Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Metroland (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) It’s often amusing to see almost obscure films resurface because they happen to star actors that later became much, much more famous. Case in point: the rather unremarkable Metroland, which plays with an uneasy mixture of British middle-aged married ennui juxtaposed with formative years nostalgia. The plot gets in motion when the comfortable, even boring life of a thirtysomething couple is upended by the return of a long-gone globetrotting friend back in London for a few days. Cue the flashbacks to their wild Parisian years. Not much of this narrative summary is all that promising, so the key to the film’s selection is in the casting: Christian Bale and Emily Watson as the married couple. Everything is a period piece (the flashbacks go from the 1970s London to the 1960s Paris, earning this film an honorary place alongside other May 1968 homages). and there’s a lot more sex and nudity than expected – in keeping with the spirit of 1960s France (or at least what people recall of it), it’s largely a film about letting the 1960s shake up boring mundanity. Bale is young and a bit bland here, but I was rather surprised to see Watson (not often the idea of a pin-up girl) looking much more attractive than usual here. As such, I suspect that both lead actors may have a fond spot for the film in their own private DVD collection – a reminder of what they looked like as up-and-coming actors plausibly starring in an erotic drama that concludes with a torrid reconciliation in bed. By the time the end credits roll on Metroland, you can understand why it’s still getting airtime twenty-five years later.

  • Mahogany (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) It’s a disservice to insist that a film should work on all cylinders before finding some value to it. Mahogany, in telling us about a black female fashion model/designer trying to succeed in a tough business in the company of difficult men, is almost a big pile of episodic nonsense, flitting from one dramatic happening to another. This is a film that advances its story by having characters drive fast and die in a crash, freeing their spouse to get close to someone else. But Mahogany is not meant to be a story: It’s about getting Diana Ross to look terrific in high-end fashion outfits (including a few that she designed herself) and getting in a weirdly contrived romance with Lady Sings the Blues screen partner Billy Dee Williams (but only after the wild photographer played by Anthony Perkins is out of the picture… and the French count as well, since this is that kind of film). It’s a film about gloss and fleeting moments, but not necessarily a strong story that makes sense. As such, it often works better than you’d think. Ross is almost always a pleasure to look at, and the film can string along a few pretty sequences. They’re not necessarily strung along in a way that makes sense, but that’s Mahogany. From a historical perspective, there’s something more interesting to say about Mahogany being a film by a black director (Motown founder Berry Gordie!) featuring two leading black performers – especially given its place alongside middle-period Blaxploitation and prior to the genre-killer that was The Wiz. It portrays black characters engaged in activism and being successful in their own fields and, as such, suggests a different 1980s for black film if The Wiz hadn’t been such a flop. Today, you can’t really call it a good movie – but it’s certainly worth a gleeful look for the costumes, Ross, a big unabashed mid-1970s period feel and bizarre plotting turns. Mahogany does not fire on all cylinders… but it’s fun enough based on what does work.

