Movie Review

  • Crossfire (1947)

    Crossfire (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) 1947 was an interesting year when it comes to social-issues drama films at the Academy Awards. Two films in nomination for the Best Picture Oscar were squarely about antisemitism—a bold statement at the time. One of them, the serious and finely controlled major studio picture Gentleman’s Agreement, won the award. But it’s the other, Crossfire, that clearly exceeded expectations. A production of a major studio (RKO) but clearly intended as a B-movie in the disreputable crime thriller genre (now identified as a film noir), the picture went beyond its strict murder-and-investigation formula by tying it to a sensitive social issue—the victim having been the victim of an antisemitic hate crime. (Tellingly enough, the film is based on a novel where the victim was homosexual rather than Jewish.)  It is, in many ways, more overly hard-hitting than Gentleman’s Agreement—the price to pay for discrimination being death rather than social ostracism. Its execution may be less refined, but it’s well in the norms for a film noir—a darkly-lit tale of murder and the investigation to find not only the killer, but his motive. Crossfire is merely one in a long line of crime dramas being used to illustrate deeper issues, but it has the distinction of being the first to punch through the Academy’s prejudice against genre films to earn a handful of nominations. It’s still quite watchable today even if you don’t care about the historical context: Robert Mitchum stars as a police detective, making the film just a bit better every time he’s on-screen. Director Edward Dmytryk keeps things moving through a tight 86-minute running time, delivering a very satisfying film that exceeds noir motifs to deliver a stark and still relevant discussion of hate-fuelled murder. You may watch Gentleman’s Agreement and find that it has aged poorly in its well-mannered depiction of prejudice, but Crossfire will still grab you by the throat.

  • Penny Serenade (1941)

    Penny Serenade (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) I didn’t think it was possible to dislike a Cary Grant film, but here I am, looking at Penny Serenade. Oh, it’s not virulent hatred, nor wall-to-wall dislike. It’s just … not that enjoyable. Part of it has to be that in trying to show the first few years of a marriage, the film becomes an episodic melodrama, meant to make people sob and then rebuild them back into happiness even if it doesn’t quite make sense. It could have worked had it been executed well, but it’s not: instead, there’s a jerky-jerky rhythm to the plot that stops and goes and throws in tragedy instead of plot development and then caps it off with a cheap resolution that doesn’t actually resolve anything. Some of the early moments showing the courtship between our male lead (Grant, in a role with more serious moments and emotional range than many of his other roles—he was nominated for an Oscar for it) and our female lead (the beautiful Irene Dunne, at ease playing Grant’s on-screen wife for the third time but limited by a very traditional script) base their courtship on vinyl records. But the cavalcade of misery that awaits our characters at every turn gets increasingly ludicrous. Raking my brain for a way to make it make sense, the best I came up with was having a secondary character (played by Beulah Bondi) being an actually supernatural fairy godmother—at that point, Penny Serenade makes some kind of plotting sense rather than a collection of drama. Alas, I’m sure that this wasn’t the intended meaning of this melodrama. Unfortunately, that means that the ending (in which a new baby is meant to make everything all right) is hollow and unconvincing: It feels as if Penny Serenade had lasted twenty more minutes, the new kid would have died, some other tragedy would have tested our protagonist (place your bets on WW2!) and we’d be back at the starting point with yet another kid on the way. There are a few good moments along the way—and a few good bits of direction from George Stevens, as ham-fisted and obvious as they may seem to us. But Penny Serenade was never meant to be an audacious film—it’s old-school Hollywood mawkishness, and it’s not unusual that it would feel too broad, too on-the-nose for twenty-first century audiences.

  • Honey, I Blew up the Kid (1992)

    Honey, I Blew up the Kid (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) You’ve seen an absent-minded scientist shrink the kids, now watch him blow up a toddler to the size of a skyscraper in Honey, I Blew up the Kid. Yes, Rick Moranis returns as an endearingly clueless inventor, this time turning the size dial the other way in enlarging his two-year-old son. It’s a Science Fiction comedy, so there’s no need to be concerned. The spectacle is quite ambitious for an early-1990s film—including having a gigantic kid run amok through downtown Las Vegas. The special effects are definitely limited by the technology of the time, but there are plenty of them, and some actually work really well. Moranis is equal to himself, with some fine supporting work from other actors—including a teenage Keri Russell doing her big-screen debut here. On a plotting level, I was pleasantly surprised to see that, after an opening that portends strife between the teenager heroes and their parents, the script chooses to have the teenagers remain likable, be resourceful and work in collaboration with their parents to resolve the film’s conflict. This, plus the rather charming visual impact of seeing a two-year-old rampage through the Nevada scenery, does all lead to a very cute ending. Honey, I Blew up the Kid is not quite as attention-grabbing as its predecessor and doesn’t have as many ideas to go around, but it’s a solid high-concept executed in competent fashion.

