Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Mr. Jones (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) If you often find professional movie reviewers obsessing over a specific film’s reason to exist, there’s a good reason for that. Knowing about Hollywood’s greenlighting process means that there are dozens more film proposals than finished films, and something always tilts the balance toward what shows up on screen. Usually money, but more often money with added purpose. By the time Mr. Jones was filming in 1991, Richard Gere (who co-produced the film) was arriving at the top of his superstardom following well-regarded performances in Pretty Woman and Internal Affairs—it’s natural for actors with that level of clout to start looking for acting showcases. He certainly gets one here, as a protagonist with bipolar disorder that gives him the chance to go from one emotional extreme to another in the same scene. In director Mike Figgis’ hands, the film turns into a slickly overproduced romantic drama that keeps the focus on Gere at all times, whether he’s going through several emotional states, cajoling a foreman, rushing an orchestra, romancing his psychiatrist or threatening to jump off a building. It’s a showy performance that overshadows a script built on contrivances and nice Hollywood sentiments—the romance between patient and doctor means that Mr. Jones could be subtitled “Medical Malpractice: The Movie,” and the pat overemotional ending rings hollow during the entire end credits. Still, credit should go to Gere: it’s a terrific performance and it does much to make us forget about the rest of the film. It exists to showcase Gere, and it does just that.

  • Ripoux contre ripoux (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) I was very dubious that Ripoux contre ripoux would be interesting, considering the unlikely success of the first film in the series, Les Ripoux, in making audiences sympathize with a pair of crooked cops shaking out their neighbourhood for cash and favours. How can you make a fun sequel to that? (Aside from the obvious problem of the previous film’s conclusion—which this one cheerfully ignores.)  Well, the solution, as the opening act of the sequel, is to have them fall from grace (after an act of honesty, ironically enough) and be replaced by even worse crooked cops that set out to squeeze the neighbourhood for all it’s worth. That leads the oppressed neighbourhood shop owners to head to the rural retreat of our horse-raising protagonists to beg them to come back and get rid of their replacements. No, it’s not quite as neat or original as the first film, but Ripoux contre Ripoux still manages to extend the dubious charm of the previous film—Thierry Lhermitte and especially Philippe Noiret are in fine form as the crooked cops asked to prevent an even greater evil from taking over, even when their allies prove fickle and their allegiances uncertain. The sense of neighbourhood is muddled somewhat by the protagonists’ temporary exile, but the film does roar back to a better tempo during its last half as the action returns to Paris. It’s more of the same, but pleasantly so—while I still have substantial moral qualms about making heroes out of crooked cops, there’s still some charm to the series and its lead actors.

  • The Last Gangster (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) As the story goes, Edward G. Robinson was getting tired of playing gangsters but was remodeling his house and needed the money. An offer from MGM (rather than his usual Warner Brothers) later—voilà, one more gangster role in The Last Gangster, albeit one that greatly benefited from Robinson’s experience in lending depth to what could have been a caricature. More significantly, it offers a singular film in which Robinson, in his prime, plays an ascendant James Stewart—two recognizable actors going at each other with their own styles. Stewart is quite good (even with an unusual moustache) as an urbane, compassionate newspaperman who rivals Robinson’s gangster for the affection of his ex-wife and son. It all escalates, providing Robinson with a few showcase sequences and a heroic guns-blazing finale with an even worse criminal. Executed by the professional standards of the time, The Last Gangster is not quite as grandiose as its title suggests, but it’s a nice actor’s showcase and the best opportunity to see two screen legends on opposite sides. (They’d later reunite on Cheyenne Autumn, but not as direct opponents.)

