Movie Review

  • Brice de Nice (2005)

    Brice de Nice (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2019) I had to watch Brice de Nice because some of its comic stylings had made it overseas all the way to the former French colonies—namely, the title character’s tic of loudly proclaiming, “Cassé!” (“Broken!”) after successfully insulting someone (or making them speechless). Then there’s Jean Dujardin as well, one of the better-known French actors of the twenty-first century so far. Alas, there isn’t much more to Brice de Nice than “Cassé!”: As the film laboriously sets up its half-dozen recurring gags, there’s a growing dread that it will just keep going in that vein for its duration, and unfortunately it doesn’t: It gets worse. The jokes are slight, the protagonist is obnoxious and even the flights of fancy away from the real world don’t work. The film actually gets exasperating thirty minutes in, as the protagonist is stripped of most assets and loses much of the rich-boy humour that unlimited means can provide. The rich-boy-becomes-poor comedy just keeps adding to the character’s humiliation, and to our exasperation. Part of it may be a very French sense of humour, but I suspect that even on the other side of the Atlantic, Brice de Nice is just a lame film.

  • Jack Frost (1997)

    Jack Frost (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2019) For a generally bad movie, Jack Frost does get going nicely with an opening sequence featuring Michael Keaton as a pretty good Blues musician. Unfortunately, that’s the high note of the film: The next twenty-five minutes merely set up the usual absent-dad, resentful-kid dynamics that we’ve seen in so many other family movies. Then Keaton’s character is killed (!), and replaced in short order by a grotesque snowman. The film becomes increasingly moronic from that point, with early CGI bizarrely combining with substandard practical effects to create one of the most dumbfoundingly repulsive snowmen in movie history. There’s some evidence elsewhere in Jack Frost that the filmmakers have never seen snow in their lives, let alone had any experience with it: many of the opening sequences show appalling ideas about how to build a snowman, and all of the scenes in the front yard of the character’s house obviously have fake snow in a studio set. Those issues could be ignored if the film was actually fun or interesting and it’s neither. Killing off the father in a family comedy at the end of the first act is the kind of inexplicable creative decision that should have stopped the project right there, but Jack Frost keeps going merrily as if it didn’t care. Some of the snowboarding sequences later during the film are dated and overdone in only the way “supercool extreme sports” sequences were back in the late 1990s. An unsatisfying ending puts a merciful bullet in the film’s snowy head, but many people won’t make it this far—my own household’s resident kid’s movie expert decided to stop watching 45 minutes in. I watched the rest later to see if it would get worse, and it did. Too bad—I usually like whatever Michael Keaton is playing. One of the film’s problems is that he’s barely in Jack Frost.

  • Holmes & Watson (2018)

    Holmes & Watson (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) The first few minutes of Holmes & Watson set a dismal tone for a comedy: they’re not only free of smiles, but they quickly create dread in audiences’ minds: as extended comic set-pieces fall flat, we come to fear what comes next. Will Ferrell is back to his obnoxious man-child persona, while John C. Reilly seems there only to make us recall the other movies in which he co-starred. Amazingly enough, this Homes & Watson not only comes out a decade after the source it’s parodying (Guy Richie’s Sherlock Holmes series), but is substantially less funny than its inspiration. Half an hour in the film, though, things improve a bit. Just as I was despairing at Rebecca Hall’s inclusion in the cast (she’s one of the rare actresses specializing in brainy characters, explaining my crush on her), she actually marks a modest turning point in the film’s effectiveness. Her character exists in a dignified realm outside the parameters of the rest of the film (she also gets a few shots at the current American “president”), and she comes accompanied by Lauren Lapkus, who wordlessly steals most of her scenes through weird facial expressions and cat mimicry. Both belong in a better movie. Let’s be clear: Holmes & Watson never becomes a good film, but it does settle for a less irritating rhythm, with a few chuckles here and there. Still, it’s not much by itself, and it’s a sad waste of talent to see Ralph Fiennes wasted as a potentially great Moriarty, Kelly Macdonald (who does manage some of the film’s few chuckles), Steve Coogan and an uncredited Hugh Laurie simply given bad material to play. Some still manage to make the most of what they’re given, but the film around them is a prodigious misfire, handled by people who simply can’t write, stage, direct or edit a simple joke. Holmes & Watson simply feels dated, and not in the Golden-Hollywood-movies-seen-decades-later kind of way: it’s built around dumb jokes about topics already beaten into the ground (selfies?), parodying material that already does a good job of poking fun at itself, and depending on comedy trends (i.e.: Will Ferrell) that were annoying even when they were popular, and now haven’t been popular in a while. It simply doesn’t work, even when it eventually works its way to mere mediocrity.  Those calling Holmes & Watson a terrible movie clearly should see more made-for-cable atrocities, but they’re right in pointing out that you seldom see such failure from a big studio released in thousands of theatres.

