Reviews

  • Crawler (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Given my laughable credentials as a film reviewer, my connections to the film industry are tenuous, outdated and almost entirely tied to the French-Canadian market. One of the particularities in reviewing the little-known, little-seen horror film Crawler is that I remember attending a few Montréal-area genre conventions alongside its writer-director S. V. Bell back in the late 1990s – I don’t recall interacting with him, but I’m reasonably sure we were in the same room together a few times. But anyway – Crawler is a low-budget Québec-made horror film that clearly apes Stephen King’s films of the 1980s – mysterious not-really-explained horror taking the form of a bulldozer that kills people. But not in the way you imagine – sure, that bulldozer crawls over a few people, but it also hosts various horrors of imaginary, tentacular and ichorific forms. All of this to say – it doesn’t end well for most of the construction crew around the bulldozer. What’s perhaps most remarkable about this clearly low-end production is how sunny and colourful it often is, with much of the action taking place on a rural construction site with bright yellows, greens and blues. Some of the practical special effects are not bad when graded against their 1980s inspirations. The acting is not so good, but as with the rest of the film… I’ve seen worse. You’ll have to work overtime to see Crawler: shown at Fantasia 2009 but otherwise not theatrically screened, currently unavailable on physical media and streaming media, the film briefly popped up on French-Canadian horror channel Frissons TV as part of their occasional unearthing of obscure local genre films. The amusing thing is that it’s better than much of what else plays on the channel!

  • The Lineup (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) I know that most people (especially those who haven’t discovered the joys of Classic Hollywood) refer to “old movies” as if that was a damning epithet by itself — as if newer movies were automatically better, or maybe that all movies become steadily worse as soon as they’re released in an echo of new cars driving off the dealership. But even letting slide the idea that great movies are timeless; that this attitude reflects the power of crass marketing making you crave new movies; that all movies appeal to a fundamental human condition… the truth is more complicated. Some very ordinary films can be appreciated in time for mirroring their era, making them special decades after they were commonplace and unremarkable. Maybe they innovate with things that have since become more obvious, maybe they show images that would be impossible to capture today. I’m not going to point at The Lineup and say that it’s an ordinary film that has become great while we weren’t looking. But I will suggest that, in presenting a thriller set against the backdrop of late-1950s San Francisco, it shows a unique glimpse at the city as it existed then, with landmarks now gone or altered. I will rally to the opinion that it features one of the most intense car chases made during the 1950s. I’ll point to its director, Don Seigel, as historically important considering that he’d go on to direct films such as Dirty Harry -also set in San Francisco- and mentor Clint Eastwood. None of these reasons elevate The Lineup over what it is – a competent thriller featuring psychopaths going after an innocent woman and her daughter. But they do manage to make this film better now than in 1958 – a classic case of film as a time capsule.

  • Illicit (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2022) Please forgive me if I get some of Illicit’s details wrong – I’m writing this review only a few days after seeing the film, but already it’s blurring into an indistinct morass of very, very similar black-cast infidelity dramas also broadcast on BET. Let me check the plot summary for details – oh yes: a parole officer and a model-turned-housewife are a few years into their marriage, so both decide on their own to start an affair. The hallmarks of a BET infidelity drama are all there, except for the slightly different ending: attractive cast (which is more than half my justification for watching — Michele Weaver looks fantastic in curls and glasses), lingerie scenes, appearances by patron saints of straight-to-BET movies Vivica A. Fox and Essence Atkins, and plotting so wonky that I’m not sure the filmmakers were working with adult supervision. Aside from attractive actresses, what keeps me coming back to BET films is the delicious sense that their movies are not slick or particularly competent: their storytelling mistakes are so confoundingly inept that they feel like fresh air in a world of overengineered filmmaking. In Illicit’s case, for instance, it means setting up the two adulterous relationships, then slowly cranking up the pressure on both partners until they’re blackmailed, revealing the connections between the various characters, getting all of them in the same place and threatening to blow all the secrets wide open… then walking away from the whole potential climax. Both husbands and wife end their affairs. No serious consequences. Never mind the blackmail that seemed so urgent ten minutes earlier. Roll credits. Who ever thought this was a good finale, ready to air? Even the most twisted “subvert all expectations” fan would find this unacceptable. In the end, films like Illicit have this bizarre blend of crowd-pleasing titillation (yet with nothing more explicit than lingerie), conservative morality (affairs are bad!), stupid characters (you would think parole officers would know not to mess with parolees), straight-ahead basic filmmaking (don’t go looking for directorial style from writer-director Corey Grant!), low-budget expediency and yet an embarrassing amount of rookie mistakes that stop the entire thing from being enjoyable as more than a catalogue of things not to do. I still liked Illicit, maybe in part because of its faults, but would it be too much to ask for a conventionally good film of that ilk once in a while?