  • The Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

    The Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Despite liking Jason Statham quite a bit, I have no regrets whatsoever in watching The Mechanic: Resurrection three years after its release, so average and undistinguished is the result. If you were to rank all Statham films, this sequel would probably be at the exact median—nothing special, but without the pretentious existential musings of its prequel, and with a few decent action set-pieces. This sequel dispenses with the more ambitious fluff of the original film to focus on another retired-hitman-brought-back-to-the-business plot with few bells and whistles. The schematic plot is built around three globetrotting set-pieces, with director Dennis Gansel doing his best to make each segment visually distinctive. He doesn’t do particularly well on the rest: the action is intelligible without being spectacular most of the time, a result of a frenetic editing style that doesn’t give a lot of room for the action to breathe. Statham is up to his usual standards, while Tommy Lee Jones looks like he’s having a tiny amount of perceptible fun playing an arms dealer. I have mixed feeling about Jessica Alba and Michelle Yeoh as supporting characters: on one hand, yay, on the other they don’t have much to do except being kidnapped. The vague videogame-like plot is all about providing Statham with a chance to do his usual tough-guy thing, and arranging action set pieces in increasing levels of difficulty. (The best remains the mid-film pool sequence, so clearly contrived it becomes funny … but with the panache necessary to be remembered long after the rest of the film has quickly faded away.)  Fortunately, only arm dealers and their henchmen are killed along the way. Even in its schematic mediocrity, I prefer The Mechanic: Resurrection to its nearly unrelated prequel (or New Hollywood-era original): it’s less dour, more colourful and features Statham in good form. He’s capable of much better, but he has also starred in worse movies so it all evens out to a median-tier film, largely for his fans.

  • The Accused (1988)

    The Accused (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2019) You wouldn’t necessarily expect a tough subject matter film to create a compelling viewing experience, but The Accused still carries quite a punch even three decades later. As a procedural legal thriller following the consequences of a rape in a small-town bar, it’s not meant to be fun or comforting—but the twists and turns ensure that it remains a gripping viewing experience. While Kelly McGillis headlines the film as the attorney, it’s Jodie Foster’s showy role as the victim that still earns all the attention. Foster, who won an Oscar for her performance, does have a difficult role, one that impresses even now given that it doesn’t quite fit her later upper-class screen persona. Despite being focused on a courtroom trial, the script cleverly keeps its harshest moment for late in the film—after an opening that takes place after the mass rape central to its premise, it proceeds for a solid three-quarter of its length before flashing back and taking the audience kicking and screaming through the entire traumatizing experience. This is not a unique structural trick, but by this time, the film has already established the sympathy for the character, and its bona fides as a serious and non-exploitative film. (Also, not to put too fine a point on it, the sequence has audiences watching a rape in the context of a trial about witnesses who watched a rape, after creating sympathy for the victim.)   The Accused made quite a stir back in 1988 (Even as a teenager, I recall some of the chatter) and it’s still remarkably effective today—even if you think you know what the film is about, its execution is excellent, with director Jonathan Kaplan creating that elusive scene-to-scene “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” quality. It feels more entertaining (if that’s the right word for it for a film with such an unbearable sequence) than a strictly social-issues film. And it does feature a high-intensity sequence that remains exceptionally effective even today.

  • Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

    Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) “Here we go again” is indeed the point of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again as it tries, and succeeds better than expected, at recreating the in-your-face fun factor of its 2008 predecessor. This time, the timeline splits into a prequel and a sequel, showing a mother/daughter pair of stories with parallels to each other. Clearly, the novelty factor of the original (if such a thing could exist considering its adaptation from a long-running touring musical) is no longer there, replaced by comfort at the premise. The large ensemble returning cast is made even larger by the duelling timelines, and features both better vocal performers and a somewhat more judicious use of those returning actors with limited vocal ranges. Everything is shot in a comfy colourful way meant to evoke happy memories and sun-drenched holidays. While this Mamma Mia sequel is watchable to those who haven’t seen the original (or don’t have specific memories of it), it’s clearly meant as an encore for fans. The film deftly plays on its own self-awareness, blending allusions to itself and its actors in a way that’s unapologetically meant to be fun—just witness the buildup to Cher’s arrival in the film and the mass prostration that follows. It’s all great good fun like the original (and perhaps even more so, given better vocals, more ambitious cinema-specific scripting and bigger slicker numbers), even though the constraints of sticking to the ABBA catalogue mean diminishing returns in terms of big anthems. It does reach a crescendo during the final number, blending timelines in a big celebratory number. In the grand spirit of musicals, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is not meant to be intricate, but there are a few nice touches along the way. But perhaps best of all, it’s utterly unrepentant about the kind of musical comedy it means to be.

  • Lost Horizon (1937)

    Lost Horizon (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) There’s something dreamlike and romantic about the idea of lost Eden, and Lost Horizon certainly milks that notion for all it’s worth—it’s a compelling fantastical adventure in which various lost travellers stumble upon Shangri-La and deal with the promise of paradise on Earth. There’s some dodgy material here about white people bringing civilization to Tibet, but perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is how it studies the effect of paradise on its characters—some are initially reluctant and then get into it, whereas others never take to it and convince themselves they have to leave (leading to the film’s third act). Helmed by Frank Capra, Lost Horizon naturally runs a bit long once the inspirational speeches are included (especially the restored version, which replaces a few minutes of missing footage with still pictures of the production) but it’s still an interesting premise for a fantasy film, and well executed as well. If you really want to see what overlong feels like, have a look at the terrible 1973 musical remake—which brings further credence that some ideas, some stories are best fixed in time, like some lost utopia.

  • Umberto D. (1952)

    Umberto D. (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) I may be indifferent to Italian neorealism after all: Umberto D, as a story of an old man sliding from poverty to despair, is very long and unsparing in its downward spiral. An ending that offers a temporary respite can’t keep up from imagining what’s coming up days later. It does share a lot of similarities with director Vittorio de Sica’s other best-known work—like Bicycle Thieves, it takes place in lower-class Rome, featuring desperate characters trying to secure a future for themselves and (spoiler, I guess, even though plotting isn’t the point of neorealism) not succeeding. The cinematography is often accidental, with non-professional actors playing most roles. While I may admire Italian neorealism for a few things (including showing another way of making movies compared to the glossy Hollywood standard), I don’t respond well to non-plot-driven material—and I suspect that watching two such movies on successive days did not do much for the second one.

  • Atlantic City, USA (1981)

    Atlantic City, USA (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Cultural decades never end on December 31st of their tenth year—they linger on for a while and in retrospect often begin before they chronologically do. This is even truer for “The Seventies” in cinema, often used interchangeably with “New Hollywood”—a period in which American filmmakers understood that they could say anything without being beholden to the censorship of the Production Code or the aesthetic standards of glamorous Classic Hollywood. There was plenty of innovation during that decade, but also a lot of depressing and ugly films. Atlantic City, USA feels like one of the last echoes of that period, and another one of the reasons why the 1980s placed emphasis back on entertainment and spectacle. In it, director Louis Malle delivers a decidedly unglamorous vision of Atlantic City in the early eighties, focusing on an ensemble of characters eking out a meagre living in the shadow of the casinos. He does work with a great pair of lead actors at very different stages of their careers: Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon. Much of the story has to do with small-time scams and criminal enterprises—and not in a flashy film-noir way but as a disreputable grimy drama. Many of the characters are deluded in their own ways, leading to a very depressing result. While there are a few moments of comedy, it’s not fun to watch and not meant to be fun to watch. Given the film’s origins as a Franco-Canadian production, there are a surprising number of Canadian and French references in the story (starting with a lead character coming from Saskatchewan!), as well as Canadian actors in supporting roles. The film certainly has its fans—It figures on a few best-of lists, earned a few Academy Awards nominations, and got added early on to the National Film Registry. Still, Atlantic City, USA is perhaps best seen as one of the last statements made by New Hollywood before it got replaced by a far more commercial crowd-pleasing aesthetic. I’ll let others mourn for it.

