Movie Review

  • Moonfall (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, April 2022) Roland Emmerich has been making disaster movie for longer than some of Moonfall’s audience has been alive, but he’s not necessarily getting better at it. Sure, the special effects are much improved, but what’s their use when they can’t patch a terrible script, a disappointing structure and atrocious dialogue? For my money, Emmerich peaked during the first two thirds of 2012 – about as good a blend of spectacle and enjoyable nonsense as he’s able to orchestrate, with better special effects than Independence Day and Godzilla, and a better script (relatively speaking) than Geostorm or Moonfall. This time around, the moon is behaving mysteriously and drawing ever close to Earth – the only hope for humanity being a mission with a hastily recommissioned Space Shuttle. A usual, Emmerich disaster films get worse the longer they’re not spectacles – you get the usual crew of disgraced professionals, conspiracy crackpots who happen to be right (the sooner we can get rid of that trope, the better) and divorced characters. There is a long and not-completely interesting essay to be written about disaster movies and script structure (as in: the disaster film was born the moment screenwriters understood that you could stretch the thrills over an entire film rather than have it at the beginning of the third act) and Moonfall doesn’t quite know how to get that right: The opening half of the film is duller than expected, with some subplots that are mind-numbingly rote or useless (including Kelly Yu in a redundant role solely fit to affirm the film’s Chinese production money). While the disaster itself has its moments, you can see the energy running out of it fast enough to justify the film’s third-act slide into pure undiluted science fiction with two alien races battling it out inside Earth’s “moon.”  There are, to be fair, some good showpieces – sure, you’ve seen plenty of rocket launches in other movies, but what about a shuttle launch from underwater? But at other times, the script becomes obnoxious-to-irritating – the Elon Musk worship was a bad idea from the get-go, and is only going to become even more troublesome. Even the last-third slide into pure SF – which I should like – is hampered by ham-fisted exposition and a refusal to explore some of these possibilities. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve read plenty of SF novels taking a far more grounded look at the moon exploding (McDevitt’s Moonfall and Baxter’s Moonseed, among many others) and this feels like a pale, preposterous copy of that. Emmerich can still be depended on for short bursts of excitement and trailer-worthy shots, but I think it’s time to let go of the hope that he’ll ever be able to rope it all again into a satisfying film.

  • American Utopia (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s no sense in pretending otherwise: I watched American Utopia less for a David Byrne concert than for Spike Lee’s direction. It’s not that I don’t know Byrne or his work – there are at least three songs in here that I recognized – but more that he’s not really anywhere near my list of favourite artists, and concert films are invariably aimed at fans. As such, what struck me about American Utopia is how clearly and specifically it aims at Byrne fans: there are pauses for applause, cheers and whoops that are mystifying if you’re not already invested in Byrne’s career, and the pandering to people who already have a parasocial relationship with the artist can be very curious. This being said, I’m marginally closer to being a Byrne fan after seeing the concert: While the music isn’t always to my liking (even if “Lazy” is an old-school favourite), Byrne himself is a likable presence, with his age adding gravitas and contrast to his lighter moments. His humanistic approach is refreshing even when it has to engage with American politics, and his take on Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout” is a highlight that also helps explain why Spike Lee directed the film. If you stop to read on American Utopia’s production, the technical elements of the concert (with dynamic lighting and wireless musical instruments allowing for musical performances to be blended with choreography) are quite amazing in their own ways… and transparent enough to allow the result to speak by itself. Even if you feel like a newcomer to Byrne’s music, his silver-suited candid patter will win you over.

  • Eat Locals (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) The surest way to make a film reviewer mad is not necessarily to show them a bad movie – it’s to ask them to talk about a film that had many reasons to be good (or fun, or at least entertaining) yet couldn’t manage much more than a handful of good moments. There’s something promising in the situation set up early in Eat Locals – a gathering of powerful vampires in an isolated country house, surrounded by a team of vampire hunters. The point of the meeting is to carve up England’s population for vampire use (they use quotas), and some of the vampire hunters have mercenary motives. This should be a solid foundation for a film, but actor-turned director Jason Flemyng doesn’t have much to work with – the script fails to take advantage of what it has at its disposal, and turns out something surprisingly boring. Even though it’s not taking itself seriously, Eat Locals is considerably less funny than it could have been, and the production’s limited budget clearly stops it from relying on action sequences or special-effects set-pieces that could have mitigated the dullness of the script. Sure, it’s rather fun to see Anette Crosbie as an elderly vampire mowing down attackers with a machine gun… but when that’s the highlight of the film, that more or less confirms my point. Eat Locals is nowhere near as witty as its title – it may appeal to vampire fans having seen nearly everything else, but there are much better horror comedies out there that deserve attention before this one.

