Movie Review

  • The Secret Garden (1949)

    The Secret Garden (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Much of The Secret Garden’s specific charm comes from twin accidents of history—having both Margaret O’Brien and Dean Stockwell being the right age to play the child characters essential to the story, for one; but also being at a stage of cinema’s technological development that you could still switch from normal black-and-white cinematography to a Technicolour segment and amaze audiences. This had only been possible for fifteen years at that point (and wasn’t that original, considering the use of a similar device in The Wizard of Oz), but more importantly, it would no longer be possible a few years later due to colour film becoming the standard for children’s movies. In any case—both the actors and the wow factor of a black-and-white film turning to colour remain essential elements in this gentle portal fantasy story, in troubled children discover a maybe-magical garden that eventually makes them better people. I wouldn’t want to discount the weight of the narrative here—adapted from a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, it has full redemption arcs for the characters, and even the switch to colour would not have been as effective without laying the groundwork for the garden to be perceived as more wondrous than the baseline black-and-white reality. The script also gives the material for the child actors to excel—the shouting match between the two is their showcase opportunity. All of this makes The Secret Garden an interesting film still. I can’t guess how it plays to the current generation, but it does remain a watchable part of cinema history.

  • The Stepfather (1987)

    The Stepfather (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Despite my overall loathing of slasher films, even I have to admit that The Stepfather is a little bit more insidious than the usual psycho-with-a-knife movie. The already-uncomfortable idea of a stepfather coming into a family is heightened until the antagonist becomes a ticking bomb of deadly violence just waiting to kill our heroine and the rest of the family. This is, thematically, pretty strong stuff, and the film is never quite as good as when it plays with those ideas from a psychological horror standpoint. I’m really not so fond of the various deaths that punctuate the film on the way to the face-off between psycho-stepdad and plucky teenage heroine—those feel too much like gratuitous kills before the main conflict is addressed. Still, it does end with a good climax, and the film’s pernicious plot drivers never quite stop working. Terry O’Quinn is quite good in the unenviable role of the titular stepfather. The Stepfather is not recommended to any child of recomposed families with a sudden new stepfather in the picture.

  • Scream and Scream Again (1970)

    Scream and Scream Again (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I’d like to be kinder to Scream and Scream Again, but this horror film doesn’t make it easy on itself through false promises, mostly incoherent plotting, wasted opportunities and an indecisive finale. While it’s sort-of-interesting to see the film’s plot strands come together at what’s almost the last minute, it still makes much of the film a slog to get through, as stuff just happens for no reason—and the ending does not solidly tie up those strands. I’ll be more critical of the film’s loose adherence to genre—it feels like horror most of the time, blends in a bit of spy thriller and police action, then touches briefly upon science fiction in time for the hastily sketched ending. (You’ll understand if I don’t even bother with a plot summary.) More disappointment abounds if you pay attention to the cast and see that Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are in the film: their presences are short and largely disconnected: they are in no way leading roles, or even supporting characters. Add to that the lacklustre treatment of its 1970-ish London setting, and Scream and Scream Again doesn’t fulfill its potential. While it’s true that some of director Gordon Hessler’s execution can rise to the occasion, much of it still feels wasted on an empty, near-incoherent script.

  • The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007)

    The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Horror is a very peculiar movie genre in that you can have a rather wonderful first half of a horror film filled with mysteries, scares and plot hooks, only to lose it all when you actually start to tie together the plot strands. (Or worse, not tie them at all.) The Deaths of Ian Stone falls prey to this decades-old risk, sabotaging an intriguing beginning with a trite conclusion that sucks a lot of energy out of the film. The setup is more elegant than original, as a young man wakes up in a different body every day, and is inevitably killed at around 5 PM. It’s all quite serious and sombre (in keeping with the mid-2000s’ fondness for dark cinematography) and there are several interesting questions raised throughout this opening. But then, alas, come the explanations and while a film with a conclusion is infinitely preferable to one without, the one selected by screenwriter Brendan Hood isn’t quite as strong as it could have been. As The Deaths of Ian Stone sinks into love-conquers-all easiness, the film definitely loses an edge—and I say this as someone who generally prefers love-conquer-all movies. Too bad—director Dario Piana can create an atmosphere, and some of the initial ideas aren’t bad despite working in the overdone time-loop genre. But then there’s the rest…