  • Within our Gates (1920)

    Within our Gates (1920)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) The more I watch older movies, the more I appreciate either the time-travelling aspect of watching something created decades ago, or the various discoveries that reading about a movie can lead to. So it is that Within our Gates, already an intriguing film upon watching, becomes a fascinating gateway to learning more about “race films,” an early subgenre of cinema made for black American audiences decades before blaxploitation paved the way (or so I thought) to modern black cinema. Within our Gates is all the more remarkable in that it’s the earliest surviving film by black writer-director Oscar Michaux, that it features a mostly black cast, and that it squarely describes and confronts the racism of the times. Considering the narrative from a conventional perspective, the plot is a mess: The prologue is badly integrated, the coincidences and contrivances multiply, the ending becomes a third-act flashback that merely explains something right before the conclusion rushes by. From a cinematic perspective, the film is also limited by the conventions of silent cinema: static shots, overacting, not many refinements in terms of staging. And yet not many of those flaws actually matter once you start watching the film. In fact, some of those flaws end up strengthening it: The herky-jerky nature of the plotting means that the film has a substantial number of themes, and gets to cover many aspects of circa-1920 black experience in America, including womanly rivalry, north/south divide, urban crime, blacks undermining other blacks, the importance of education, the burden of mixed heritage and the ever-present threat of violent death at the hands of whites. It’s that last aspect that appears the most vital to contemporary viewers. The film begins with a title card nonchalantly dropping the horrifying “At the opening of our drama, we find our characters in the North, where the prejudices and hatreds of the South do not exist—though this does not prevent the occasional lynching of a Negro.” … and it ends with a white-on-black rape attempt intercut with a surprisingly explicit depiction of a lynching of innocent black characters. Within our Gates is also quite a showcase for many actors neglected by mainstream Hollywood histories, beginning with the incredibly likable Evelyn Preer, who carries the film on her shoulders as the protagonist. Historically, Preer was probably the first black actress superstar and this film has her demonstrating quite an emotional range. There’s quite a bit of clever material in Within our Gates once you see it as an intentional answer to the incredibly racist Birth of a Nation, a conscious attempt to affirm the black perspective on then-current America to some provocative editing to drive its point home. I was surprised to be taken so intensely by this film—I had recorded it on a whim and ended up discovering far more than I had expected in the process. As a pre-Code black movie, it vigorously tackles important issues in ways we wouldn’t see again until many decades later. I kept thinking that the film has a lot more to do with 2018’s Blackkklansman than most other movies in the intervening century—and that it still has a lot to teach us about why everyone should get to tell their stories through movies.

  • Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

    Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) Now that I’ve seen Some Kind of Wonderful, I think I’ve completed the high points of my John Hughes filmography. Hugues only wrote this film (it was directed by Hughes stalwart Howard Deutch), but it’s clearly his movie, and a response to previous scripts of his. Eric Stoltz stars as an unconventional teenager lusting after the unapproachable girl in his class yet blind to the affection of his own tomboy best friend. It’s not a complicated premise (and you already know how it’s going to end) but it’s the details and the performances along the way that make it worthwhile. Lea Thompson and Mary Stuart Masterson make for a ridiculously good pair of duelling romantic interests for the protagonist, while Craig Sheffer plays the unlikable ex-boyfriend perfectly and Elias Koteas has a surprisingly engaging turn as a skinhead. There are a few rough spots along the way (I’m not happy about the 180 romantic turn that the film takes very late—I mean, I know where it was going to end, but I just wish the transition would have been smoother), but if you like the 1980s Hughes teen comedies, Some Kind of Wonderful is probably one of his savvier scripts even if it lacks the spark that made some of his other movies become classics.