  • Ging chaat goo si 4: Gaan dan yam mo [Police Story 4: First Strike] (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, June 2022) Jackie Chan goes from Hong Kong cop to international secret agent in Police Story 4: First Strike – such a change of pace that the film was marketed in North America as its own standalone film. I actually saw it in theatres back then, a month or two before I started reviewing every film I saw on this web site, but I still had to watch a few minutes of First Strike before confirming that, yes, I had already seen it. (Chan’s koala briefs was the thing that made me go from “this is familiar” to “yup, seen it.”)  This lack of certitude about whether this was a first or second viewing is not a reflection on the quality of the film – almost any Jackie Chan film from his golden period (roughly 1978–1998) is guaranteed to be comic Kung fu entertainment worth seeing on its own, but there are so many of them that anyone may be unsure which one it is. First Strike is “the stepladder one” – because, after some lengthy throat-clearing that humorously shows Chan in the middle of a Bond-like international adventure going from Hong Kong to Ukraine to Australia, the film really finds its usual footing in a terrific athletic sequence in which Chan uses a stepladder to defend himself from attackers. It’s a sequence as good as any other Chan showpiece, with an incredible integration of environmental elements to enliven great stunts – an exceptional showcase of Chan’s team approach to blocking a scene from scene elements and riffing ever-crazier action beats from what’s available. The comedy is the usual for Chan – an innocuous blend of an incredible athlete’s self-deprecation and family-friendly action. First Strike amounts to a film that sits solidly in Chan’s middle-tier filmography – not a classic, but a respectable, solid entry that showcases him doing what only he could do.

  • The Big Cube (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) If you ever wanted to experience a late-1960s soap opera-style drug melodrama, then The Big Cube is your otherwise indescribable pick for the evening. Headlined by Lana Turner, the film was shot in Mexico and heightens its inheritance-thriller foundation with LSD-infused sequences. Turner plays a widowed actress gaslit by her stepdaughter and no-good boyfriend through drug ingestion and spooky recordings at night. The same drug-less plot would have been perfectly viable Hollywood fare in earlier decades, but this being the late 1960s, we get a lot of LSD talk and semi-trippy visuals as bonuses. Turner here turns in one last role for the big studios, while George Chakiris is deliciously slimy as a deceptive LSD-dealing medical student. The Big Cube often feels like a period case study of how pre-New Hollywood desperately tried reheating old formulas with new 1960s elements – there’s a comfort in well-worn plotting, with a spicy dare of the forbidden in roundly denouncing drugs. Not necessarily a classic, but something that has some interest even today.

