Movie Review

  • Stowaway (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, November 2022) While I may not like Stowaway’s precipitating plot points and its defeatist conclusion, I am pretty happy to get even a not-so-believable take on The Cold Equations as a crisp movie production. Ably slotted in the footsteps of the hard-SF space films of the previous decade, Stowaway describes what happens when a mission to Mars working with lowest-bidder equipment discovers a stowaway on board. Suddenly, there isn’t as much oxygen or food to go around, and the astronauts can either get creative or die along the way. In the tradition of hard-SF stories that keep shrinking the options available to their characters, much of the film is a slow (far too slow) descent into a foreordained conclusion: Writer-director Joe Penna isn’t interested in triumphant conclusions, so we settle for a long elegy. I’m favourably impressed by the hardness of the film’s science—save from a few special visual effects late in the film, much of it feels realistic even as the script stacks the deck against its characters. (IMDB does list quite a few scientific mistakes, but they reinforce just how much of the story is manipulated by the screenwriters.)  While the cast is a mere handful, it does include Anna Kendrick, Toni Colette and Daniel Dae Kim—with the role of the intruding stowaway appropriately cast with the lesser-known Shamier Anderson. Now, Stowaway is really lazy in how it introduces a stowaway in the (cold) equation—but then again something was needed to get the plot rolling. The conclusion is far too downbeat to endear the film to viewers in the same way as, say, The Martian went for a whole “triumph of the human spirit” thing. Still, I’m rather pleased by Stowaway. It’s clearly not as optimistic as I am (to the point of killing off the optimist in a more-than-symbolic way), but I appreciate any new hard-SF space movie that at least plays the game inherent in the subgenre.

  • The Big Fix (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) While reckoning with the legacy of the hippie countercultural movement became a popular topic of discussion as the former hippies aged and the historical legacy of the movement became clearer in the reactionary 1980s, The Big Fix is notable in that it already started poking at the topic as early as the late 1970s. Richard Dreyfuss stars as a former radical who has mellowed with age and is now stuck with bills, an ex-wife, shared-custody kids, and a Private Investigator practice that is, more often than not, serving insurance companies. It’s within the context of a close political race that he’s contacted by former acquaintances, thrust into film-noir intrigue, and untangles a complex assassination plot. In the tradition of the dour New Hollywood era (which was also already winding down), The Big Fix feels confused about everything except being contrarian and downbeat. It clearly qualifies as a neo-noir in the way it reuses the genre’s archetypes, but you could take the film’s plot summary as a guide for a new screenplay and end up with a very different film just through tone and characterization. Dreyfuss is not bad here, but viewers may have more fun with an early John Lithgow performance, or Bonnie Bedelia in a cute turn. Still, The Big Fix’s plot is solid and the semi-comic, semi-tragic tone is a main line to an exploration of fading ideals well into a particularly cynical decade.

  • The Divine Lady (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Despite a demonstrable love of older cinema, my patience runs thin on silent drama films, and The Divine Lady (despite synchronized sound and music) is clearly from the silent era. Deathly dull pacing doesn’t help this historical costume drama about Lady Hamilton’s scandalous relationship with Horatio Nelson—a topic better covered in the later 1941 film That Hamilton Woman. It’s not all dull—the marine battles are executed with some spectacle, although I can’t quite be sure if they were shot for this film or taken from another one. The film remains notable for being an early favourite of the Academy Awards—winning an award for director Frank Lloyd and earning two more nominations, for lead Corinne Griffith and cinematography. But even then, The Divine Lady is not a must-see for anyone but fans of the filmmakers involved or Oscars completists.

  • Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) It would be too easy to cry sacrilege at Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run—it doesn’t feel like a classic Looney Tunes, what with Bugs Bunny being borderline obnoxious, Lola Bunny being an airhead and the rest of the crew hammered in ill-fitting roles within a loose spy-caper framework. But since I haven’t been paying attention to the Tunes universe since the first few seasons of Animaniacs, so what do I know? Still, this straight-to-DVD feature-length animated adventure is merely adequate at best: As Lola Bunny invents an invisibility potion and gets the help of taxi-driving Bugs Bunny (no relation) to escape gangsters and government agents, it’s an excuse for some very mild Looney Tuns antics. Rabbits Run is meant to be a theatrical-troupe kind of thing where the characters play roles for the story, so don’t expect the usual personalities of the characters to be strictly followed. (Still, I wish they had leaned more on the “playing other characters” aspect for comedy and continuity.)  It’s all right if your expectations are kept in check: Rabbits Run is not much of a movie, but its release was so low-profile that, for one thing, it’s unsurprising you happily lived your life without knowing about it; and second, ensure that your expectations are not of a top-notch Looney Tunes movie. At least it keeps the franchise alive for Warner Brothers, and that’s that.

  • Chaos Walking (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, November 2022) I am told that the YA Science Fiction trilogy on which Chaos Walking is based is one of the best things ever written lately. I’m told it’s deep and meaningful with great characters and strong themes. Alas, I can’t find much of that in the adaptation. I also gather that the film’s production history was… eventful, with substantial reshoots and reworking of the third act and entire characters cut from the final result. But when I’m watching a film, I’m not necessarily interested in a comparative analysis—my first concern is whether the film works as-is or not, and in the case of Chaos Rising, I’m going for “not.”  It doesn’t help that, in the tradition of much YA SF, the premise only makes sense if you’re willing to treat it as fantasy, allegory or nonsense. Here, humans colonizing an alien planet find out that men can broadcast and hear thoughts, while women don’t—and that inevitably leads to a group of men killing/exiling those mysteriously inscrutable women. (Some of this is hidden behind a conceptual breakthrough plot turn, but only the dullest viewers won’t guess it ahead of time.) If you’re going to go along with that premise, the supplemental hurdle to face is that while veteran director Doug Liman has to innovate a bit of visual grammar in order to present cinematically the prose concept of broadcast/reading minds, what he ends up with is ugly and dull. The literalization of the metaphor (or rather the audio-visual presentation of a literary conceit) is confusing and then irritating—not to mention being unconvincing most of the time. Once you get past that, you still have to confront a number of more traditional failures: the script is dull, the characters are annoying, the third act is very conventional and the entire thing feels as if it’s ill at ease with itself. Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland are not necessarily bad as the leads, but the film around them is a let-down (and, interestingly, seems determined to infantilize their budding romance to a safe PG level), while some very interesting supporting players are barely given any chance to be interesting. (This is a film that wastes Mads Mikkelsen, and that’s saying something.)  Chaos Walking quickly burns through its initial burst of interest, and settles for such a middle-of-the-road, disappointing experience. It’s as if no one learned anything from the YA SF movie boom-and-bust of 2010–2015. Fortunately, its reception was so tepid as to kill any chance of a sequel—which, if I’m understanding correctly, might even have been self-sabotage, as rewrites included material from the next two books in the series. I’m certainly not mourning the lost possibilities: the original books remain for those who want the full experience rather than an inept adaptation.