  • In a Lonely Place (1950)

    In a Lonely Place (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) While In a Lonely Place would be a great film noir no matter who was cast in the lead role, seeing Humphrey Bogart as an impulsively violent screenwriter embroiled in a sordid murder plot does add a lot to the result. Many critics with a good knowledge of Bogart’s career will single out his performance here as the closest to Bogart’s real-life personality and an underrated critic’s choice. The metareferential aspects of the story set in Hollywood are enough to recall Sunset Blvd and All about Eve, also released in 1950. But it’s the execution that shines. The direction and set designs are straightforward, but the dialogues, characters and plot more than make this a great watch. (Some acting is a bit off, but it has to be measured against the looser standards of the time.)  It ends on a tragic note in the classic sense, as the protagonist’s flaws prevent him from getting what he wants. (It’s more optimistic than the original scripted ending, but no less heartbreaking.) Bogart is quite good here—while he doesn’t really come across credibly as a screenwriter, he definitely manages to portray the violent impulses of the character more efficiently than another actor would. Twenty-first century viewers will be quick to identify this as a look at toxic masculinity decades before the term was coined, and does so with Humphrey Bogart—who exemplified its characteristics in a glamorous fashion. While sometimes presented as a film noir without qualifications, In a Lonely Place earns a second look in part because it pulls back from noir at the last moment, ending in a way that is far more relatable than the usual everybody-dies-then-goes-to-prison conclusion that other comparable film would have taken. Sometime the harshest prisons are the one we build for ourselves, and there’s no better tour guide that Bogart’s haggard look.

  • The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

    The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) If Citizen Kane is Orson Welles’s biggest hit, then The Magnificent Ambersons is the one that got away—a favourite of those willing to start digging into the filmography of the famously difficult writer-director and see where, arguably, it all started to go wrong. What’s on screen is easy to admire. There’s something admirably modern in the way the story begins, with directing and editing well in advance of its time with voiceovers, visual segments and droll vignettes combined in order to adapt a novel on-screen in an efficient, dynamic fashion. This is really Orson Welles at his best, immediately following on the success of Citizen Kane. The Magnificent Ambersons rolls on good acting, good themes, exceptional direction and great sets, with the camera moving into them to track the characters in long shots. But there is a catch: the ending really isn’t as satisfying as the beginning, and trying to understand why it is will quickly get you reading about Welles’s clashes with the studio—a pattern that would repeat itself for the rest of his life. Perhaps more has been written on what’s missing from the film than what remains, but what remains is impressive—even though the unsatisfying and rushed ending clearly demonstrates the meddling even to those uninterested in reading about the film’s production.

  • Keeper of the Flame (1943)

    Keeper of the Flame (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Cukor, Hepburn, Spencer—it didn’t take much more than that to get me watching Keeper of the Flame without even taking a look at the plot description or any of the material about the film. I just knew that I’m on my way of seeing all of the nine Hepburn/Spencer movies (this being my sixth) and also (eventually, maybe) seeing all of George Cukor’s films. If you were expecting a romantic comedy, the first minute of the film will set you straight as a famous man dies in a car crash and the entire nation mourns. Tracy Spencer plays a journalist who wants to get the story behind the death, his primary objective being meeting the deceased’s widow (Katharine Hepburn). What he discovers will go far beyond anything he (or we) could have imagined. The film is structured along the lines of a mystery, with enough sombre hints to get us hooked on the promise of something sinister. Hepburn is at her best here: still looking like a gorgeous ingenue, but acting with the strong will of her later matronly roles. But I defy anyone from guessing how the film ends. By the time it does, the female lead effectively becomes the woman who looked forward in time and stopped American fascism in the nick of time. The second half of Keeper of the Flame does have issues: the romantic drama slows down, and the delivery of the film’s secret is done through a ham-fisted fashion that weighs down the film’s laudable intentions and daring premise with inelegant exposition that never stops unspooling well after the point is made and too densely to be satisfying—certainly more could have been done to prepare viewers for the revelations. Keeper of the Flame remains relevant well after it served its purpose as an anti-fascism call to arms against the axis, and its lack of contemporary success can be squarely attributed to the public revulsion at even considering the possibility of homegrown American fascism. We twenty-first century viewers know better.

