting of 1995, character actions that defy any kind of plausibility, impossible logistics (such as a camera with no off button, infinite batteries and infinite capacity), and a conclusion that flies off the rails of what’s possible even in a horror film. The film’s found footage is as irritating as the most mediocre examples of the genre usually are, and that also goes for the characters as well. Nothing is believable here—it’s all clumsily handled through authorial fiat, with the characters being puppets for something that turns out to have no point. Forget about thematic meaning: this is a film that just wants to be mean-spirited, much like writer-director Bryan Bertino previous effort, the intolerable The Strangers. There’s some rough competence to the way it’s put together, but it’s going to be up to the viewer to decide whether that’s enough to offset the constant irritation of the rest of the film. It’s o surprise if Mockingbird remains near the bottom of the Blumhouse list in terms of impact, fun or quality.

  • The Catered Affair (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) I suspect that most modern viewers of The Catered Affairs will be drawn to the film for its cast (as I was): With names such as Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds and Rod Taylor (plus Barry Fitzgerald for an even-deeper cut of classic Hollywood), it’s the kind of film worth watching if only to see those actors going up against each other. The first half of the film has plenty to offer, as a “simple” marriage between two young people of different classes (Reynolds and Taylor) soon spins out of control thanks to the meddling of their parents. Before anyone knows it, the projected event will include several hundred guests and costs so much as to alter the lives and plans of the poor girl’s parents. There’s a quiet desperation in evidence here, as we understand that the girl’s mother is pouring decades of past dreams into this catered affair. Davis (affecting an Irish accent) adds a lot to an unglamorous character that could have been played as deluded, and Borgnine is quite effective, as he lays out the impact that such a folly will cost them. Beyond that promising setup, however, the film runs out of gas long before a rather predictable ending. Despite a script written by Gore Vidal from a Paddy Chayefsky play, what should have been a collaboration between two screenwriting legends ends up being both trite and boring once the conflict has been set up. The low-key working-class backdrop is not fancy and neither is Richard Brooks’ straightforward direction, all contributing to a growing sense of blandness to the result. In the end, what remains are the actors’s performances, some of them stretching acting muscles in ways not often seen in their best-remembered work.

  • Bruiser (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) Acclaimed directors can be justifiably proud of their best-known work, but they usually have an entire body of work to consider. The fun begins when you get into the completion game of watching movies because they’re directed by a Known Name, and make your way to those lesser-known works. George A. Romeo is best known for his zombie movies (something that would come to define and take over his career, especially in the last decade of his life), but thirteen of his nineteen films are not “of the Dead” (including Juice on the Loose, a 1974 documentary about then-football player O. J. Simpson?!?). Bruiser was the last of those. It’s… not that good. The premise does have a kick to it, as a put-down milquetoast man suddenly acquires/imagines a mask that allows him to unleash his inner violent fantasies and goes on a killing spree against the bullies in his life. There’s some psychological depth to the dissociation mechanism that would allow such a thing to happen, and the ambiguity about whether the mask is evil or merely a pretext. But Romero wasn’t interested in such subtleties. What starts Bruiser on the wrong foot is the caricatural depiction of the protagonist’s terrible life, with an abusive boss, a best friend who defrauds him, an openly contemptuous wife (who’s openly carrying an affair with his boss and his best friend), a maid who steals from him… it gets to be laughable, but it’s the foundation on which everything is built. Violent fantasy sequences become real murders and the film is off to some predictable business, although the ironic finale (which disposes of the mask until it’s needed again) is better than average. It’s not a terrible film, and a cast headlined by Jason Flemyng (as protagonist) and Peter Stormare (as deliciously evil boss) does make it work. But compared to the potential of its premise, the film ends up short of its ambitions and turns out to be a relatively ordinary entry. Romero wasn’t infallible—something made even more apparent when he followed Bruiser with three more “of the Dead” movies with diminishing returns.

  • Enhanced (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) The problem with good ideas is that they often end up being copied by people who don’t have the creativity to have good ideas of their own, don’t understand the reasons why they’re good ideas and don’t have the skills to execute them well. Super-powered mutants aren’t necessarily a terrible idea, but by this time in the superhero era, you better bring something fresh or competent to the table if you want good reviews. Enhanced, sadly, does neither—and could be entered as a contestant in the category of Blandest Superhero film. I’m not sure anyone can make a more generic super-mutant film if they deliberately tried to. A blend of tired tropes executed in snooze-inducing fashion, it’s a film that feels satisfied by stealing ideas from much better movies without putting in the effort to make itself distinctive. The cinematography is a familiar blend of dark urban landscapes and laughably ridiculous super-secret military installations. The plot is familiar to the point of making sense even if you should happen to miss entire minutes of it. The actors are there for the paycheque, and writer-director James Mark barely manages to present the material he’s got on screen. There’s a very late blip of interest as we finally get to the ending confrontation but it’s far too little for what feels like a substantial investment, even at 99 minutes. The only superheroic thing about Enhanced is how quickly it’s forgotten after viewing.