  • Ray Donovan: The Movie (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) I watched just enough of the first season of Ray Donovan to be interested in the film epilogue, but clearly not enough to get the most out of it. Meant as a crash-conclusion to the series after it was unceremoniously cut short, Ray Donovan: The Movie focuses its plotting on the melodramatic family matters that got me to stop watching the series in the first place—Donovan as a Hollywood fixer is interesting, but Donovan as a man stuck between the criminal activities of his father and his highly dysfunctional family is far more ordinary. But the series made its choices seasons ago, driving Donovan cross-country back to the less sunny skies of New York City and Boston, and keeping the tension high between father and son. As this movie begins, flashbacks quickly get viewers up to speed as to the deaths, betrayals and fat stack of valuable paper driving the final confrontation. There’s both a framing device in which Donovan discusses killing his father with a therapist, and a series of flashbacks to the 1980s to explain how and why there’s such an enmity between the two. Liev Schreiber is his usual dependable self as Donovan-fils, while Jon Voight is still suitably slimy as the aged Donovan-père. The film is clearly meant for series viewers, though: little time is spent reintroducing characters or plotlines, and the stakes of the rather glum film are clearly aligned with the series rather than pump things up for broader audiences. While there’s an attempt to upgrade the directing to a feature-film quality, the results are still very much aligned with that’s commonly seen on cable TV. In other words (and unlike similar spinoff The Many Saints of Newark, riffing off The Sopranos), there’s no real reason to check out Ray Donovan: The Movie unless you’re a confirmed fan of the show looking for closure: the highlights are few, the stakes are minimal if you’re not already invested in the characters and the presentation is humdrum at best. Fans of the show will feel differently and that’s fine—everything benefits from closure even if it’s not the graceful last season the show-runners initially wanted.

  • The Cross of Lorraine (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) The first draft of history usually resembles but is not identical to the more definitive version, and so there’s a constant sense of underlying weirdness to the way the French Résistance is portrayed in The Cross of Lorraine. It’s not just about seeing Gene Kelly (clearly a Francophile even at this early stage of his career) in a straight dramatic role as a Frenchman who suffers from a crisis of courage but ultimately chooses to fight against the Nazis—it’s about the portrayal of Vichy France and the burgeoning Resistance even as it was going on. By the time The Cross of Lorraine was released, let alone produced, there was no D-Day to draw upon and no oral histories of partisans fighting the Nazis. If the film feels like a piece of propaganda high on ideals and low on details, it’s because no one knew what la resistance was doing at the time: this was aimed at the American home front as a way to shore up support for the war effort, not as a serious historical examination of what was going on. So, if The Cross of Lorraine feels quite different from what you’ve seen elsewhere about France’s WW2 occupation, there’s a good reason for that, and it’s one of the factors why the film feels more interesting than it should. Not that it doesn’t have a few intrinsic qualities of its own: besides a rather good turn from Kelly, it also features small roles for Hume Cronyn and Peter Lorre and competent technical credentials thanks to MGM’s usually high standards. Still, for modern audiences, the propagandist aspect of The Cross of Lorraine takes the first spot, as is the film’s ignorance of the tropes that would come to dominate any representation of La Résistance in later years.

  • Speedy (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Travel back to another time and place with Speedy—a Harold Lloyd production featuring his “Glasses” character as a well-meaning young man trying to save the last horse-pulled transit car in Manhattan from being put out of service by an unscrupulous tycoon. (He’s not doing this out of a simple good heart: there’s a girl involved.)  Lloyd’s last theatrical silent film shows the filmmaker with a competent ability to put together a fast-paced silent comedy. A number of highlights pepper the film, whether it’s the opening sequences demonstrating how much of a baseball nut the protagonist can be (all the way to rearranging a pastry display to update a game score for his co-workers), a trip to Luna Park, a pair of thrilling high-speed vehicle chases, and a big street brawl—Speedy isn’t always as well-regarded as other Lloyd films, but it still packs a few laughs or two: a Babe Ruth cameo, a cute turn from Ann Christy as the love interest, and perhaps, best of all, an incredible depiction of late 1920 Manhattan. As a silent film send-off to the memorable Lloyd and his bespectacled character, it’s a lot more fun than I expected and it ranks high on the list of silent movies that still pack some entertainment value today.

  • Retfærdighedens ryttere [Riders of Justice] (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) The problem with films that deliberately try to upset you is that, well, they either don’t work, or they do succeed at upsetting you. There’s an early series of hints in Riders of Justice that the film is about cosmic coincidences in the vein of films that seek some kind of statement about the universe. Well, ignore that hint to your peril, because this is not a film about fine-tuned algorithms and fail-proof analyses. It’s about human obsession with finding links where there are none, and the rather vexing consequences when people make the wrong decisions. Anchored by a typically solid performance from Mads Mikkelsen, Riders of Justice nonetheless does not want to be the kind of revenge thriller that it initially suggests. Rather than avenge the death of the protagonist’s wife, this thriller has its characters create more problems for themselves by seeking connections where there are none, and taking action on people who don’t turn out to be all that innocent. Resolutely unwilling to play by the rules of Hollywood, it ends up like a film that nearly has something to say but seems determined to meander along the way. In messing with expectations, it doesn’t feel like a tight film—a damaging quality for a thriller. If, indeed, it’s meant to be a thriller, because for all of the gunplay and violence, there’s a feeling that Riders of Justice is really more interested in doing its own things, even if it leaves viewers unsatisfied and shrugging.

