Movie Review

  • Madman (1981)

    Madman (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) You have certainly heard this one before: a psycho with a knife killing summer camp counselors. Yeah. No clichés are left behind in writer-director Joe Giannone’s Madman, a slashy slasher from the slashiest period: backwoods legend, isolated camp, couples having sex before being killed and one final girl. Sure, those clichés may not have been clichés at the time (remember, this film was released only one year after Friday the 13th and more or less contemporary to The Burning) but even if that’s true, time has not been kind to Madman. It now feels completely generic at the level you’d see from bargain-basement straight-to-streaming releases, undistinguishable from so many movies of the era from the camp-killing premise to the synth soundtrack, the incessant screaming, the muddy nighttime atmosphere and so on. I suppose that Madman gets a place in the movie hall of fame for being the most utterly average of all slashers from the golden age of slashers, but that’s really not much praise.

  • Maniac Cop (1988)

    Maniac Cop (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) So there’s this maniac and he’s a cop and this is a slasher horror film set in New York City and I can probably stop the review right here because you know all you really need to know about Maniac Cop. It’s directed by William Lustig (who also directed 1980’s execrable Maniac) but written by Larry Cohen, so there’s something that can’t easily be dismissed in the script and the result is, much to my dismay, an above-average slasher—maybe even a dark supernatural thriller. One of the interesting tricks that Cohen plays is changing protagonists every so often, eventually landing on none other than Bruce Campbell (albeit in a histrionic-free turn) as the protagonist. Richard Roundtree also shows up! There are a few surprisingly good stunts at the end of the film, and the entire thing is very much a New York City movie—and proudly made as a B-movie. While I can’t bring myself to call Maniac Cop a good film, I liked it better than I thought, and feel that with police brutality being under an unprecedented scope, the film should find a specific audience in the ACAB crowd. Maybe we’ll end up with a remake one of these days.

  • Pulse 3 (2008)

    Pulse 3 (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) As one could guess from a barely-known third-in-a-series horror film, there really isn’t much to say about Pulse 3. The ghosts-invasion-through-the-Internet apocalypse of the first film happened years ago, and now the human survivors are in rural camps while cities are off-limits. Then, proving that even idiots have survived the apocalypse, a young girl strikes a videoconference romance via an illicit laptop and decides to go see him… in the city. That is about the last coherent thing that happens, although I suppose that it could have been worse. But what remains is still not that good: half the movie looks as if it was shot against greenscreen for even the most ordinary shot, and at the script level the attempts to earn sympathy for the ghost antagonists simply don’t work. Pulse 3 never quite knows what to do with itself, but those problems grow even worse in the third act. Adding insult to injury, my only reason to see the film, Noreen DeWulf, is only there for a few minutes in low-resolution screen and gets an unfortunate send-off. I’d recommend avoiding Pulse 3, but really the joke is on me because I’m the only one dumb enough to even watch it.

  • Phantasm (1979)

    Phantasm (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Hoopla Streaming, April 2020) The biggest surprise of Phantasm is that (especially with its new restoration) it looks just slightly newer than its 1979 release year—had I not known, I would have pegged the film as one of those imaginative mid-1980s horror movies with big ideas and no budget. The plot doesn’t quite make sense (a lot would be explained in the sequels), but as long as we stick to the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), the sci-fi gadgets and weird imagination of writer-director Don Coscarelli, then we’re in good hands. The amateurish no-budget constraints of the film do grate, however, especially when the film’s high concepts can’t be delivered effectively: this is a film where these are clear differences between what’s being said and what’s shown on-screen. Still, imagination is a great asset, and the film is often effective in its impact. I just wish that there had been stronger attention paid at the higher level: Even after five films, I feel as if the Phantasm series has only scratched the surface of what it could achieve.

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) This is my second time having a gander at the horror/Science Fiction cult classic Phantasm, and I still don’t have a good handle on what’s going on. That’s by design: writer/director Don Coscarelli was labouring under severe budgetary constraints and a lack of narrative direction when he put together Phantasm (some of the hour-long amount of footage cut from the film would be revived as part of the fourth film in the series) and the emphasis is clearly on the high concepts, the uncanny visuals and the dreamlike atmosphere. The result is not uninteresting—and it’s a great deal more original than the slasher craze that was burgeoning at the time!—but those who crave a strong narrative will not necessarily have a good time. Of course, having a second look informed by the rest of the series helps in backfilling creative explanations that did not exist at the time: the sequels do a lot in providing context and pointing at the way some initially secondary characters would become the series’ focus over nearly thirty years. Angus Scrimm obviously remains the series’ most distinctive actor (his death in 2016 marked the definitive end of the original series more than any creative exhaustion or narrative conclusion), but who could have guessed that Reggie Bannister would become the series’ most valuable player? The ambitions of the film are constantly defeated by the low budget and the haphazard narrative, but there’s some undeniable power to the silver spheres, the mixture of horror and science fiction (which Coscarelli would later execute to a superlative degree in John Dies at the End) and the dreamlike atmosphere that emerged from heroic low-end filmmaking. It’s not clear to me if any of the sequels are better despite better production values, special effects and a better idea of where the narrative is meant to go: there is a rough filmmaking power to Phantasm that, at least, explains why it led to four follow-ups over the following thirty years.