  • The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

    The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Hammer horror and Peter Cushing take a swing at Sherlock Holmes’ classic story in the 1959 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles… and generally succeeds. Making quite a few updates to the narrative, the film nonetheless lets Cushing realize a long-held dream of playing Holmes, bringing along an impeccable understanding of the character. At his side, André Morell plays Watson as a real, competent character. (And there’s Christopher Lee in a supporting role!) Compared to the Basil Rathbone films, the colour cinematography brings Holmes into a more modern era, with the patina of foggy horror that the Hammer films perfected. The least faithful aspect of the production is its lack of adherence to the original short story, but that’s absolutely not to the film’s detriment—in fact, the added attraction of having a little bit of Hammer Horror thrown into a Holmes story adds considerably to the film’s distinctiveness. It’s all quite watchable, although I would only recommend the result to those who are both Holmes and Hammer fans in order not to get false expectations. It’s a shame that the Holmes Hammer series did not continue beyond this initial instalment—Cushing is good, and the horror-infused take is distinctive.

  • The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)

    The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Well, I suppose you had to be there: MGM going wild to produce an Anglophile weepy drama adaptation of a book, doubling as propaganda picture hailing the courage of those sturdy British. It’s certainly worth noting that The White Cliffs of Dover was produced during the height of WW2, after the Americans joined the fight but before the invasion of Normandy—in other words, at a time when the fate of the war was still very much in the balance, and an extra dollop of home-front propaganda meant something. For modern viewers, it can be more interesting to note Irene Dunne’s performance, or that a very young Elizabeth Taylor shows up in a supporting role. The rest… is a slog. While The White Cliffs of Dover is not necessarily a bad film (MGM’s production values ensure that, if nothing else, the budget is shown on screen), but it is a plodding one with propagandist aims that aren’t so acceptable today. (Is dying for the country really that much better than going back home to Mom?)

  • Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)

    Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) There’s a lot to like in Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, whether it’s the pairing of Doris Day and David Niven, the story of a Manhattanite family moving to a fixer-upper in the country, or a farce about a theatrical critic reaping the rewards (and perils) of fame. Combined with bright clean 1960s cinematography, the film becomes a solid comic hit—not quite a classic, but good enough to sustain amused viewing. Day not only gets to play comedy, but play and sing a little big (including a bit of “Que Sera, Sera”), while Niven is his usual unflappable self even when he’s being flapped. The multiple subplots (adapted from a book of comic essays by Jean Kerr) are enough to keep the film going through its running time, but there’s a lack of cohesion to the entire enterprise, with the spot light moving from one strand of narrative threads to another without quite bringing it together, either during the film itself, or in what’s supposed to be a big finale. Please Don’t Eat the Daisies could have been quite a bit better, but it’s rather charming in its current state, and not a bad moment in Day and Niven’s company.

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) A second look at Please Don’t Eat the Daisies with a few added months’ worth of Doris Day appreciations means that the focus of the film shifts a bit—While it’s always fun to see David Niven as a pompous theatrical critic experience various issues at a critical junction in his life, a second viewing is free to go past the obvious showmanship of Niven’s performance to dwell on Day’s solid turn and help distinguish the very different halves of the film’s structure. Much of the fun of the film remains intact, having to do with a Manhattan-based theatrical critic (Niven) who finds himself forced to move out in the far suburbs ninety minutes away from Manhattan and face a few professional challenges while that’s going on. The film somewhat changes gears halfway through, and while that initially feels like a let-down of sorts if the urban lifestyle drew you in, it works a little bit better when you expect it the second time around. What’s clearer as well is how this second half suits Day’s character: The film is clearly meant to be a vehicle of sorts for her as well: while the role first highlights her innocuous domesticity as it begins in the city (where her husband is the toast of the town), the last half of the film gets more and more focused on her strengths—keeping house and playing with kids, yes, but also dancing and singing as only a popular singer could do. (Her rendition of “Que Sera Sera” is even featured.)  Meanwhile, the lack of judgment from Niven’s character gets harder to ignore or dismiss: Never mind the pompous mannerism that the film associates with the profession of a critic, it’s his entire behaviour that becomes suspect the moment he steps away from Manhattan, getting in a pointless argument at his kids’ school and playing with matrimonial fire with a once-criticized actress. I can appreciate the parallels with Mr. Blandings Build his Dream House as well—but I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of renouncing to live in Manhattan.