  • Skidoo (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Some movies end in elation, others in disappointment, many more without making much of an impact and a few in flabbergasted perplexity. Skidoo goes straight in that last category, because the most likely response to making it to this film’s end credits is an awed “…what?”  It’s blindingly from 1968 – calling it “dated” is like dismissing a calendar of previous years, so clearly does it present a (satirical) picture of what the late 1960s must have felt like to older adults at the time. Directed by renowned iconoclast Otto Preminger, the film sets up an old-Hollywood archetype in the form of ultraconservative gangsters, set against the then-weirdness of the hippie youth lifestyle. Drugs prominently feature in the storyline, and so do about a dozen well-known comedians: If you want to see Groucho Marx’s last film role, it’s right here alongside such notables as Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Burgess Meredith, Peter Lawford, Cesar Romero, Slim Pickens and Mickey Rooney – some of these actors in featured roles, others in cameos. This is a big-budget comedy from beginning to end, with decent production values and an end-credit sequence that is not only illustrated, but sung through (!) with relevant lyrics. Alas, comedy isn’t universal, and there’s a reason why Skidoo is often regarded as the worst in Preminger’s filmography: it’s awkward and reactionary, two words that seldom applied to Preminger’s earlier films. But let’s face it: he wasn’t much of a comedian, and he was definitely too old (in his mid-sixties) to reflect anything but bemusement at youth culture and the promotion of LSD as world-peace instrument. The result, ironically, doesn’t reflex late-1960s youth culture as much as it feels like a contemporary parody of the late 1960s. Yes, I would argue that Skidoo has aged rather well in this regard: it’s probably funnier now with ironic distance than it was upon release. That doesn’t make it a great movie still – but I can think of a few good reasons why it’s worth a look for anyone even remotely aware and interested in late-1960s Hollywood and how it was trying to figure out the social changes that were underway. The result? Unique.

  • Dementia 13 (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Even Oscar-winning directors have to start somewhere, and so Dementia 13’s claim to fame remains being Francis Ford Coppola’s mainstream directing debut (after a few sexploitation films made-to-order for Roger Corman). As such, it’s a surprisingly self-assured genre horror film, with psychological thriller elements overlaid on top of a familiar psycho-killer proto-slasher plot template. What impresses most, however, is the quality of the images and the dreamlike Gothic atmosphere. Produced on a low budget, Dementia 13 often plays fast and loose with continuity and the refinements required for a seamless narrative experience – too often, the result skips from one strong image or sequence to another without bothering to paper over the transitions and the plot turns. Still, Dementia 13 is interesting in its own right, and a great deal more respectable than similar films from the Corman school. It clearly affirms Coppola’s origins in genre work (making such films as his later Bram Stoker’s Dracula less surprising) and makes for a perfectly respectable novice entry in a far more distinguished filmography.

  • Creepozoids (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) If I asked you to picture a low-budget 1980s monster movie set in a post-apocalyptic research facility, chances are really good that you’ll end up imagining something much like Creepozoids. This isn’t a badge of quality as much as an assurance of obviousness: the film seldom deviates from the easiest, most conventional path. The paper-thin plot has a bunch of WW3 survivors finding shelter from acid rain in an intact research facility. But that’s really just an excuse for gathering a bunch of disposable characters together in an enclosed set for one shower scene, and a bunch of death sequences. The violence escalates along with the gooey special effects, as our characters run down the same corridor set multiple times. Not much of it has any internal consistency or credible drama – the narrative logic of the film is to rip everything off from Alien, without caring much about whether it’s justified in-between the deaths. The staging is terrible and the shrieks make no sense (boy, that giant rat sequence!), but what else could we be asking for? Noted VHS-era pornstar (and occasional mainstream guest) Ashlyn Gere shows up in a minor role – or rather: as minor as a film with six actors can have. First-time writer-director David DeCoteau would go on to have a long and too-prolific career as a purveyor of low-budget schlock. Creepozoids is terrible no matter how you look at it, but if it has one saving grace, it’s being almost exactly what we imagine a bad Sci-Fi horror film from the late 1987s to feel like. If you’re so intent on being a cinephile to experience the worst alongside the best…

  • Crush (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) You could retitle Crush as “Tweenager’s first stalker thriller” and you wouldn’t be too far off the mark: recasting some very familiar tropes in a high-school context, it makes about as much sense as the Fatal Attraction-inspired films of previous decades. In the aspirational tradition of high-school films, the actors not only look thirty, but they act in ways that would be far more appropriate to post-college young people. Yet so it goes! Our protagonist is a popular soccer jock (but artistically sensitive!) who figures out that there’s a violent stalker in his life when anyone who shows a bit of romantic or flirting interest in him gets attacked. (It’s not much of a mystery when Crush’s DVD cover features the stalker, but who looks at DVD covers these days?)  The plotting is absurd if you don’t buy into the film’s cartoonish stalker character, but then again this is a film about genre thrills, not neo-realistic drama among high school kids. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a violent teenage thriller – not good, not subtle, but forthright about its low ambitions and executed by director Malik Bader with a certain degree of formal professionalism, even despite a nonsensical script. Leigh Whannell (otherwise famous as a horror writer-director) shows up briefly in a secondary role. Everyone else in the cast is cute, interchangeable and disposable. Crush will only be successful among undemanding audiences – everyone else has already seen most of it before even starting to watch.