  • He’s Not Worth Dying For (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2022) I often discuss made-for-TV thrillers with a smirk, highlighting their craziness or ineptness as strengths and celebrating when one film turns out to be particularly silly or over-the-top. Crazy overdone cheap thrillers are still a step up from many other kinds of film, and here is He’s Not Worth Dying For to help make my point. Apparently inspired by true events, this is a film that takes an old person’s proud stance against social media, as it describes the escalating bickering between two young women fighting over the same guy through online posts and, later, a real confrontation. Hilda Martin stars as a wide-eyed innocent who’s gradually corrupted by the experience, while Rachel Boyd plays the self-styled influencer who becomes worse and worse while Lachlan Quarmby is stuck playing the schmuck enjoying the affection of both women. He’s a terrible character, and the film does nothing to humanize or even explain his state of mind. Anyway: by the time the good girl turns bad and fights the always-bad one, we’re left with a sordid little tale that’s not remotely enjoyable. Never understanding when to shut up, He’s Not Worth Dying For then drags on for another twenty excruciating minutes of no further value after making its most dramatic point. (Actually, that’s not quite true: I did enjoy seeing Canadian character actor Lochlyn Munroe in a far-too-short role as a public prosecutor. But he gets sixty seconds of airtime.)  By the end of the ordeal, He’s Not Worth Dying For just feels pathetic—nowhere enough over-the-top to serve as a social media Reefer Madness and not even bothered to make the most out of its elements. So, the next time you read me talking about a ridiculous made-for-TV thriller as if it was a good thing, believe me: there’s worse out there.

  • Le jour se lève [Daybreak] (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) I don’t particularly care for Le Jour se lève, but I can certainly admire its craft and chosen genre—anyone who loves film noir can’t help but be fascinated by the French poetic realism subgenre that shares so much of its DNA. The premise is admirably tight: After killing a man, the protagonist locks himself in this apartment and flashes back to the romantic relationship worth killing over even as the police surround the apartment and plan on breaking through. With Marcel Carné directing, Jacques Prévert writing and Jean Gabin in the lead role, this is one of the big French films of the 1930s. The combination between romance and crime is still effective, and brings to mind many later films. Amazingly enough, Le jour se lève was long thought lost—a combination of the Nazi regime and RKO’s efforts to destroy all copies of the film as so not to compete with the American remake The Long Night ensured that the film disappeared for a few years, only to re-emerge in the 1950s. It would have been quite a loss.

  • Lie with Me (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Mainstream movies stopped being erotic in the 1990s for a variety of factors, both economic and politically reactionary. But that just means that the raw erotic film went slightly underground—in low-budget productions of dramatic (rather than exploitative) interest made for film festivals and arthouse theatres. This being said, tagging Lie with Me as being “of dramatic interest” or being mentioned in the same breath as “art house” is pushing it—this romantic drama about a woman with an oversized sexual appetite and her difficult relationship with a man perhaps too well suited to her is clearly meant to be more introspective than exploitative… but still feels voyeuristic and jejune in many ways. This low-budget Canadian production features Lauren Lee Smith in the lead role (in a performance that most will correctly describe as brave, and that from the first self-pleasuring moments) with Eric Balfour in the main male supporting role. The two main characters’ relationship may or may not be healthy—at best it’s the kind of thing that will get older viewers muttering, “Eh, young people these days” (even if the film is now old enough to drink in some jurisdictions). Writer-director Clement Virgo takes a big chance by featuring un-simulated on-camera sex, but as it turns out, Lie with Me is more undone by a meandering, frustrating third act (and an overall dramatic arc that’s far more conventional than its sexy images or edgy characters would suggest) than from the frank way it’s presented. I liked the matter-of-fact presentation of Toronto’s The Annex neighbourhood, and that the film boldly goes where mainstream cinema is really afraid to go. Unfortunately, there’s a hard limit to the material being used here, and Lie with Me isn’t quite capable of creating empathy with its outlandish characters.

  • City of Fear (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Great premise, merely adequate movie—but such an epitaph for director Irving Lerner’s City of Fear may not be much of a criticism considering that it was patched together from low-budget production means and the intent to make a quick buck. That’s it’s still getting airtime (and privileged airtime at that, being TCM’s Noir Alley pick of the week) sixty-more years later probably exceeds the expectations of anyone involved in its production. This late-period film noir, on the other hand, does have a really good premise: A convict returns to Los Angeles after breaking out of prison, having stolen a canister of what he thinks is heroin but is, in reality, a dangerously radioactive isotope with the potential to make much of the city uninhabitable. As he suffers the effects of radiation exposure, the police grapple with the problem of finding him and taking away the canister before it’s opened and contaminates the area. The inclusion of a weapon of mass destruction into a noir framework is not unique but still delightful, and brings the film closer to a unique noir/technothriller blend. On the other hand, the idea of a doomed hero making things worse for everyone else and being shot like a dog in the middle of the street? Now that’s a classic noir attitude. Executed with bargain-basement production means, City of Fear nonetheless features a few good exterior shots of late-1950s Los Angeles, and arguably presents a more suspenseful result than many of its better-financed contemporaries. Quite a nice find for noir connoisseurs even despite a few execution issues.