  • Henchmen (2018)

    Henchmen (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Chances are that you haven’t seen low-budget Canadian animated superhero film Henchmen and that’s too bad: while hampered by production constraints and an undercooked script, it does show off an exceptional art style, some good ideas and a certain energy within its short 89-minute running time. The shortcomings of the film are apparent early on with slap-dash worldbuilding sloppily introduced, an opening action sequence that doesn’t quite know how to juggle its two protagonists or how to ease us into the film’s atmosphere. The crass pun-addicted opening villain doesn’t help either. The production limits of writer-director Adam Wood’s film also become obvious early on, with lush matte painting acting as background to much of the cell-shaded 3D-animated action: To its credit, the integration of both works very well, but the static nature of the 2D backgrounds becomes obvious with time. The scriptwriting is uneven—I’d like to praise the protagonist’s occasional temptations into evil, but I’m not sure they’re controlled all that finely. Still, Henchmen becomes better and better as it advances, taking a slightly different outlook on superhero tropes and not being particularly taken with super-heroism as a way of life. It’s still sloppy in how it doesn’t explore its own ideas, and has redundant or annoying characters taking far too much space. It’s still a bit of a pleasant surprise, especially given its perceived budget (you’ll notice that the credit sequence is markedly shorter than other animated features). It even keeps some money in store for a few party anthems—”Ballroom Blitz” never gets old, the “Falling Free” sequence is good, and while “Sweet Home Alabama” is a great song, I’m not sure it’s used all that wisely here. If you keep your expectations in check and can make it past the first twenty minutes or so, the rest of Henchmen is a nice little surprise, and one that should be seen more widely.

  • Le notti di Cabiria [The Nights of Cabiria] (1957)

    Le notti di Cabiria [The Nights of Cabiria] (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) Getting through writer-director Federico Fellini’s filmography is a bit like balancing the meat-and-potatoes (with early neorealist films) with the far more exciting desserts (his later, more expressionist material). The Nights of Cabiria is one of the duller meat-and-potatoes courses. It’s neorealism à la Fellini, following the adventures of a prostitute throughout heartbreak, murder attempts and complete destitution. While the tone can approach comedy at times, the unbelievably cruel ending is tough to watch despite last-ditch attempts to show joy. It’s clearly not as oneiric as later Fellini; in fact, it feels closer to other early neorealists like De Sica and that’s not necessarily a good thing when it comes to liking the result. I can’t say whether I liked the great performance by Giulietta Masina’s performance and the somewhat dispiriting depiction of mid-50s Roman slums—both are top-notch, but both made the depressing film even worse. That lack of enthusiasm also explains why the film feels overlong, with multiple episodes that keep on going long after any patience has worn thin. Still, the ending won me over, perhaps more out of beaten-dog sympathy than anything else. If you like Italian neorealism, you know it and you know if you’re going to like The Nights of Cabiria.

  • Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

    Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) For all the flack that Hollywood social-issues drama films often get as insincere, award-begging performative exercises, they certainly can help chart the social evolution of the United States throughout the decades. Gentleman’s Agreement, having won a Best Picture Oscar (albeit being one of the most obscure winners of the award), can be considered a successful A-grade social-issues drama, and it does make for intriguing viewing. Gregory Peck is in fine likable form as a writer who, as an assignment in a new city, tells everyone he’s Jewish. Antisemitism being the topic of the film, you can imagine how well that goes: Ostracism, prejudice, snide remarks, exclusion, fights with his girlfriend and so on. Taking place in upstate New York fine society makes it more infuriating. By focusing as much on the bigotry than on the duty to stand up to bigotry, the film remains effective despite a few naïve moments and on-the-nose messages: nobody likes to think of themselves as bigot, but it’s not as obvious to be against bigotry, especially given the so-called “grown-up” desire to get along and not be perceived as a troublemaker … as happens to the protagonist here. It’s not a perfect film: the romantic ending seems to come out of nowhere—especially since the film seems to play with presenting a suitable alternative to the proudly prejudiced fiancée. It’s also a bit unlikely that a man of the world such as the lead character would be initially surprised at the prejudice he encounters as a self-proclaimed Jew—the film becomes more effective once it dispenses with the first few early scenes to show the tension in being part of that social circle and yet making sure that it is restricted from “these people.”  Finally, there’s the issue of “temporal inconvenience” that has dogged majority representation of minority issues, but let’s stop there—Gentleman’s Agreement was daring enough in 1947 that it should be assessed kindly. Few other actors than Peck or director Elia Kazan would be able to pull off the righteousness of his protagonist without coming across a sanctimonious and that ultimately is what separates Gentleman’s Agreement from other, less successful films. (There’s also the prestige A-list star treatment to help make sure this was the winning pick rather than the same year’s film noir Crossfire, but that’s an entirely different review…)