  • Obsession (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) As I make my way through writer-director Brian de Palma’s lower-tier filmography, one of the questions I get to put to rest is “When does de Palma’s classic period begin?” It’s not as clear as when it ends (I’ll propose Carlito’s Way in 1993, with 1996’s Mission: Impossible being the big-budget victory lap) – While most will clearly identify Carrie (1976) as the film that kick-started de Palma’s notoriety, there are other answers if you’re looking for the film that first showed his dealing with his favourite themes with an acceptable degree of technical polish. You can make a case for Sisters (1972), but I think that you’re on more solid ground with 1976’s Obsession, which feels technically slicker while still allowing de Palma to explore his favourite themes. Much of the film, after all, is a thriller about two women looking like each other, with a few big plot twists in the third act and a disquieting feeling. In this case, we get Cliff Robertson playing a real estate developer who’s haunted by the violent death of his wife and daughter decades earlier, and who suddenly encounters a woman (Geneviève Bujold) who looks eerily like his late wife. There’s a lot more to it, but let’s not spoil the best parts — including John Lithgow in one of his earliest screen roles, complete with southern accent. (Don’t look at the poster too closely, though, because — whoa, spoiler when you know what to look for!)  Even those foolish de Palma detractors won’t be able to deny that the film is (as they often accused) a big Hitchcock homage by riffing from Vertigo, and its production included a protracted argument with both screenwriter and studio about the content of the film. Classic de Palma right there – and for modern viewers, that means that the film is a lot of fun to watch and read about – even if you know about the big twist. The flashy directing is there as well, with some pre-digital effects (such as switching characters while a travelling camera is in darkness between bright windows) showcasing his audacity. It does feel like part of a continuum that would lead to Dressed to Kill, Body Double and Raising Cain (among others) and it’s often a joy to watch even when it delves into dark themes and uncomfortable content “presented as a fantasy.”  Obsession is not lower-tier de Palma – it easily makes its way to the mid-tier, and remains an essential part of his filmography.

  • Son of Lassie (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Oof. Or rather: Woof, because if you thought the original Lassie was a dumpster of dog-propagandizing British-boosterism overly sentimental claptrap, you have no idea what the sequel does with the next generation and Nazis. The story has to do with Laddie, son of the famous Lassie, and the adventures he gets into once he hops on board his master’s plane (the grown-up boy hero of the previous film, now played by Peter Lawford) and they both get shot down over Nazi-controlled territory. Will they be able to escape the prisoner camp, stay together and make it back to England? Well, what do you think? Filmed in rather good Technicolor, the film doesn’t make any attempt at hiding its sickly-sweet blend of patriotism (despite being an American-produced, Canadian-shot film, it carries the British flag proudly), doggy-love and filial pride. It’s pretty much what it wants to be, and there was clearly a good audience for this kind of material in 1945, and still today.

  • Burnt Offerings (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2022) For some reason, I’m very receptive to haunted-house movies – I’ll record them as soon as they show up on the DVR TV guide. But I’m more often than not let down by the results, and Burnt Offerings is another entry in the promising-but-ultimately-disappointing subgenre. The plot gets underway as a family locates a sumptuous residence for a ridiculously low rent and moves there for the summer. Alas, there’s always a price to be paid, and before long it becomes clear to viewers (but not the characters) that the house is out for their blood and/or souls – as accidents, possession, strange behaviour and unusual portents become commonplace. As far as horror films of the 1970s go, Burnt Offerings has the soft cinematography, contrived plotting, star cameo, dumb characters and downbeat ending of its contemporaries. It does make for a bit of a weird experience – the tonal control isn’t refined, so we go from subtle to blunt in moments, with the grand-guignol violence looking cheap and exploitative. Bette Davis shows up without much to do; Karen Black is a bit bland, and both Oliver Reed and Burgess Meredith also seem a bit lost in a genre film. Still, I’ve seen worse: Burnt Offerings could have been much better and made more out of its premise, but it’s passable entertainment as long as you keep your expectations in check.