  • Bachman (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) Most people will know Randy Bachman as the Bachman in Bachman-Turner Overdrive (“You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” “Takin’ Care of Business,” etc.), but I felt a closer connection to him as the host of the CBC retrospective music show Vinyl Tap, which accompanied many of my Saturday evening drives with its thematic selections of classic rock music. But there’s a lot more to him than a band and a radio show, as retrospective biography Bachman clearly shows. Bachman, a next-level guitarist, was part of more bands than most people own cars, never lost his passion for music and had a relatively tumultuous life despite a quiet personality. Much of the documentary is made of affectionate interviews with close associates of the man rather than Bachman himself, along with historical footage, song snippets and a current-day story about Bachman putting together a new album. Highlights of his life include the way his Mormon beliefs held him back from turning into a sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll rockstar like many of his contemporaries; and the incredible 15,000-square-foot “Bachman estate” (complete with recording studio) that was the backdrop to Bachman’s most expansive years. (Alas, it’s a period that also led to his first divorce, something that the film does confront with honesty—even if it’s held back from exploring the full story by virtue of being authorized by Bachman.)  As a portrait of one of Canada’s most successful rockers, Bachman succeeds both at explaining why he was such a towering figure and at explaining what made him tick—always the consummate, quiet musician (just wait until he gives viewers a tour of his guitars) even when pushing people a bit too hard to go on tour, play music and make music. A Mormon rocker makes for an interesting blend of passions and beliefs, and much of the film’s interest is in that combination… even when we sense that there’s a lot left unsaid here, especially when it comes to the ex-wives and ex-bands. Even then, Bachman taught me much about the man-and-the-legend, and made me sad once more that Vinyl Tap is no longer being produced at the CBC.

  • The Search (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) There’s something amazing in the way cinema can reach across decades to make period-specific points with wide universal appeal. The issue that concerned socially-conscious director Fred Zinnemann in tackling The Search is intensely specific to the end of WW2—the plight of children separated from their parents during the war, and the efforts of allied forces to reunite families. Headed by the solid Montgomery Clift, the film uses real location shooting in Germany to present the bombed-out remains of the country as backdrop to a desperate time. Atmosphere and subject matter do what the rest of the film struggles a bit to achieve, which is to remain gripping: despite the universal interest of making sure a child is reunited with their parents, Zinnemann is often more about lofty values than cinematic interest (especially at this early state of his career—although he would almost always remain a very formal director than a stylish one). Oh, The Search remains watchable—but there’s something missing to take it where it should be. Still, it still has the ability to make us care about something that happened more than seventy years ago, and that’s wonderful in itself.

  • The Hand (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) One of Oliver Stone’s earliest movies as writer-director, The Hand is an oddity in his filmography in that it’s probably a supernatural thriller. I say probably, because in the usual fashion of psychological thrillers going for Todorovian ambiguity, it intentionally presents contradictory material in order to have it both ways. Michael Caine remains one of the best reasons to see the film, as he plays a comic book artist who loses one of his hands in a very contrived accident scene. That’s bad enough, but when his enemies and personal annoyances start dropping dead at the hand of a mysterious entity, we’re either dealing with our protagonist undergoing a psychotic break, or a supernatural disembodied hand going around and doing his dirty subconscious business. Even hard-core horror fans will opt for the psychological explanation… except that the ending of the film has other ideas. OR DOES IT?!? Because, as is often the case with those borderline thrillers, nothing is really expected to make sense. Still, Caine is fun to watch as a writer going crazy (he reportedly did the film for garage-building cash), and the special effects are not bad for the time and budget of the film. There’s some grand-guignol entertainment value to The Hand even if it’s not all that good, and it’s not even close to the worst film in Caine’s filmography.