  • Roberta (1935)

    Roberta (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) In assessing Roberta, it’s useful to be reminded that even if this was the third Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film, the pair wasn’t nearly as famous as they’d become the next year with the success of Top Hat. Their roles in the film are important but not dominant: There’s also Randolph Scott and Irene Dunn having nearly as much screentime as the busy plot tries to have two romances going at once. The disappointment continues with the relatively few musical numbers and their impact: While Roberta is professionally produced, the songs aren’t that memorable (although I do like “I won’t dance”) and neither is the choreography. While Astaire and Hermes Pan were getting up to speed, we’re still far away (well, aside from the hand-piano bit) from the high-concept sequences of Astaire films to come. If you’re a fan of those later movies, Roberta feels familiar—not terribly special, but comforting nonetheless. The plot itself is a bit dull, and is largely led by Scott and Dunne—something about an American ex-football player (Scott) inheriting a fashion house in Paris while his friend (Astaire) plays in a band. There are a few good barbs, but the plot gets shoved away quickly when Astaire and Ginger get their dancing shoes and start tap-dancing away: they’re always fun even when Roberta is determined not to give them too much time. But that would quickly change in the following months, and give us the film that ensured their long-lived popularity.

  • The Rainmaker (1956)

    The Rainmaker (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2020) There’s some serious star power at the top of the bill for dustbowl romantic comedy The Rainmaker: Katharine Hepburn plays a spinster pining for marriage, and her wishes for a suitable man are answered by none other than Burt Lancaster. He plays his always-travelling conman character (promising rain for a modest price) like a rough draft for the one he’d play three years later in Elmer Gantry. Meanwhile, well, Hepburn is as good as ever, yet about a decade too old to play a coquettish maid, and—being Hepburn—can’t help but being Hepburn even when it doesn’t make sense for the character. (The problems start with casting Hepburn as “plain”—look, Hollywood, even multiple-Oscar-winning Hepburn couldn’t play “plain.”) While the core of The Rainmaker is fine (a woman rediscovering herself thanks to a flamboyant stranger—I’m not saying “manic pixie dream dude” but I’m thinking it), the rest of it loses itself in not-always-interesting tangents and asides. This is probably an artifact of the film’s theatrical origins, just as is the over-the-top acting exhibited in the film. Now, I do like the result—manic Lancaster is the best Lancaster—but the film may be a hard sell for those not used to that kind of performance. Still, The Rainmaker is an interesting film for all sorts of reasons, maybe half of them not necessarily intended by the filmmakers.

    (On TV, September 2021) With the right script, there’s something fascinating in seeing well-known actors facing against each other. Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster were two epochal actors, but The Rainmaker is the only film in which you’ll see them go head-to-head in roles hewing closely to their screen personas. She plays the clever spinster, pining for the right man but not too much. He plays a charismatic conman, with a business model of selling fancy decorations as devices fit to make it rain… and then moseying on to the next town. As the film begins, his hurried escape from a town suddenly opposed to his flim-flammery leads him right to Hepburn’s house. A short antagonistic romance begins, heightened by the difference on both actors’ acting styles. Unsubtly enough, rain ends up being a thematic stand-in for all sorts of things here – but never mind the symbolism, because we’re here for the stars. For Hepburn, the film is solidly in line with her progression from a spinster to a matriarch. For Lancaster, it’s one in a lengthy list of roles for which he used his leading-man good looks as a front for a deceitful character. This is a film where a second viewing can be more interesting than the first: it’s the push-and-pull of the romance that’s more interesting here than its resolution, especially if you think the characters are too mismatched for more than a brief but torrid affair. The Depression-era setting offers an interesting development of the western stories that would have been set in the same geographical area a few decades earlier. Nonetheless, I would recommend The Rainmaker for existing Hepburn/Lancaster fans – you get a lot more out of it as a clash of actors than as a standalone story.