  • Spencer (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, June 2022) My expectations for Spencer ran very, very low: combining an actress I don’t particularly care about with a historical figure I have almost no interest in, the film nonetheless manages to create some unexpected sympathy out of its unpromising elements. Kirsten Stewart is far from an actress I like – her very limited “woe is me, a victim” range can be effective in the right context (I keep going back to Adventureland as an example, although she was not badly cast in the Twilight series either) but only a fraction of all roles are fit for someone like her. Meanwhile, I have an almost total lack of attachment to the story of Princess Diana Spencer – as a colonial, I don’t relate all that well to the British monarchy, and could never find anything but sadness in her story. A film featuring Stewart as Diana at a critical (but largely internal) junction in her unhappy marriage with Prince Charles, Spencer does have the credit of matching actress range with the requirements of the role – Spencer is here portrayed as a mopey broken woman going through the motions of conforming to the quasi-impossible requirements of the nation’s princess. The action may take place over a weekend, but there are years of build up to it (and, ironically known to the audience, further years to go afterward). Not wholly dissimilar to other recent works poking at the institution of monarchy (The Favourite comes to mind), Spencer uses fantasy sequences, expressionist moments and a quasi-endless succession of shots showing Stewart staring distantly into space as ways to create a powerful sense of unease. We’re told by people close to the figure that the film captures quite a bit of her personality, and much of that has to go with Stewart’s deadened acting style used in service of an appropriate topic matter. (Meanwhile, if you’re worried that a modern princess film featuring Stewart will not have Sapphic content, don’t worry – Spenser has that covered.)  This is, obviously, not my kind of film – the pacing is deliberately interminable considering that this is a single-mood piece reinforced over a period of time. But I found it far more tolerable than I initially anticipated, and Stewart a most appropriate fit for the material. The film doesn’t raise my interest either in Stewart or Spencer, but that’s not necessarily a problem – it’s mostly about re-creating an experience (that of being stuck with stuck-up royals for the weekend) and it does that rather well.

  • Tykho Moon (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) I did not like Tykho Moon – it’s dull, ugly, surprisingly conventional in plot elements and utterly inept in terms of science fiction ideas. On the other hand, it’s a fascinating film that illustrates how much of a gulf there can be between concepts and execution. If I tell you that it’s a sombre espionage/succession tale set on the Moon in a dictatorial future, you’re probably imagining the high-tech immersion required to portray such a tale – the fancy special effects, the details to show a lived-in future, possibly a few sequences at one-sixth Earth’s gravity. But Tykho Moon laughs at your presumptions. It shoots the entire film in grimy industrial settings somewhere in the Parisian suburbs, makes no effort to visualize its otherworldly nature (except for a single unimpressive special-effects shot toward the end) and ignores just about anything to do with the realities of what a lunar settlement would look like. Other than a few clichés about future disease, it also works on an incredibly pedestrian level when it comes to plotting, with depressingly trite plot mechanics and not much in terms of satisfaction. Like the incomparably superior Alphaville, it voluntarily uses its low budget as an excuse to dissociate what we see from what we expect to see in a science-fiction tale. It becomes a surreal exercise in detachment, exploring matters of form versus presentation. I certainly didn’t like it (and I like it less and less the longer I go on writing this review) but it makes for an unusual object lesson in opposing the content of Science Fiction versus its presentation. The lesson would be far more eloquent if it had some substance on the plotting side and a more deliberate approach on the presentation side (rather than fill a room with trash and calling it a day), but Tykho Moon is all about disappointment anyway.

  • Death Line aka Raw Meat (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) Repetition is an essential part of movies, especially if they aim at a wide audience – it’s an accepted quirk that everything needs to be repeated two or three times to account for short attention spans, people getting up for the washroom (or, these days, having a look at their phones), wide disparities in cognitive capabilities, and the proverbial common denominator. This usually goes double for horror films – not because they’re more complex, but because there usually isn’t much more to say than “monster bad and kills people” repeated a few times to make sure we get the message and get our money’s worth in gore and death. But even given those accepted parameters, Death Line goes all-out on the repetition thing. Every ten minutes or so, the film’s opening event is brought up again (have you heard about the unconscious man in the stairwell? That unconscious man in the stairwell? Yes, that unconscious man in the stairwell! Isn’t it strange that there should be an unconscious man in the stairwell? What a strange place, a stairwell, for an unconscious man! I know, who could imagine such a thing as a stairwell with an unconscious man? etc.) in what almost becomes a running gag. But the film has more than that – a sombre tale of a police inspector investigating something that ends up being a cannibal tribe hidden underneath the London Underground, the film does have a few stylistic flourishes and odd turns. Donald Pleasance, for once, doesn’t play a mad scientist but a surly hard-working London policeman, and his brief scene with Christopher Lee (as a high-ranking MI5 officer) is a meeting of the greats. There are some nice things here for a 1972 horror film – most notably one long uninterrupted sequence, a good portrayal of the monster, and some unnerving plot elements. Less fortunately, an entire subplot of the film having to do with a young couple (endlessly talking about an unconscious man in a stairwell) takes away some of the film’s energy. Death Line is a bit better than my dismissive comments about repetition may suggest, but it’s hardly a great movie – another script rewrite with fewer young couples and more Christopher Lee could have improved things quite a bit.

  • Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Both obvious and transgressive, Thomasine & Bushrod is a film that would benefit from being more widely known. Existing at the intersection between Blaxploitation, revisionist western and the New Hollywood standard of criminal-lovers-on-the-run, it feels at once like a far more modern film than it is, and yet a film that could only come from the 1970s. Much of the story can be fairly summed up as “black-cast Bonnie and Clyde western” and that’s already intriguing enough. It gets better once you realize that the film was directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. (of Superfly and Three the Hard Way fame), that it’s written by co-lead actor-producer Max Julien, and that its viewpoint character is clearly the woman lead played by the magnificent Vonetta McGee. As I write this, the hottest black-cast film of 2021 is The Harder They Fall, which prides itself on being a revisionist black western with strong female roles – so it’s interesting to dig back fifty years and find another very similar film that doesn’t often show up in discussions. Now, let’s be honest — Thomasine & Bushrod is more interesting than good: Despite the overt progressive intentions of the film, the execution often falls back on obviousness, formula and last-minute reversion to tradition. The film’s stated intention to steal from the rich white in order to give back to the poor black is undermined by a moralistic ending that harkens back to the requirements of the Production Code, and also makes the film undistinguishable in this regard from many, many other outlaw-lovers-on-the-run films brought to screens around that time. The film itself does remain worth a watch, though – it still feels daring, McGee looks superb and the film occasionally gets a great moment or two. Thomasine & Bushrod is certainly worth adding to anyone’s deep knowledge of 1970s cinema, just as Blaxploitation was momentarily opening a few unusual doors for black representation in film.

  • Pushpa: The Rise – Part 1 (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, June 2022) It’s probably time for me to step away from mainstream Indian cinema for a few months, because it’s all starting to blur together. Despite completely different regional origins and production industries, a lot of the better-known Indian films lately have been hitting very similar plot beats: lone heroes against powerful crime lords, with films split in two parts and a somewhat similar execution to the material. I’m aware that the same charges can be brought against Hollywood, but my ears aren’t as attuned to the differences in Indian cinema yet – hence the benefits of a temporary pullback. Given this overdose, I only have mildly nice things to say about Pushpa: The Rise – Part 1 (and that’s assuming I can distinguish between it, Radhe, Master, KGF (Part 1) and others). I like the premise of basing an entire film on red sandalwood smuggling, which provides the excuse of playing around with big trucks as part of the action of the film. Writer-director Sukumar shows fluency in keeping the complex film moving forward (with the execution being better than the narrative foundation), even though the final result, at three hours, remains a masala film too long to be maximally effective. Allu Arjun is quite good as the titular coolie-turned-action-hero, showing decent physicality in action sequences. It’s regrettable that Pushpa Part One is better in its first half than its second – and that lack of balance is not improved by what feels like a near-endless running time. Still, for all of its visual polish and slick filmmaking, Pushpa feels incredibly similar to many, many Indian blockbusters of the past few years, and I’m looking for a change.