  • Mindwarp (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) One of two things can explain Mindwarp – either it’s the product of a feverish coke-fuelled binge by screenwriters dead-set on blending three different genres together, or it’s a low-budget direct-to-video production. How else to explain the demented mix of cyberpunk tropes with post-apocalyptic setting, with a dash of slasher and the presence of both Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm? Yes, Mindwarp is a trip – and that’s even before getting into the crackpot last few minutes of the film. But no, sorry – it’s not a good film. I mean – sure, it’s kind of interesting just to see how the pieces are brought together and don’t fit, but it’s not as if any quality or enjoyment pops out of that. Campbell is subdued (although Scrimm is effective), the gore effects seem perfunctory (which makes sense considering that the film was produced as part of Fangoria’s magazine brief foray into films) and the ending is too wishy-washy to be effective. Interestingly enough, the screenwriting duo responsible for Mindwarp’s script, John Brancato and Michael Ferris, would go on to have a modestly impressive Hollywood career with a few highs (The Game) and lows (Catwoman).

  • Bird of Paradise (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Looking for non-white representativeness in classic Hollywood history is always a double-edged sword. Sure, you may find it… but at the cost of seeing tired clichés and offensive stereotypes. So it is that while Bird of Paradise does feature King Vidor (one of the best and most humane directors of the 1920s–1930s – and also the director of the black-cast Hallelujah), the magnificent Dolores del Rio, and a story entirely set on a tropical island… the price to pay for it is a story that seemingly indulges in the worst clichés of exotic noble savages, from casual nudity to volcanic sacrifices. Joel McCrea and Lon Chaney Jr. also feature in the film, with Busby Berkeley contributing dance choreography – so there are clearly some production values to go around in the film’s recreation of the South Pacific. Still, Bird of Paradise isn’t supposed to be a fun romp: It doesn’t end well (perhaps due to the interracial component of the film’s central romance), and the storm of racial clichés can be hard to take seriously. Still, still – the pre-Code nature of the film does soften a few edges, or more accurately adds more to the film than if it had been completed even three years later. Del Rio is a timeless beauty, and while Vidor doesn’t have much to do here to play up his usual themes (it was reportedly very much work-for-hire), he delivers romantic sequences of unusually good quality. As with many similar films, Bird of Paradise is a mixed bag: sure, there’s some good stuff here, but are you willing to watch the rest of it?

  • The California No (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2022) If The California No wanted to be a comedy, it did have the proper set-up for it as our protagonist “discovers” that he’s in an open marriage. (Note: If that happens to you in real life, you’re not in an open marriage – your spouse is being disingenuously forthright in telling you they’re cheating.)  There are many ways this premise could have been reused for a comedy of raunch and revenge, but writer-director Ned Ehrbar is not interested in these things here. At all. Instead, the premise becomes a launching point for a character study of a sadly detestable protagonist – a mopey, depressed, incompetent, whining kind of guy who’s intolerable after two minutes – let alone 84 of them. Shambolic in all aspects of his life, he impassively goes from one crisis to another, loses his job after turning a press junket interview with a well-known actor into a fight, doesn’t respond to the lustful signals broadcast by a female friend, stumbles in bed with another woman, deceives his way into a celebrity profile that turns sour… and then the film ends because satisfying ending are not for you, plebeian. Cheaply made and even more cheaply conceived, The California No impresses more by how it wastes its assets (Los Angeles being the least of it) in the service of an obnoxious effort more than anything else. I did like Tracie Thoms (as I usually do) and can’t quite fault Jesse Bradford and Brecklin Meyer for having small roles here. But the rest of the film? Almost intolerable even as background noise. The film ends more than concludes, but don’t worry – you’ll feel so little about it all that it won’t matter.