  • Days of Heaven (1978)

    Days of Heaven (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) It’s entirely possible to think that a film achieves its objectives, yet be almost completely cold to those objectives. So it goes with Days of Heaven, a well made but somewhat soporific period drama that places a lot more emphasis on visuals than plot. It is what it is—a cinematic poem, perhaps, or a series of 1910s nature images with meditative narration loosely connected by a lovers-on-the-run plot. Which is a way of saying that it’s a very Terrence Malick film, bridging the gap between Badlands and The Thin Red Line two decades later. The plot is perfunctory, and if you read just a little bit about the film’s production, you will hear about how the film spent two years in editing, only making it out when Malick used a new voiceover to give some structure to the result. I’m not particularly fond of those kinds of meandering movies, to the point of calling them pretentious at the earliest opportunity, but even I have to admit that Days of Heaven is well done. The reliance on golden-hour rural cinematography makes for good images (although we’ve seen quite a bit of the same since 1978, somewhat dulling the impact of the film forty years later) while the sometimes-intrusive narration reinforces the dreamlike impact of the result. Richard Gere stars as a killer on the run who hatches a plan for his wife to seduce a wealthy farm owner in the Texas panhandle, but that’s making the entire film sound far more urgent than it is. Still, there are highlights—a shot here and there, a compelling locust sequence, and so on. The film, despite its tone and atmosphere, is surprisingly short, clocking in at barely more than 90 minutes. I didn’t quite dislike Days of Heaven as much as I expected given my experience with previous Malick films, but now that I think of it, I’m actually becoming lukewarm on his movies as I age. Hmmm.

  • The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

    The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) Blockbuster spectacles aren’t a new thing for Hollywood, as the first version of The Thief of Bagdad amply proves. Here we have a dashing adventurer (Douglas Fairbanks, arguably the first action hero) in the fantastical setting of old-time Bagdad, falling in love with a princess and going through special-effects-heavy adventures in order to win her affections over the villain. That sure looks like the plot summary of countless movies since then (and, to be fair, it’s lifted from The 1001 Nights of Scheherazade), except that this one was released in 1924. From the get-go, there is still, ninety-five years later, something interesting about the world featured in this film. The first act of the film has some fantastical sets, most of them built high up above the characters. Fairbanks jumps and gesticulates his way through many other adventures—the middle section of the film is particularly heavy in optical effects recreating fantastic visions for the movie screen. The Thief of Bagdad is really not bad once you get into the typical (and overlong) rhythm of silent movies—the succession of special effects, fantastical plot devices and dashing adventure is enough to keep even modern viewer entertained.

  • The Last Emperor (1987)

    The Last Emperor (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) While we think of the 1950s–1960s as the golden era of epic filmmaking, a few later examples show that the tradition kept going well afterwards. And frankly, “epic” is the kind of word that comes most naturally when discussing The Last Emperor, a film that heads to China in order to take us through fifty years of history as seen through the eyes of Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, selected for the throne at the age of 2, treated like a demigod during his childhood, deposed, propped up as a fake leader of a fake country, disgraced by the communists, rehabilitated thanks to his remorsefulness and ultimately dying as a humble gardener. It’s quite a story, but The Last Emperor does have a compulsive watchability that keeps it interesting despite a generous running time. You may or may not want to use the lulls in the narrative to read through Pu Yi’s Wikipedia article for added context. For one thing, you will find the film generally exact but somewhat coy in its depiction of its protagonist. Yes, much of the incredible story told here is true to the facts, as mind-boggling as they are. On the other hand, Pu Yi was far more of a serial sadist and abuser than the film lets on. Flogging of servants was a regular hobby of his throughout much of his life, and some of the darker corners of his biography are simply horrifying (think twice about reading what happened to his first wife). The film, perhaps in an attempt to maintain audience sympathy, doesn’t delve too deep in those aspects. It may lead viewers to express far too much pity for a historical figure that didn’t deserve it. Still, The Last Emperor is directed with skill and manages to present a lightweight history lesson somewhat effectively. The recreation of life in the Forbidden City in the last years of the Chinese Empire is nothing short of mesmerizing, and the high production value keep up through the less glamorous years of Pu Yi’s life. It’s easy to see why the film walked away with nine Oscars—including two for writer-director Bernardo Bertolucci.

  • Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

    Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) There’s always something off-putting about bio-fiction that ennobles its subject beyond any reasonable bound. Watching Birdman of Alcatraz, for instance, you’d be ready to go to the barricades to understand why an intellect bright enough to write a book about birds and their diseases would remain locked up inside the American penal system with no hope of parole. Why, he seems so good-natured and mild-mannered! But, of course, that’s the magic of movies for you. Dig deeper in the Wikipedia entry for the Birdman of Leavenworth (for he had no birds once transferred to Alcatraz—that’s right, the film’s inaccuracies begin in the title itself!) and you’d find that the real story is quite different. The character in reality was a violent, short-tempered, abusive person, to say nothing of his younger sexual preferences. While the basic facts of the film’s narrative are based on reality, much of the details are wildly off, exaggerated when it suits the narrative (such as having a singular antagonist within the prison walls) and downplayed or elided when they don’t. Every character is prettier, smarter, kinder than reality. But that’s Hollywood for you. With Burt Lancaster in the lead and Lancaster-handpicked director John Frankenheimer at the helm, Birdman of Alcatraz goes for inspiration and amazement—if that character was able to achieve so much when locked up, then what’s stopping most of us? Taken on its own, the film is watchable enough … if it wasn’t for the gnawing suspicion that we’re not getting half the story.

  • Absence of Malice (1981)

    Absence of Malice (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) We seldom get feature-length classes in journalism ethics, so Absence of Malice is a welcome entry in the genre. Featuring no less than Sally Field as a journalist with a dodgy sense of propriety, Paul Newman as an aggravated suspect singled out by the media, and Bob Balaban as a slimy underhanded District Attorney, this is a film that shows a complex dance between police, media, and private interests. It’s seldom glorious, but it does portray a nicely cynical view of the city newspaper desks of the early 1980s, with the “public interest” running afoul of private interests when unscrupulous individuals get involved. It’s a crime thriller, a newspaper drama, a doomed romance all at once. Wilford Brimley gets a short but spectacular role late in the film as the troubleshooter sent from Washington to untangle the mess and assign punishment—his folksy demeanour hides an iron mind and a determined fist. Meanwhile, Balaban plays a far less admirable version of his usual characters, while Newman and Field are up to their usual standards at the time. The atmosphere of Miami is well presented, and the period details are striking—I mean, the film begins with a montage showing us the minutia of publishing a daily metro newspaper, instantly endearing me. The rest of the film does toy with mounting curiosity as how it’s all going to play out—the script cleverly features first-act secrets, mid-movie coyness and final revelations hopping over each other, a sure-fire way to keep the audience interested. Absence of Malice amounts to a decent film—perhaps not a classic, but one worth revisiting even in these accursed times when the daily metro newspaper is regrettably becoming a relic of the past.

  • Le déclin de l’empire américain (1986)

    Le déclin de l’empire américain (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) In French-Canadian circles, Le déclin de l’empire américain is as close to a classic as it comes—it was a big box-office success, was nominated for an Oscar, spawned two sequels (the second of which actually won an Oscar, still Canada’s sole Foreign-Language Oscar), became one of French-Canada’s most successful cultural export, made writer-director Denys Arcand a superstar and marked a generation. I recall seeing it as a teen, but missed (or forgot) much of the film’s meaning until seeing it again. The very strange thing about it is that in many ways, it’s an anti-movie. Its plot could fit on a napkin with enough space left to wipe your mouth. There isn’t much in terms of cinematography (although some of the camera shots are quite nice). But what the film does have is a nearly steady stream of dialogue from beginning to the end, alternating between the low and the high. Le déclin de l’empire américain is about a few characters, most of them intellectual, university professors, preparing for a weekend at the cottage and then chatting during the weekend. Much of the dialogue is about sex, and the remainder about highbrow intellectual concerns spanning history, philosophy, sociology, and non-specific politics. There is a definite The Big Chill sensibility to the way the characters all congregate as friends for a weekend in a secluded location, but that’s a misleading impression, as these characters have secrets that they’re keeping from one other, and the amiable companionship detonates late in the film. But that’s the only bit of plotting in a film that’s meant to be heard for the dialogue going from scabrous to scholarly in the blink of an eye. I guess that as a cultural ambassador, it doesn’t hurt for French-Canadians to have been portrayed as lusty intellectuals across the globe—although I’d caution that most of us are far less obnoxious than the hedonistic degenerates shown here.