  • The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

    The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) The documentary evidence that is The Incredible Mr. Limpet suggests that once upon a time, Don Knotts was considered a bona fide movie star. Okay. While we process this, a look at the film itself also suggests that this was the special-effects family movie event of 1965. It describes how an ordinary bookkeeper (Knotts, obviously) transforms into a fish (animated, with glasses), falls in love with another fish despite being married, befriends a crab, gets a lieutenant’s commission with the US Navy, helps the war effort by locating U-Boats, and runs away with his new fish-wife after the war is over. Again: Okay. Mystifying charm of the leading man and insane plot summary aside… all right, I can’t keep kidding: there is no “aside” of those two things. Even the copious amount of animation required for the concept only highlights just how weird this whole thing is. Knott disappears from the screen once he’s a fish, but his voice carries through the end of the film. So, someone so unhappy in the world becomes a fish and kills a few hundred people? Top-notch family film right there. Kids’ propaganda film for the US Navy, kids’ propaganda for extreme body dimorphism, kids’ propaganda for interspecies polygamy… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see this in a few years and laugh all the way through. Right now, I’m just overwhelmed by the weirdness. Just listen to “I Wish I Were a Fish” and see how you feel after. Sure, the film was a hit with kids and still has its fans. But: Okay.

  • Martyrs (2015)

    Martyrs (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) American remakes of foreign horror films are usually disappointments, and the advantage I had with the original Martyrs is that I could watch it in my native French. So, really, I have no excuses other than I was curious to see how the film would be adapted to an American context rather than a French/Canadian one. Well, it’s entirely unsurprising if I report that the American remake is just as expected: Slicker, Americanized, not that different and yet significantly tamer to the point of stripping off what was unnerving about the original. If you thought that the French Martyrs was effective more because of the way it was put together than what it was about, then the American remake will confirm your impression. Directors Kevin and Michael Goetz clearly haven’t taken the right cues from the first film. I’m not going to lionize the original, but there’s no argument that, despite not changing much, this remake is clearly inferior to the first film. But that was pretty much what everyone expected.

  • Menteur [Liar] (2019)

    Menteur [Liar] (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) French-Canadian absurdist comedy Menteur takes a fantasy concept (an inveterate liar suddenly wakes up in a world where his lies have become truth) and runs with it as far as it can. Perennial French-Canadian marquee name Louis-José Houde leads the film along with Antoine Bertrand, but the fun here is in the script’s comic invention—even if the result is a bit too scattershot to be completely satisfying. The first part is generally more interesting than the second, which seems to escalate matters into a disappointing dead-end. Still, this is the kind of film that the French-Canadian cinema industry does best: a fast-paced crowd-pleaser comedy, not particularly refined but able to deliver what it intends to.

  • Blinded by the Light (2019)

    Blinded by the Light (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) The musical flashbacks continue apace with Blinded by the Light, following into the footsteps of musical biopics of other acts such as The Beatles, Elton John and Queen. But while this film idolizes Bruce Springsteen, it takes a slightly different approach than the straight-up life retelling. More political, more personal than a biography or a Yesterday-style comic homage, it follows a British teenager of South Asian ethnicity in Thatcher’s England as he discovers Springsteen, becomes a better person and travels to the United States to meet his idol. While the Boss’ music occupies a central place in Blinded by the Light, much of it is a journey of self-discovery and affirmation, with many subplots being familiar riffs on immigrant families adapting to their new surroundings. Viveik Kalra makes for a likable lead, with Nell Williams making a good romantic foil. Politically, it’s a film that doesn’t miss an opportunity to highlight the commonalities between working-class people on both sides of the Atlantic. While Blinded by the Light, like many musical-themed pictures, doesn’t quite work if you don’t already idolize the featured artist, it’s watchable enough, amusing, honest and joyous. Better yet, it doesn’t attempt to rewrite an artist’s biography.

  • Firestarter (1984)

    Firestarter (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2020) 1980s Stephen King adaptations span the scale from terrible to terrific, and Firestarter lands right in the middle of it, meaning that it’s both mediocre and bland. Anyone who has read the novel will be disappointed at how much of the humanistic material has been stripped away, leaving in its place a blunt blend of paranoid thriller, paranormal powers, secret government experiments and endangered children. Some of it does work, mind you: the father-daughter relationship is effectively sketched, and Firestarter remains more interesting than it could have been because it doesn’t settle for a simple chase narrative. Special effects are not bad for a lower-budget mid-1980s film, with some spontaneous combustion out of thin air. A very young Drew Barrymore stars, and much scenery is chewed by George C. Scott. Still, while much of what works here is taken straight from the novel, the film itself simply refuses to go anywhere beyond a mediocre middle-of-the-road adaptation. There’s little life to Mark L. Lester’s direction, and aside from a climax that appropriately burns everything up, the film has trouble sustaining the pacing that a thriller should have. I suppose that King fans weren’t too disappointed in Firestarter back in 1984—after all, no less than seven King adaptations were released in 1983–1985. Not all of them could be complete successes.