  • Innocent Blood (1992)

    Innocent Blood (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2020) I’m maybe halfway done seeing the John Landis filmography, but what’s left is clearly getting more and more esoteric—documentaries, juvenilia and feature films that have been overlooked next to some of his all-time classics. Innocent Blood dates from the two-third mark of his career, after That Accident and the peak of his fame, but before the steady slide in mediocrity that marked most of his last phase. It certainly feels like such a film—it’s not that good, but it shows flashes of dark humour, wit and confident use of genre elements. Anne Parillaud (then red-hot from her performance in La Femme Nikita) stars as a French vampire living in Pittsburgh and limiting her blood feasts to the undesirable elements of the city. A gang war gives her an excuse to feast (“go for Italian”), but she quickly earns the attention of mobsters and cops alike, accidentally creating a group of vampiric mobsters and falling for a likable policeman (Anthony LaPaglia). Before long, we get a vampire/mobster mashup with a bit of comedy and some romance to top it off. Landis boasted of shooting “A Hammer film as if it was directed by Scorsese” and that’s a fair assessment of the result, although it does fall short of what Scorsese would have done. Still, the rain-slicked city streets of the Pittsburgh downtown core look good, and the film does have its good moments. The usual group of Italian-American actors is there to portray the mob (including a few who would later star in many more mob movies), but the real fun begins once the mobsters turn into vampires and start making plans of their own. Parillaud is slightly stiff but LaPaglia is not bad, and Robert Loggia does bite into his role as an undead godfather. The script could have been streamlined, made funnier and slightly more compelling, but Innocent Blood is still an odd, entertaining film even for those who are jaded about vampire movies.

  • The Bobo (1967)

    The Bobo (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Any film starring Peter Sellers starts at a disadvantage with me, and The Bobo further compounds the issues by not being a very good film. A comedy about a singing matador seducing a near-professional gold-digger, it takes place in Barcelona and, if nothing else, does feature some nice 1960s eurochic period detail. Alas, it also features Sellers at his most irritating, playing up a character with plenty of quirks and, eventually, blue-dyed skin. Opposite him is then-wife Britt Ekland, looking pretty good but stuck in a not-very-good film. The Bobo tries a few things, but getting a laugh isn’t one of those. The result is overlong and tedious—no amount of period atmosphere eventually overcomes the film’s lack of reason for existing. There are times when I question whether I’m being overly harsh on Sellers due to having read his biography. Then comes along The Bobo to reassure me that I’m not.

  • Gretel & Hansel (2020)

    Gretel & Hansel (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Big shrug on Gretel & Hansel—I can go either way on style-over-substance films, but on this one I’m going the way of the thumbs down: Exactingly directed by Osgood Perkins to come up with striking visuals, it’s a film that, ultimately, doesn’t have much to say: languidly paced to the point of stark boredom, it feels like a pretentious attempt to replicate The Witch without even bothering to understand what it is that people liked in that film. I suppose that the visuals save it from complete failure, but it’s still thin and unimpressive gruel in matters of substance—let along entertainment, which this film doesn’t really care about.

  • The Gallows Act II (2019)

    The Gallows Act II (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I barely remember anything about The Gallows, and chances are pretty good that I eventually won’t remember much about its sequel The Gallows Act II either. A soporific teenage horror film in which teenage drama club people battle a curse or something more directly dangerous, it’s hampered by the get-go from inferior execution from writers-directors Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff. It’s undistinguished throughout most of its running time (although, thankfully, it avoids the first film’s found-horror conceit)—familiar tropes used without vigour nor cleverness, wrapped in near-amateur filmmaking. There is a bit of a twist ending, but it’s the kind of twist ending that makes the entire film worse, as it makes a mockery of much of the plotting and throws the film into a confusion of genres that doesn’t serve it well. It also requires an implausible conspiracy, but you don’t need anything more to figure out that The Gallows Act II is not a good movie at all—it’s a blend of clichés with a dumb twist, the only thing worth remembering about being that it’s not worth remembering. No wonder it was held back from release by two years—even its producers were embarrassed about it.