  • The War of the Worlds (1953)

    The War of the Worlds (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) Science Fiction movies of the 1950s often featured aliens invading Earth, but none of them were as expansive as The War of the Worlds in showing us a big-scale invasion. Led by producer George Pal, it loosely takes the classic novel H. G. Wells novel as inspiration for a widescreen depiction of an international invasion, even if the story stays focused quite tightly on a Californian scientist and his distaff counterpart. Surprisingly sombre at times (seeing WW2 footage used to portray city devastation is sobering enough, even without realizing that the film was released less than a decade after the war), and downright horrifying enough to give nightmares to my younger self (young boy not yet jaded by horror plus that shot of a soldier being disintegrated to a green skeleton equals unhappy memories), The War of the Worlds is at its best when adapting the Wells novel to the realities of the 1950s—even in a twenty-first century where Steven Spielberg delivered his own take on the story in 2003, this version is often fascinating as a pure period piece. Alas, some things don’t work as well. The initially super-competent female character played by Ann Robinson starts out fascinating, then degrades throughout the film until she becomes a shrieking simpleton right in time for Gene Barry’s character to rescue her during the film’s biggest suspense sequence. The Technicolor cinematography is striking, although it’s taken a bit too far when the alien tripods show three-coloured cells in their tools. Still, you have to admire the audacity of the film’s intention in showing a global engagement and its lovely period California setting. Both explain why The War of the Worlds remains worth a look now, despite the now-creaky special effects and the outdated social values.

  • Casper (1995)

    Casper (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2019) Whenever we’re talking about older fantasy movies, one of the common refrains is how the film’s special effects have aged. This makes Casper especially surprising, given that it was the first film to feature full-CGI main characters (a few months before Toy Story), and yet the special effects hold up surprisingly well by today’s standards. It’s all thanks to some appropriate use of imperfect technology: The CGI characters in Casper are meant to be ghostly, transparent and interact loosely with their surroundings, which explains why many of the telltale signs we usually associate with bad CGI don’t register here. Fortunately, the film that the effects support does have its moments of interest. While the main plot isn’t particularly distinguished (and it dates most severely whenever the teenagers on-screen do something cool by mid-nineties standards), there are striking moments of dark humour to the proceedings, to the point where you may be tempted to double-check that the film isn’t directed by Tim Burton or Henry Selick (close! It’s Brad Silberling’s debut feature, later of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events). Christina Ricci certainly burnishes her credentials as a proto-goth here, while Bill Paxton has a warm turn as a ghost-obsessed but sympathetic widower dad. Casper doesn’t amount to much more than an entertaining film, but sometimes that’s more than enough.

  • Youngblood (1986)

    Youngblood (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2019) For most of Youngblood’s duration, I was firmly onboard the movie. I happen to think that there aren’t enough hockey movies as it is, and this one happens to portray junior hockey in generally believable detail. Rob Lowe stars (with some assistance from Patrick Swayze—although not as much as you’d think—and a tiny part for Keanu Reeves as a goalie) as a young man escaping the farm to try to make it in the minor leagues. Much of the movie is about his attempts to fit in, as an American crossing the border to play with a Canadian team. There aren’t that many unusual or intriguing things about Youngblood (although the boarding house madam who collects players may qualify), but for most of its duration it’s a straightforward hockey movie. But then, just as I forgot that I had recorded the film off The Fight Channel (temporarily descrambled, I swear), there came the last minutes where, not content with winning a climactic game, the film feels forced to throw in a gratuitous fight. Nooo, that’s not the essence of hockey. And with that went my amicable recommendation for the film, its small-city atmosphere, its forced romance or its gentler take on Slap Shot material. Hockey is a noble sport—it doesn’t need fights and it’s not about fights.

  • Les frères Sisters [The Sisters Brothers] (2018)

    Les frères Sisters [The Sisters Brothers] (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2019) As much as I’d like to like The Sisters Brothers, I felt more nonplussed than entertained during its duration. For all of the fun of seeing John C. Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal and Joaquin Phoenix in the same movie, the final result seems stuck between two chairs, neither distinguishing itself from modern westerns nor being comfortable enough to play the usual elements of the genre without tweaks. To be fair, there are plenty of delights here—the atmosphere is well rendered with a contemporary edge, John C. Reilley gets a rare dark difficult role, and the ending doesn’t give in to easy expectations. On the other hand, The Sisters Brothers coasts a long time on its bitter comedy, neither being all that funny nor all that revisionist enough. Its most distinctive trait may be that it’s a western that takes flagrant liberties with chemistry—how often do we get to say that? Otherwise, well, it’s a sombre tale of gunmen nearing the end of their run, of self-reflective heroes questioning what they’re best suited for. The feeling is more akin to art-house cinema (well, OK, not really) than to classical western—all scenes feel too dark, all characters too self-tortured, all subplots ending in a way designed to withhold conventional satisfaction. I do believe that director Jacques Audiard (a Frenchman playing in a very American genre) has achieved in The Sisters Brothers the film he wanted to make—but I’m not sure that’s the film I wanted to see.