  • Rich and Famous (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Most directors go out with a whimper rather than a bang, and so Rich and Famous is veteran filmmaker George Cukor’s swan song in a career that spanned six decades. Unfortunately, it’s not much of a final statement. While adapting the classic 1943 Old Acquaintance to mid-to-late 20th century America and keeping a firm focus on Cukor’s much-vaunted ability to direct “women’s pictures,” this sexed-up remake is far more frequently bland than bold. Starring Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen as two lifelong frenemies whose relative fortunes keep shifting over two decades, the film wants to be a drama about a complex friendship but usually settles for annoying bickering between two people who should know better. The portrait of the literary scene that it (may) want to satirize feels alien, and so do the relationships between every single character in the film. Bisset and Bergen look great, but Rich and Famous itself is a fuzzy melodrama that thinks it’s profound. The real question is whether this was an ill-advised late-life project for Cukor, or that he was lucky to have made another movie entirely at that age.

  • Below Zero (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2022) This should have been much better. I mean: Below Zero’s premise barely makes sense, but as a dramatic conceit, the idea of an author going to a secluded location to break out of writer’s block is a great one—there have been plenty of decent movies incorporating that idea. But as Below Zero piles up the details, it gets dumber and dumber—the writer locks himself up in a meat locker, he imagines a torture-horror story that merges with real events (mostly) and soon enough we’re in this nightmarish puree of maybe-reality-maybe-fiction spiced with ugly horror clichés both visual and conceptual. Edward Furlong gets a late career starring role(s) here but doesn’t do much with the opportunity, while Michael Berryman does turn in a much better performance. I’m more receptive than most to the idea of fiction bleeding into a writer’s reality, but the way it’s done in Below Zero is completely uninvolving: it just resolves into a big bunch of arbitrary nonsense without much of a point to it. This isn’t worth the trouble: even in the realm of low-budget horror films, there are much better movies about writers looking for inspiration having trouble with intrusive fiction. (It’s a subgenre.)

  • Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Roku Streaming, November 2022) I can’t think of many musical artists for whom I’d go through the trouble of digging out and setting up my old Roku box to watch their biopic on release day. But Weird Al Yankovic? Ah, now that’s a different story: His early heyday coincided with my high-school years, so it makes sense that I can sing along with most of 1993’s Alapalooza, was an early purchaser of UHF on DVD (“Supplies!”) and can still recall a good chunk of his filmography. I admit losing track of Yankovic’s work throughout the 2000s, but then again Yankovic himself became a different musician during this period: fewer studio releases, more touring. He’s now an elder statesman of music/comedy: His latest album was 2014’s Mandatory Fun, and he has since focused on live shows. His personal life is refreshingly devoid of scandal, and his wholesome image remains, well, untarnished. Considering that much of his success rests on pure parody, it’s not that much of a surprise if biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story ends up being a thorough sendup of the biopic genre that creates its own alternate universe. Basic elements of his biography are spun in tall tales through big (if limited budget) Hollywood-style sequences, following the trace left by much more serious films. (Casting about for the closest equivalent, you either end up with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, or the Leslie Nielsen “autobiography” The Naked Truth.)  While much of the film is steadily amusing, I wouldn’t necessarily call it funny: the laugh-out-loud jokes are few, and the film prefers to exist on a weird uncanny plane of mockery. Still, it’s worth a look—there’s a brilliant parody/recreation of Boogie Nights’ pool party with dozens of zonked-out cameos of known people playing other known people, the shift of inspiration between “Eat It” and “Beat It” is eye-rollingly endearing, and Daniel Radcliffe is much, much better than anyone would expect playing Yankovic. (Similarly, Evan Rachel Wood is lovely as Madonna, and Rainn Wilson makes an excellent Dr. Demento.)  The music, much of it rearranged for the occasion, is catchy, and the ending will catch everyone by surprise—even if I found one aspect of it a touch too violent when compared to the singer’s family-friendly image. I’m not sure I’d call Weird a great movie—its lulls become more noticeable in time, and as mentioned, it’s trying for zany rather than hilarious—but I certainly enjoyed it and don’t begrudge the added hoops I had to go through in order to watch it.