  • Gycklarnas afton [Sawdust and Tinsel] (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2022) All right, Ingmar Bergman fans, here’s the deal: I don’t have a good batting average when it comes to his films. There are a few I like, a few more I can tolerate, and far many more that I don’t really care about — except for a vague sentiment of having wasted my time watching something I don’t care about. Sawdust and Tinsel goes into that last category – it’s one of his early films, it takes place at a circus and it’s not about anything much. It’s not perceptively funny (in keeping with Bergman’s comedies) and not particularly dramatic and, most of all, not really involving. So there it is: Sawdust and Tinsel. Need I go on? Not really.

  • Ningen no jôken [The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer] (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) One of my core beliefs as a critic is that endings can make or break a film. They’re not everything (and that’s why I’m not averse to explaining the nature of endings with little regard for overly protective spoiler alerts), but they shape the meaning of movies and how viewers react to them. In this light, the supremely depressing ending of The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer is monumental, because it caps nine hours of film designed as a single story. What viewers may be able to forgive after a ten-minute subplot or a ninety-minute horror film may not be the same as how they’ll feel after nine hours of gruelling suffering for the central characters. But writer-director Masaki Kobayashi makes his choices and sticks to them here, all the way to an impressive bleakness that does give a very different flavour to the trilogy than what it would have been with an upbeat, satisfying ending. As much as I have painfully slogged through those nine hours (well, fewer than that – there was a liberal use of fast-forwarding), I am ready to concede that The Human Condition, designed as it was as a humanistic anti-war statement, would be a far lesser achievement with a happy ending. The masochistic suffering of its viewers is the point, one could say while suffering echoes of Stockholm’s syndrome. Compared to the first two volumes, this final act is far more anarchistic: there’s little wartime glory here, and plenty of incidents to show how it’s impossible to hold on to ideals in wartime, especially after the fighting is over and the real survival efforts begin. I am not likely to revisit the trilogy any time soon, but it’s going to haunt me – few other works of that magnitude would have dared such uncompromising nihilism.

  • Songwriter (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I don’t have much to say about Songwriter’s plot – it’s something about country singers, the predatory elements in the genre, and holding on to song rights – but neither does the film itself: It’s a film of moments and observations loosely structured around a narrative clothesline. I do have much nicer things to say about the film’s quasi-documentary atmosphere, its portrayal of the country music industry and its performers: Director Alan Rudolph makes the good choice to film things as if the camera was almost irrelevant to the staging and actors, and this allows the performers to be showcased in a quasi-documentary fashion. It certainly helps that the film was first conceived by singer-actor Willie Nelson as a semi-autobiographical rant, and that he was able to rope in the always-likable singer-actor Kris Kristofferson as co-star. They know what they’re talking about, and that credible authenticity carries to the end product. The music is terrific if you’re in that genre, and having Nelson and Kristofferson as performers makes for a nice time-capsule capture of their performances. Kristofferson had a great run of films in the 1970s and early 1980s, and you can add this film to the list – he always comes across as compelling. The echoes of New Hollywood are apparent in this mid-1980s effort, through gritty cinematography and de-glammed presentation. Songwriter is not going to be for everyone, but country fans will enjoy this throwback to the 1980s, and everyone looking for a specific portrayal of a musical niche at a specific time and place will get the full immersion.