  • Pal Joey (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) If you’re going to make a 1950s film about a cad of a crooner, there were no better choices than Frank Sinatra at a moment where he was ascending as the Rat Pack’s “chairman of the board.”  Even in toning down the material from the original Broadway show (where, in an uncanny parallel, the character was played by Gene Kelly), Pal Joey has him gallivanting as an incorrigible womanizer, forced to a nomadic existence because of his issues with women. The cycle begins again when he lands in San Francisco and finds himself in another singing spot… unless he can’t help himself. While Pal Joey doesn’t quite measure up to the great musicals of the decade, it’s not a bad watch by itself—largely due to the charismatic nature of Sinatra’s performance, as well as the presences of Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak in supporting roles. A few of the songs are fun or well known — “Zip” is about as burlesque as they could get away in an all-family musical, while “The Lady is a Tramp” is another take on a classic. (I still like Lena Horne’s version better.) The cad-learns-better story is familiar but handled in a way that suits what Sinatra can bring to the role, and the technical aspects of the film are not bad for a non-MGM musical—although the film deals with its dance choreography in close-up fashion rather than going for a wide multi-dancer approach. It also remains a Broadway musical in conception, limiting what movie-magic could be done with the structure and plotting. Pay Joey was an undeniable success for Sinatra (who paid for a house on the film’s proceeds and opened a restaurant of the same name) and still all wraps up into something worth a look, even if it’s probably not all that memorable as some of its musical contemporaries.

  • Our Dancing Daughters (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) While the traditional definition of Pre-Code cinema usually starts with the beginning of sound cinema, it’s obvious that it didn’t spring from nothing—the trends were already there, the morals already loosened by the swinging 1920s, the appetite for frankly portraying the world already whetted. While Our Dancing Daughters is a silent film at the very end of that era, its frank subject matter revolves around a young woman (Joan Crawford, in a star-making turn) playing with codes of what’s a good or bad woman at a time where unprecedented freedom was available. The story, with its numerous supporting characters, eventually turns to romance which resolves with a rather hilarious punishing-the-bad-girl-by-throwing-her-down-the-stairs ending. Our Dancing Daughters is sometimes tedious to get through given the low narrative density of silent cinema, but it’s not uninteresting as a Pre-Pre-Code piece of cinema. Crawford here shows the qualities that made her a star, and exemplifies the flapper archetypes that silent cinema just managed to catch at the right time. Older cinema usually survives when it has something to say or illustrate, and there’s a good case to be made for Our Dancing Daughters as a still-interesting portrayal of another era.

  • Operator 13 (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) There’s something interesting in Operator 13’s dive into American Civil War history as a pretext for a spy romance. It features Marion Davis as a showgirl pressed into service to spy on southern forces as a maid (in blackface, unbelievably enough). With Gary Cooper to blandly serve as a romantic interest, you can see how the film is an early shot at the four-quadrant demographics even in the 1930s. For modern viewers, the dismay at the blackface stuff may (or may not) be matched with the unusual nature of a spy story set at an unusual period—especially now when few spy thrillers ever delve beyond World War II. The ludicrousness of the story was apparent even to 1934 viewers, but there’s some lingering effectiveness to this early-Hollywood attempt to dramatize recent history (reminder: The American Civil War was as distant to 1934 as the mid-1950s are to 2022) even when it scarcely makes any sense.

  • Irene (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) It’s not because it’s classic Hollywood that it’s, well, classic—there are plenty of half-remembered films that don’t quite work even when they use tried-and-true elements, and Irene certainly feels like one of them. It should be better than it is—it certainly plays with solid tropes, with its shopgirl heroine getting swept into a Cinderella-like episode with a richer man. Irene’s most remarkable moment is when it goes from black and white to colour the time of an evening ball, but even that isn’t all that enough to keep the film from feeling unusually dull and distant. Romantic criss-crosses help but don’t improve the film enough. Despite being an adaptation of a Broadway theatrical, Irene doesn’t impress much with its musical numbers either. Anna Neagle doesn’t do all that badly as the titular character, but the film itself lets her down. Oh, Irene is watchable—but memorable? That’s another story.

  • Libel (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) In many ways, Libel should be more interesting than it ends up being. The story of an English aristocrat veteran with amnesia about his wartime years, it kicks into high gear when he’s accused of not being who he is—that he’s another person having usurped the noble’s identity. The ensuing trial takes us back to wartime POW camps when everyone starts having doubts about who he says he is. Dick Bogarde plays the protagonist (and, in a casting choice designed to keep everyone guessing, also the man he’s accused of being), while Olivia de Havilland plays the increasingly doubtful wife. While Libel’s first act is set largely against the stately backdrop of upper-class British estate, the rest of the film goes for POW camps and courtrooms. It all sounds promising on paper, but in practice it’s more annoying than anything else: we can’t quite care for the lead character, which doesn’t help a film in which we’re asked to root for him. It wraps up nicely, though—even if the road to get there passes through some very convenient amnesia. It’s not that bad, but Libel should have been much better, at least in reaching its own potential.