  • Coda (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) This is not the 2021 Oscar-winning CODA about a Child Of Deaf Adults—this is the small under-seen 2019 Coda about a renowned elderly pianist getting his mojo back after meeting a young woman. No, not like that—although there’s subtext there that could have become text without too much effort. Still, the main selling point of this Coda is that it’s anchored by none other than Patrick Stewart, exceptionally well cast as an older pianist cast adrift by the death of his wife. By the time the film begins, it’s been years since he has performed in public (a consequence of his wife’s death) and getting back on stage leads to bouts of severe stage fright. Fortunately, there’s a younger woman (Katie Holmes, at least in her forties) to get him back on the saddle—plus a trip to Sils Maria for some mountain air and landscapes. It’s not much of a film in terms of plot or suspense, but Holmes has a good role, and we have another film role for Stewart—a serious actor whose theatrical performance remains legendary, but who has not been captured enough for posterity in movie roles. Otherwise, well, director Claude Lalonde (better known as the writer of a few much-broader French-Canadian films) keeps things going at a nice simmer. Coda is more contemplative than intriguing, but it achieves most of its goals.

  • The Seventh Veil (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Film history has no shortage of films that can be called problematic or troubling, but even those steeled against much of the worst may find themselves unpleasantly surprised at the conclusion of The Seventh Veil, in which the heroine goes running back to her abusive, possessive, controlling second cousin for romance. Not that it’s the only weird thing in this hypnotherapy film about a pianist who has lost the use of her (intact) hands—yet this was a box-office success in 1945 United Kingdom and won an Academy Award for best screenplay. What maybe saves it (well, aside from the fascination of an unavowable undercurrent of gender-aligned domination/submission) is a sense of melodrama, some choice lines (including the explanation for the titular seventh veil) and James Mason as the utter cad at the centre of the mixture. One of Mason’s most endearing trademarks is that he could be both very likable and completely repulsive in the same role (usually by playing impeccably mannered villains) and this duality is perfectly showcased here. The Seventh Veil can’t really be recommended as innocent entertainment viewing—but it is a mesmerizing film to watch, a piece of old-school filmmaking that really wouldn’t (or shouldn’t?) work today.

  • È stata la mano di Dio [The Hand of God] (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2022) As far as foreign-movies-in-which-writer-director-hyphenates-reflect-on-their-early-years go, The Hand of God is really not as dull as many others. Here, Paolo Sorrentino takes us back to 1980s Naples to follow a young man apparently much like himself, as he deals with a large and boisterous family, goes through a sexual awakening, cheers for Maradona, finds his way and learns the sound that motorboats do at high speed. Explicit references to Fellini (as a character auditions for one of his movies) reinforce the kinship between this film and other affectionate autobiographical pictures. But The Hand of God isn’t stuffy—crisp cinematography helps present a film that’s comic, tragic, self-reflective and often surprisingly entertaining. There are traces of self-indulgence here, but they’re inherent in the project itself—how else to make an autobiographical film? While the result may not be entirely within my wheelhouse, I can only respect the result.