  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, June 2022) It’s been a few rough years for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following the climactic punctuation of Avengers: Endgame. While the Spider-Man movies have been generally well-received, other attempts to introduce new characters (or retrofit a Black Widow prequel) have been more yawn-inducing than anything else. Fortunately, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is more successful – both at presenting new adventures for a familiar character, but also in blending in a few new influences. It’s also, but not for the first time (considering the cinematic universe blending of Spider-Man: No Way Home) a Marvel Cinematic Universe film that pulls threads from previous entries and TV shows, meaning that you need to be conversant with material spanning a number of media formats in order to get the most of it. This is probably considered an asset for the MCU brain trust, who would love nothing more than to suck up all available entertainment time from their audiences, effectively transforming them from moviegoers to MCU-goers (or, specifically, Disney+ subscribers). But let’s move on from this, because there are a few interesting things to talk about in terms of character development and how self-confident the MCU can be at this point. The most notable aspect of this Multiverse of Madness, for instance, is how it’s willing to do some face-heel turns for a major character, and actively consider the possibility that its arrogant protagonist has extensive potential for self-serving evil. This plays out against a substantially more sombre tone than other films in the series – some marketing twaddle made much out of this being the MCU’s first horror film and while that typical overstatement (the Lovecraftian monster that opens up the film is cuddly enough to be plushable), there’s no denying that director Sam Raimi is pushing the envelope in less-than-desirable dimensions by suggesting a few gory deaths later on. There’s the usual number of winks and nods and portents of future adventures – I wasn’t a fan of the dark-universe Avengers, but if that suggests John Krasinski as Reed Richards, then I’m paying attention. Benedict Cumberbatch has a more interesting role (and film) this time around than in the first Doctor Strange film, while Xochitl Gomez has a much better introduction to a new character than many of the last few standalone films. The film’s last act even brings in Marvel Zombies in a relatively clever way, and there’s a terrific minute-long sequence in which dozens of parallel universes are glimpsed. The advantages of multiverses at this point of the MCU are obvious, and even outweigh the inevitable disappointment that we’re not exploring all of them. Still, in the end, and even subtracting points from the nagging feeling that the MCU is an unsustainable black hole of film dollars and attention, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a strong entry in the series, one that shows that there’s life after Endgame and that even stressing the film series with the comics’ anything-goes blend of technology, magic, fantasy, science fiction and parallel universes is a workable proposition.

  • Under Capricorn (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) I thought I was done with director Alfred Hitchcock’s Hollywood filmography except for The Paradine Case, but as it turns out, I had overlooked all about 1949’s Under Capricorn. There are good reasons for that: Contrarily to much of Hitchcock’s filmography, it’s a brightly-coloured romantic melodrama set against the backdrop of 1931 Sydney as a frontier town. What’s more, it’s executed as a filmed stage play, with very few cuts and a marked emphasis on costume drama. The story eventually achieves a Hitchcockian velocity once a gun, an affair and attempted murder all come into play. Still, this isn’t Hitchcock as we know it: it’s almost entirely humourless, it’s too brightly lit, it’s a slower-than-slow burn and it seems dramatically at odds with the director’s strengths. It features two good actors (Joseph Cotton, but especially Ingrid Bergman) and it’s hard to fault a director for trying something different, but, in the end, Under Capricorn is almost a bore. It takes too long to get cracking, and doesn’t offer enough to Hitchcock for him to take advantage of new opportunities –and I say this having liked his equally atypical Mr. And Mrs. Smith a lot.

  • Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video On-Demand, June 2022) While there’s no denying that I liked Spider-Man: No Way Home, I’m also thoroughly vexed at some aspects of the film, what it represents and how it’s at the cutting edge of a bizarre blend of fannish devotion and Hollywood profit maximization. Despite a pre-release no-spoiler campaign that was useless the film started to screen, Spider-Man: No Way Home is going to remain famous for being that one Spider-Man film that acted not only as a capstone to the first Tom Holland trilogy, but also as an epilogue to the previous two Spider-Man film series– in bringing into one single film a bunch of other Spider-Man versions (i.e.: Tobey Maguire and the underrated Andrew Garfield versions) and a handful of villains cherry-picked in those films as well. One imagines a secret narrative R&D lab deep under the Hollywood sign in which the mandate “make more money from fans” led to the discovery of multiverses as a handy excuse to do whatever they could to justify the premise. Some of it definitely rings false – the use of Doctor Strange as an incompetent sorcerer leaves a bad taste, even if the lamp-shading can be amusing. Other details also don’t quite fit – I thought I was misremembering a few details about the earlier films at times, but no – it turns out that the continuity snarls were real and noticed by others as well. Of course, little of this – the weak dumb plotting, the continuity mistakes, the sometimes slap-dash execution – is meant to matter when – hold on to your spiderwebs, fans! – there’s nothing less than three Spider-Men played by their original actors, and the best-known villains of the series to boot. We’re meant to be impressed. Sometimes even touched when the film does for a few contrived emotional moments. Until we remember that there’s nothing that pounds of dollars won’t resolve if the actors are sufficiently motivated and if the lawyers are happy. In this regard, No Way Home acts as a capstone on a perverse portrayal of “intellectual property” as delivering on fannish desires for crossover events. It’s easy enough to see how we got here through the all-devouring MCU – what’s less clear and possibly frightening is where we go from there, transforming the multiplex into the biggest-budgeted TV show in history, incomprehensible unless you’ve consumed everything that came before that time. I sound crotchety and cantankerous, so let’s spend at least a few sentences talking about what I did like about the film: Tom Holland, Zendeya and Marisa Tomei, clearly. Also, Garfield is a great Spider-Man who had the bad luck of starring in less-than-good films. While the overall plotting is weak, some of it is actually ingenious in making sure to maximize the presence of characters from three cinematic universes. I won’t begrudge some choice bits of dialogue, and it’s impossible for me not to like a good old-school pick from De La Soul as musical background to the credit sequence. The MCU style is shown to be a much better fit for the characters, and there’s no denying the feeling of closure for the previous two series – and maybe this one as well. But how much if this is earned, and how much of it is cheap manipulation? Much of it, I suppose, will depend on how many times the same trick is going to be re-used in the next few years.

  • Comes a Horseman (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Jane Fonda as a single rancher. James Caan as a WW2 veteran helping her out. Jason Robards as a local tycoon aiming to control an entire valley. An oil executive in the area to make an irresistible offer for what’s under the ground. While none of this is uninteresting, you have to keep in mind that Comes a Horseman is a typical revisionist 1970s western. It’s sober, slow, tinted brown-on-beige, obsessed with not doing the same thing as decades’ worth of westerns but, at the same time, not as successful at holding an audience’s attention. Director Alan J. Pakula is only too happy to feature social commentary on sexism, sexual abuse, rapacious oil exploitation and the impact of war even on the American hinterland. Alas, it’s a snore – if you though Heaven’s Gate was too long and slow, you clearly haven’t seen Comes a Horseman yet. There are a few good moments, but not enough of them to matter and by the time you read about the film’s production history to discover that a stuntman died while shooting the film (with the footage preceding the accident easily identifiable in the finished film), it’s enough not to care about the film at all.

  • Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2022) Perhaps now best seen as a time capsule of a specific time and attitude, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is most notable for being a dramatization of rapper Curtis “50 cents” Jackson’s early life as a small-time criminal turning to music for salvation. Considering that Jackson plays himself, you can count on two things: He’s not that good of an actor, and the film isn’t going to be particularly hard on the actions of his character. Or is it? Because, from a certain perspective, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ isn’t all that critical of its protagonist’s decidedly non-intellectual pursuits, or his pursuit of crime until consequences come due, such as being gunned down – you’d think that anyone would get to that conclusion well before being shot. I’m not going to keep going in that direction: there have been plenty of thoughtful pieces about the thug-rapper pivot and I’m not adding much to it. But the pall hangs over the film and is compounded by ideas we’ve seen in other, much better films. It’s a story built from entirely fictional premises rather than being “inspired by real events” and being limited by them. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is watchable on a very basic level, but it doesn’t inspire much devotion – and there’s a whiff of unpleasantness hanging over it all.