  • Tumbledown (2015)

    Tumbledown (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2020) Rebecca Hall and Jason Sudeikis make for an interesting pairing in romantic comedy Tumbledown, although the “comedy” here may be a bit more muted than you’d think considering that the story happens during the female lead’s final stages of grieving for her dead husband. The plot has to do with a writer (Sudeikis, in an unusually toned-down role) travelling from New York City to Maine in order to complete his biography of a dead singer. Alas, the singer’s widow (Hall, as beautiful as ever) is not a willing participant and the complex relationship they have eventually moves toward romance. It’s all a bit predictable in a good way, with Hall’s character moving on from her grief into something else. It’s perhaps a bit sweeter than usual for those kinds of films, considering the more dramatic aspect of a dead husband hanging over the romantic component of the film. The late-winter small-town setting echoes the larger thematic aspects of the script and the darker undertones of the backstory. There are a few issues with the script—Sudeikis’ character, who has elements of wish-fulfillment for the female audience, isn’t always written in the most believable ways. Elsewhere in the cast, I did enjoy seeing another late-career role for Blythe Danner –and Griffin Dunne too! While uneven and arguably a bit too wrapped in the conventions of romance (although, you know, those are likable characters and we want them to be happy), Tumbledown isn’t bad considering its slow pace.

  • Hard Target 2 (2016)

    Hard Target 2 (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2020) It had been a while since I had taken a look at a Roel Reiné film. Reiné, for those unaware, is a reliably competent vulgarian author specializing in B-grade action movies. He does a lot with little, usually shoots in poorer countries with lower production costs and in doing so gets amazing visuals and quality action scenes. This generally holds true for Hard Target 2 as well. A sequel-in-name only to the first 1990s film, this one takes place in Myanmar, with our protagonist being hunted for sport. Decent screen fighter Scott Adkins stars and Rhona Mitra plays a bad girl, but the star here remains Reiné as he uses audacious camera moves, aerial photography and all sorts of other stylistic tricks to give a very high level of polish to this low-budget film and, incidentally, pay homage to John Woo, who directed the first film. Of note: the movie’s introduction sequence/credit sequence is moved to the end of the film—weird. Despite Reine’s efforts at making things interesting on a low budget, Hard Target 2 is not a great movie… but it’s a well-executed one in its genre. Approach it as its own thing rather than a sequel and it will feel more interesting.

  • La belle et la bête [The Beauty and the Beast] (2014)

    La belle et la bête [The Beauty and the Beast] (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2020) Considering the innate French-ness of most interpretations of The Beauty and the Beast story, from Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve to Cocteau’s first film version to both of Disney’s takes, it’s somewhat rightful that it should get another French-produced version. Fortunately, the Christophe Gans version of La belle et la bête is a sumptuous, even lavish adaptation that does offer a very nice counterpoint to other takes on the tale. Propelled by the legacy of Cocteau, it offers an unabashedly romantic take on the tale, boosted by sumptuous set design, great cinematography, magnificent visuals, as well as decent (if sometimes uneven) special effects used in interesting ways. The flip side to such a production is that it can feel insubstantial at times, especially if the romantic aspect doesn’t quite hit like it should. Also troublesome is the 19-year age difference between leads Léa Seydoux and Vincent Cassel, although considering that he starts as a monstrous man-beast isolated for decades in his castle, that’s not really as irritating as you’d think. By adding a lot of extraneous details, such as flashbacks to family affairs, the film does take a while to gel and, even then, may test the patience of some viewers not entirely taken by the poetic romanticism of the tale. Still, this take on La belle et la bête is a beautiful, remarkable film, well worth seeing even if you overdose on the Disney versions.

  • April Fool’s Day (1986)

    April Fool’s Day (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2020) By the mid-1980s, the slasher genre was overexposed after its 1978–1982 boom and fast losing popularity—anyone trying to make one had to find a strong gimmick or else… maybe try a parody? To its credit, April Fool’s Day does try something different—but what may make it interesting to people (like me) who don’t like slashers may drive slasher fans away. Spoilers inbound! The film begins like so many slashers do, with a bunch of friends headed to an isolated resort for fun… except when they all start dying one by one. So far so dull, except that director Fred Walton seems to be surprisingly aware of clichés and working hard to maintain some kind of comedy even as the bodies pile up. It’s not always amusing or compelling (I don’t really consider it a comedy) but the real kicker that differentiates this film from the rest of the 1980s slasher craze is the ending, in which the “April’s Fool!” is revealed and it turns out that no one is dead. Which is the kind of ending to drive slasher fans crazy (except that they already did get what they wanted, kill after kill) while making non-slasher fans smile at the thought of a zero-kill horror film. Your perspective may vary quite a bit on this one, but one thing’s for sure: April Fool’s Day does have a memorable hook.