  • Stage Fright (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I’m not sure it’s right to say that there’s a lot of opportunity wasted in Stage Fright – after all, what’s the reasonable ceiling on a camp slasher film adopting musical comedy tropes? Still, there’s a sense that the film achieves only a portion of its potential. As someone who loathes slashers but likes musicals, I probably shouldn’t be surprised at my mixed reaction: the musical aspects buoy my reaction to the slasher elements, and the slasher elements limit my liking of the musical bits. That tension comes into play from even the first sequence, as the joy of seeing Minnie Driver (yay!) as a Broadway star is almost immediately cut short by her being the first victim in a series of gory murders. The story really picks up ten years later, as her children are on the staff of a musical summer camp teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. But financial problems soon become the least of their worries when people start being killed (once again with maximum gore) all over the camp. The rest is rather standard slasher material, with kills every few minutes to keep audiences awake (or unimpressed, if they don’t like the genre) until a conclusion that’s slightly better than average for the genre. In between the kills, we have musical sequences (not an easy structural conceit!) – nothing particularly memorable, but enough to establish the film’s dual allegiances. Allie MacDonald is not bad as the plucky final girl, which Meat Loaf seems to have the most fun in a role that’s not particularly glamorous. There’s clearly a novelty to Stage Fright that will interest fans of genre hybridization, and a few cute quirks here and there that show how clever writer-director Jerome Sable can be. But there’s something missing, or a clear limit to how good this blend of elements can be. Perhaps pulled back by the different directions of its inspirations, Stage Fright may be worth a very marginal curious look, but don’t expect much conventional satisfaction no matter which way you approach it.

  • Mitt liv som hund [My Life as a Dog] (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Meh. Big meh. Visible-from-orbit meh. I’m not big on slice-of-life movies in the first place, so it’s hardly surprising that I would have an unimpressed reaction to My Life as a Dog. Taking us back to late-1950s rural Sweden, it’s a film that follows a young boy as he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle while his mother faces a terminal illness. New friends, eccentric characters, grief and obsession about the fate of Laika (sent in orbit without ways of making it back on Earth) are the stuff that the film is made of. Clearly a labour of nostalgia from writer-director Lasse Hallström (who parlayed the film’s unexpected American success into a Hollywood career), the film is amiable, wistful, funny and often far more imaginative than you’d expect. Rather than harp on how I didn’t care all that much for the result, I‘ll let you decide whether this is the kind of film that would interest you, and act accordingly.

  • Le doulos (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I would like to be more appreciative of Le doulos – after all, it’s in a likable genre (French criminal thrillers taking their cues from American noir), directed by the solid Jean-Pierre Melville in one of his most accessible movies, featuring no less than French screen legend Jean-Paul Belmondoin an involving plot of deceit and murder, and it remains very well-regarded even today. Alas, probably due to a quirk of mood or cumulative viewing of other similar films, I can’t muster up much enthusiasm for it. Feeling a lot like many, many very similar films, Le doulos washed over me without finding much purchase. Even writing this review a few days later, I struggle to find much worth noticing, so well does it blend with other more striking movies (even from Melville himself, as Le doulos is chronologically stuck between Bob le flambeur and Le Samourai). That’s not a great review, but don’t fret, French noir fans – I’ve got every intention of revisiting Le doulos eventually, hopefully in a more receptive mood, and report back if anything has changed. After all, it took me two attempts at Bob le Flambeur to get the most of it.

  • Lean on Me (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) There is a highly formulaic nature to the way Lean on Me is presented – the tough-as-nails principal taking on the challenge to reform an inner-city school that everyone has written off as hopeless. He shocks students, surprises teachers, annoys parents, and gathers support even as firefighters (!) and parents of bad kids league against him. There have been a number of films along those lines throughout the 1980s–1990s (Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, etc.) but even coming late to Lean on Me, I can recognize that this is the Big Kahuna of the genre – slickly made, easy to like, featuring good actors enjoying the material and a schematic structure that focuses on the essential even if it means steamrolling a few troublesome questions along the way. The standout performer here remains Morgan Freeman, tearing into a character that would be practically unbearable had he been played by a lesser actor. The first thing any viewer will notice in watching Lean on Me is how nearly every single scene in its first act is juiced-up for maximal impact: the headstrong principal walks in, spits out some tough-love rhetoric, slaps hands and imposes change. Ne’er-do-wells are sent home, hard-working students and teachers are protected, and the principal embodies the management principle of taking responsibility for his actions. More than that, the rhythm is sustained at a high pace throughout that opening half-hour – it’s bang, bang, bang one big moment after another. There’s something interesting, then, in that unlike many films, the complexity of the plot increases as the film goes along, the consequences of the protagonist’s decisive actions creating complications that then take over the back-half of the film. It’s all good fun, but if you’re raising your eyebrows at the way the protagonist goes about things and making enemies, the film isn’t really interested in addressing your concerns or showing a softening of his attitude (or showing how academic improvement is performed) – the protagonist is always right, remains right and will not be challenged: the world changes to accommodate him rather than the inverse. While that does make for a fun power fantasy that lasts about as long as the closing credits, a sober second look at the film isn’t nearly so giddy. Still, on a first viewing, Lean on Me does make an impact, and it explains why it’s still in heavy rotation even thirty-some years later.