  • 4 for Texas (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) There’s a reason why some Rat Pack films get mentioned all the time (such as Ocean’s Eleven and, to a lesser extent, Robin and the Seven Hoods) and others, not as much – such as 4 for Texas. Here, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin headline as two men of dubious morals fighting it out over a money shipment and then a riverboat casino. It’s certainly light-hearted, and having such notables as Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress in supporting roles (plus Charles Bronson and The Three Stooges) certainly helps to make the film more interesting. But there’s a difference between a light-hearted romp and a comedy, and there’s a sense that writer-director Robert Aldrich never quite gets the mixture right – the jokes fall flat, the events never cohere into a compelling narrative and the actors don’t get to showcase what they’re best at. The writing is sexist even by the standards of the time, and the conclusion happens so quickly that it feels as if something’s missing. Dean and Sinatra certainly seem to have fun “fighting” against each other, but that energy doesn’t quite carry to the rest of the film. A misfire, a waste of talent and a surprising bore, 4 for Texas may best remain forgotten, except for obsessive Rat Pack fans.

  • Stan & Ollie (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) One of the pitfalls of asking name actors to incarnate well-known historical figures is whether they can (or should) convincingly portray the figure rather than forgo their usual persona. Stan & Ollie offers an interesting case in that Steve Coogan is still a bit too much Steve Coogan when playing Stan Laurel, but John C. Reilley is wonderfully unrecognizable as Oliver Hardy. (Which is saying a lot, considering how few actors have the bulk to play Hardy.)  The film itself is not quite as remarkable as the character work, though. Set toward the twilight of the duo’s career (with a short flashback to the 1930s as introduction), Stan & Ollie focuses on the complex relationship between creative acts, especially when one half of the equation pulls away. It’s a bit glum even when dealing with the comic process (and allowing both Coogan and Reilly to re-create a few comic routines) – this is clearly the behind-the-scenes kind of biography contrasting between public and private personas. It’s certainly very watchable: the historical re-creation is believable, the temptation to cram everything with a short span is largely resisted, and there’s even a pair of good supporting performances from Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda as the wives of the leads. (Plus, Danny Huston as Hal Roach!)  Stan & Ollie isn’t quite true to the letter of the real-life events, but is generally close enough when it comes to the characters and their evolving relationship. The result should be fascinating to fans of the comedy duo, and interesting to anyone in the right frame of mind for a character study featuring two world-class comedians.

  • Burglar (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) I’m not too sure of the real state of Whoopi Goldberg’s persona these days – depending on whom you talk to, she’s either a respected actress, a loudmouth commentator with a skill for saying regrettable things, a progressive icon or a reactionary wag. One tag that’s not often applied, however, is “sexy street-smart young woman.”  This makes Burglar remarkable even if it’s not that good of a film – in this minor early-career thriller, she’s cast as a hustler manipulated into going back to a life of crime where she accidentally witnesses a murder… but not the murderer. Goldberg gets to crack wise, act tough, look attractive and affirm blackness: an interesting combination for her fans of later years or more respectable productions. Alas, the rest of the film isn’t quite as fascinating: While the film’s best bits clearly reflect its origin in one of Lawrence Block’s series of Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, the film is executed in a perfunctory manner – the usual beats in the usual places (such as a car chase), not that many thrills despite a workable premise, and not enough attention paid to its lead character. Sometimes, it’s even irritating – The French dub grates by asking the voice actor doing Bobcat Goldwaithe’s character to use the same squeaky voice as in Police Academy, but I would not be surprised to find out it’s the same in the original English version. Burglar still gets replayed in Canada due to its status as a Canadian production (a rare live-action production for animation studio Nelvana) but otherwise would be forgotten: it’s watchable thanks to Goldberg, but not exactly worth remembering fondly.