  • Haunter (2013)

    Haunter (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Canadian writer-director Vincenzo Natali hasn’t directed enough movies. His output isn’t flawless, his endings are not ideal, and it’s not as if he hasn’t been productively employed directing prestige TV shows—but films like Haunter show how interesting he can be on a longer leash. It’s a time-loop film crossed with teenage horror, as a young woman (a baby-faced Abigail Breslin, quite good) and her family endlessly relive the day before their murder. Fortunately, she gets to realize the loop, and then the plot moves into much weirder territory. The best thing about Haunter is the atmosphere—the house in which this is all taking place is isolated in the middle of a foggy nowhere, and Natali can portray even an ordinary house with considerable foreboding. The second-best asset of Haunter is its initial mystery—but that soon dissipates as explanations crowd out the enigma. As it goes along, Haunted does lose quite a bit of interest—silliness and convention replace mystery, and the narrative becomes more contrived to accommodate all of its disparate elements. But for a while, it’s promising and even effective. At some point, Natali may eventually produce something great.

  • The Quiet Ones (2014)

    The Quiet Ones (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I dislike horror films that attempt to pass themselves off as “inspired by actual events” for at least two reasons. First, obviously, because it’s bunk—the supernatural always ends up being a bunch of hooey blown out of proportion by hucksters selling to the credulous. But also because inspired by actual events usually means limited by actual events—the supernatural phenomena and scares portrayed in the film usually turn out to be smaller in scale, and less impressive than in a film that has the creative freedom to go big. So it is in The Quiet Ones, which purports to be inspired by actual events of ghostly possession, but turns out to be a snooze fest of low-octane spookiness. While the idea of a 1970s-set film starring Jared Harris had some potential, the execution is so by-the-numbers that it only reminds me of other films I can’t remember the name because they were so immediately forgettable. While there’s some better material very near the end of the film, it’s far too late at that point to make up for the way director John Pogues barely gives the film any specific identity of its own. It’s all a big mush of undistinguished blandness, and it ends just as it maybe could have become interesting. But, hey: inspired by actual events.

  • Outrageous Fortune (1987)

    Outrageous Fortune (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Whenever Bette Midler is on-screen, it shouldn’t be surprising if the result is loud messy comedy. The premise of Outrageous Fortune is simple enough to qualify as high-concept: When two women with opposite personalities discover that they’re dating the same man and he disappears, they go chasing after him and discover that he’s a spy. Cue the arguments, the chase sequences, the cross-country scenes and the shifts from comedy to thriller to action and back. It’s all handled with a veteran’s professionalism (but not energy) by director Arthur Hiller. The highlight here is clearly Midler with a typically brassy, brash performance that clearly outshines that of co-star Shelley Long who must settle for being the straight woman of the comedy duo. In many ways, Outrageous Fortune is a disappointment—it’s overly familiar in places, and not audacious enough in others: the ending is a bit of a deflating balloon, and the supporting stereotypes it perpetuates have not aged well. But there’s Midler, always Midler—it may not be worth re-watching, but she’s worth watching at least once.

  • The Prophecy (1995)

    The Prophecy (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) There are a lot of things about The Prophecy that are undercooked, bland, or otherwise disappointing… but it also has Christopher Walken as fallen angel Gabriel, and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer licking Walken’s face, and a great-looking Virginia Madsen. How can I be mad at all of that? Writer director Gregory Widen handles his angelic civil war narrative in uneven but often high-key fashion, sometimes going for expressive visuals and special effects. It works often enough to raise viewers’ expectation that this is all going to be much better than it is. Instead, the film frequently loses itself in dull material, narrative lulls, not having anyone equal to Walken in an opposing role, and being inconsistent in how it seriously takes the material. (To be clear: this film is fun when it doesn’t take itself seriously, and considerably less fun when it does.) There’s a much better version of The Prophecy locked inside this film, but it was never allowed to get out.