  • The Last Run (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I’ve got this theory that one of the reasons why Classic Hollywood movies (anything before 1967) endure well is that there’s little basis for comparison with today’s films – they were doing something different due to the constraints of the Production Code, the tastes of the public and the technology of the time. Comparisons get closer and less favourable once you get into the New Hollywood era, especially when they attempt styles and genres perfected since then. So, the appeal of a proto 1970s car chase action movie like The Last Run doesn’t really resonate today as much as it did then – and considering that The Last Run wasn’t particularly well-received at the time, then imagine how it plays now. Glumly executed in the most annoying tradition of 1970s New Hollywood, The Last Run is absolutely not fun at all: it features an aging mob driver (a dour George C. Scott) living a miserable existence, tasked with one last job ferrying a killer from one country to another. You can already see the ways in which the film is not meant as crowd-pleasing entertainment, but the way it’s executed sucks whatever thrills the idea of a multi-country car chase could have led to – director Richard Fleischer doesn’t have much success staging stunts and action scenes, and it’s not as if the state of the art at the time was all that impressive in the first place. By the time the film ends on a sour note, The Last Run cements its status as a film to forget – substandard even by the yardsticks of the time, and now even less impressive. New Hollywood was a specific taste, and it doesn’t match with the idea of a fun action thriller.

  • La sirène des tropiques [Siren of the Tropics] (1927)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Considering my unenthusiastic attitude toward silent-era drama, you would have been surprised to learn that La sirène des tropiques was one of my most anticipated DVR recordings of the month – something that popped up as a must-see when perusing TCM’s April line-up and that I watched as soon as possible. What could possibly explain this enthusiasm for a 1927 French silent film? Well, to keep it simple: La magnifique Joséphine Baker. I’ve written about Baker elsewhere, but to sum up: A poor black American girl emigrates to Paris in 1925 and, within a few years, becomes not only a celebrated signer/dancer, but the sex-symbol of the Art Deco era. I’ll leave out the most amazing elements of her later biography to focus on one thing: Cinema history records Baker as the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, which is… La sirène des tropiques.  The plot isn’t necessarily a shining beacon of progressivism, as a French engineer is sent to a Caribbean colony by a romantic rival arranging for a violent conclusion to his trip – but the intervention of a beautiful young woman (Baker) saves him and she falls in love with the Frenchman, stowing aboard a ship bound for Europe in her quest to be with him. Once in Paris, she eventually discovers that she’s ideally suited to music halls, allowing Baker to perform (and for the film to document) several of her best-known early routines. (Amusingly enough, the romance peters out, but it’s still a happy ending because our heroine finds contentment becoming Paris’ newest sensation.)  From a modern perspective, Baker’s character is squarely shown as exotic according to the prejudices of the time – she’s a happy-go-lucky kind of girl, speaks in primitive French and her wildness manifests itself in uninhibited dancing with very few clothes. (This may be one of the very few 1920s films with casual nudity –hers.)  That kind of role would be unacceptable today – but back then? It merely fuelled Baker’s fame. Indeed, she is the reason to watch the film: her performance is delightful, funny, likable, fresh, and energetic to the point of being athletic. It’s amazing that it captures Baker’s early performances at that stage of her career, not even three years in her European stardom. For Baker fans, La sirène des tropiques is a must see – and if you’re not a fan, it just may make you one.

  • Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) It’s perfectly acceptable to be skeptical about Searching for Bobby Fischer– I mean: a drama about a kid chess player, from the perspective of his father? Who’s going to want to watch that? But in the tradition of sports films, the clever script (adapted from a true-story nonfiction book by the father of true-life juvenile chess champion Josh Waitzkin) manages to make chess exciting, using dramatic elements for suspense, and extracting life lessons from an esoteric pursuit. While our kid champion is at the centre of the plot, you can reasonably argue that the lead of the film is his father, as he tries to channel his son’s passion in a life that won’t consume everything in favour of chess. Written and directed by Steven Zaillian with notable roles for Joe Mantegna, Laurence Fishburne, Joan Allen and Ben Kingsley, Searching for Bobby Fisher makes for breezy, absorbing viewing. It’s a film that spends as much time on the notion of fair play and life balance as it does on winning, giving it a slightly different edge than most sports films. (Still, you can reasonably wonder if chess gives permission for that kind of take – whether “don’t let sports consume you” and “play fair even if you lose” would work as well in the context of more hypermacho sports such as football.)  The direction is unobtrusive and the film flows well between family, coach and competitive contexts. Far more accessible than “a chess movie” would suggest, Searching for Bobby Fisher also has potential as a family film, especially as a discussion piece with overachievers.

  • The Daisy Chain (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) If you’ve seen any of the countless evil-kid horror movies out there, then you’ve already seen most of what The Daisy Chain has to offer. Part of being a film reviewer is answering a simple question: does this film justify its existence? Does it offer novelty, entertainment, reflection, or emotion? The answer here is troubling, because The Daisy Chain is strikingly unoriginal, dull, superficial and empty. The dreariness sets in early as a young mourning couple moves to a godforsaken Irish village to escape their problems: For one thing, I really don’t want to be stuck in an Irish village; for another, anyone with a milligram of genre savviness knows that this attempted kind of escape always ends up creating new and worse problems for the couple. So when an autistic girl coming from nowhere (warm up those violins, because it’s going to get worse) is gradually adopted by the family, it’s a foregone conclusion that none of this will result in sunshine, rainbows or unicorns. The female lead character (played by a really pregnant Samantha Morton) is pregnant? Oh dear. The male lead doesn’t want to take in the young girl? I’ve got baaad news for him. The rest of the film’s 89 minutes feels more like three hours, as the film boldly goes through the expected plot points and ends on the just-as-predictable bloodbath. Some viewers will enjoy the dour execution, but if you have even the slightest distaste for evil-kid horror films, then The Daisy Chain is just the same, except not fun at all.

  • The Wind (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I did not expect to like The Wind. I’ve seen and reviewed enough silent-era melodramas to know that I don’t like the subgenre in the first place, so anything I’m going to watch faces an uphill climb for me to even say nice things about it. On paper, The Wind feels like a redundant film, as a southern belle encounters hardship upon settling in the American west – from romantic struggles to outright sexual abuse and always, always the omnipresent wind making people mad. This being said… The Wind does have two things working in its favour. The first is the atmosphere of the film, nearly taking on the feeling of a science fiction film in depicting an alien landscape where the desert is subjugated by a near-omnipresent wind kicking up dust, demolishing buildings, destroying hairdos and making life even more unbearable for everyone. The sequence in which a storm threatens a church offers a few thrills midway through, while the climax is set during a sustained gust either burying windows or revealing things hidden under the sand. (The production of the film was reportedly unbearable, with extreme temperatures and the physical pain of sand blown by aircraft propeller engines for the camera.)  Director Victor Sjöström strips everything down to very simple elements and if the pacing of the film remains silent-era-dull, there’s nothing a bit of fast-forward can’t fix. More than many other westerns, The Wind drives the point that the frontier wasn’t all pretty horses and sunsets – that its lack of niceties extracted a real toll on settlers. The other asset of the film is Lilian Gish – a gifted actress, but made more interesting here due to the film letting her hair run free. It’s meant as a visible effect of the constant wind, but it makes her look unusually modern, absent the period hairdo that usually stylizes the actresses of the time. Both of those elements combine to make the Wind far more interesting than anticipated. It’s somewhat appropriate that the film is now regarded as one of the peaks of silent-era drama – coming so late in the era that it was obsoleted by talking pictures by the time it made it in cinemas, but now stands are a remarkable achievement of 1920s filmmaking.