Movie Review

  • Notfilm (2015)

    Notfilm (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) Came for Buster Keaton, stayed for Samuel Becket and drifted off thanks to director Ross Lipman. I’m always amazed at the amount of stuff I don’t know, and the link between noted author/playwright Samuel Becket (of “Waiting for Godot” fame) and comedian Buster Keaton was a missing link in my overall culture. What everyone should know before seeing Notfilm is that back in 1965, Samuel Becket somehow managed to convince a bunch of people to make a short 20 minutes experimental film called, well, Film. It starred Buster Keaton and was received like most experimental films—people called it interesting and/or incomprehensible. Forty years later, a filmmaker working on the restoration of Film got the idea of producing an accompanying making-of/retrospective feature called, ahem, Notfilm. The project grew and grew as Lipman interviewed the producers of the film and as many people he could find that had something to say about it. He found very rare audio footage of Becket (who famously disliked being recorded), uncovered intriguing contradictions coming from Becket, and started exploring the multiple facets connected to that summer 1965 shoot in Manhattan. By the time we realize that the cinematographer of Film is the brother of the filmmaker behind 1929’s classic Man with a Movie Camera, and that a teenage Leonard Maltin showed up on set to meet Keaton for the first time, we’re far past the point of wonderment. Becket being from the literary/theatrical world, we have an opportunity to talk about Grove Press and theatre in addition to film. Such an expansive approach to a topic means that Notfilm is often unwieldy. It’s certainly not focused (some information is repeated a few times; the introduction does not introduce Film properly yet spoils much of Notfilm’s later impact), and it’s inconsistently interesting—I was enthralled by matters about Buster Keaton, for instance, but not that interested in explorations of Becket’s oeuvre. My interest varied quite a bit, but at the end I had the impression of having been exposed to a hurricane of trivia, some of it uninteresting but others absolutely fascinating. It’s also refreshing in how it keeps blasting ideas at the viewer and daring them to keep up.

  • Men at Work (1990)

    Men at Work (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) There’s something very perfunctory to the dark comedy of Men at Work that makes the film far less distinctive than it wishes to be. It’s still special in that it brings together brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez as good friends involved in a murder thriller in small-town California. Garbagemen by profession but certainly not professionals by any means, our two heroes seem content to goof off all day long until they’re stuck with an observer on their daily routes, and accidentally find a murder victim. Things get wilder once their observer proves to be crazier than themselves, and the agents of the small-town conspiracy go looking for them. While the camaraderie between the two leads is exceptional, the rest of the film plays off familiar elements. Keith David gets increasingly funnier as his demeanour is stripped to its fundamentals, and Leslie Hope is eye-catching as the love interest. But much of Men at Work seems perfunctory in the way that very average circa-1990 comic thrillers could be, stuck between two decades’ very different aesthetics and not quite distinctive enough to be memorable. It’s still not a bad watch, but it’s far less memorable than I would have expected.

  • No Time for Comedy (1940)

    No Time for Comedy (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) If you like James Stewart (and who doesn’t?), No Time for Comedy has him in a good role as a young romantic lead, a gifted comic playwright playing opposite an actress (the rather wonderful Rosalind Russell) through high and low times in their relationship. As a portrait of another era where playwrights were household names, No Time for Comedy is interestingly off-beat—it speaks to readers and movie fans alike in having Stewart as an agreeably awkward writer as the protagonist. Russell was very near the peak of her early roles at the time of this film (shortly after great turns in The Women and His Girl Friday) and her screen persona is a good match for the material. Both Stewart and Russell had better roles in 1940 alone—for Stewart, his foremost turn as a young romantic lead came the same year in The Shop Around the Corner—but it’s actually fun to see them both in a lesser-known film playing to their strengths. If anything, No Time for Comedy is a perfectly acceptable little comedy (despite an unconvincing slide into manufactured drama in the third act), and it’s not quite as overexposed as His Girl Friday or The Shop Around the Corner from the same year. Stewart and Russell are perfectly up to their personas, and the result is a nice little discovery.

  • The Manor (2018)

    The Manor (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Movie reviewers often get a pretty good idea of a movie from its first few minutes. Not always, mind you—there are famous cases of slow burns delivering final deflagrations, but the craft and style in which a film is conducted are usually obvious early on. In The Manor’s case, it takes a surprisingly short time to realize that the film is going to be unusually bad. From the opening credits onward, as they try to ape an early-1980s style through synth music and in-your-face lettering, the familiar sinking feeling of a terrible low-budget production sets in. Despite a few visual flourishes, the film is so ineptly put together than we lose the suspension of disbelief essential to a movie viewing: we’re not watching a film as much as we’re watching people acting, a director framing his shots and an editor splicing the result together. The elements of The Manor’s awfulness are cumulative and go far beyond simply a bad script: overacting, awkward staging, bland cinematography, direction that can’t give a sense of space, editing that’s just a little bit too slack (or annoys though useless subliminal images), cartoonish special effects and so on. Even the titular manor just looks like a big country house. Those issues compound a script that already doesn’t make a shred of sense or decency, with stock elements jammed together in a whole that becomes increasingly bewildering the longer it goes on. Surprisingly enough, asylum outpatients, rednecks, cousins-on-cousin incest, monster puppeteers and religious nuts don’t make as interesting a blend as you’d think when in the wrong hands. And that’s not even talking about the terrible dialogue, which even the best actors wouldn’t be able to make believable—and these are not the best actors. While The Manor may aim for style, it ends up detached from reality in such a way that you seriously start wondering what everyone involved was thinking. Struggling to find anything nice to say about the film, I have to admit that I like seeing Rachel True even in the worst dreck (although I feel sorry for her), and I do think that director Jonathon Schermerhorn has a good eye from time to time. Danielle Guldin’s character would have worked better in a comedy, but that goes for much of the film in general. Alas, The Manor is not a comedy—it’s really meant as a horror film, but it fumbles its way there. Films like this one are why I don’t take the Razzies or any other “worst movie of the year” lists seriously when they focus solely on big-budget studio productions, because this is far worse than anything on the most irritating Razzie shortlist. The universe of bad movies is far bigger than we can imagine, and The Manor is like opening a door to cinematic horrors beyond any imagination.

  • The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

    The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) There are movies out there that you watch simply to be able to say (or answer), “Hey, have you seen that movie with the big spider built on a Volkswagen Bug?” To be fair, you have to be connected to the bad-movie community to know that the big spider has been built on a Bug frame, but The Giant Spider Invasion would not be remembered today if it didn’t have a bit of a reputation as one of those so-bad-it’s-good films. Produced on a tiny budget but taking advantage of the mid-1970s craze for creature horror movies, it’s incoherent, dull, offensive, mystifying and almost a chore to watch when it’s not featuring spiders on-screen. (Legend has it that the film started out featuring ordinary tarantulas, but the producer kept saying, “bigger, bigger, BIGGER!” throughout the production, which forced the directors to get creative and end up with a car-sized spider built on a car frame.) But when it gets cracking in its third act, it sports an oddly charming giant spider moving onto a small town and eating people. The special effects are terrible, but they have the likability of an eager high-school production. It’s not quite enough to make anyone forget about the nonsense that The Giant Spider Invasion spouts on the way there, but it does offer a bit of a late balm… and it does lead to asking others, “Hey, have you seen that movie with the big spider built on a Volkswagen Bug?”

  • Cabin in the Sky (1943)

    Cabin in the Sky (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) What’s historically important about Cabin in the Sky is that it was one of the very few black-dominated musicals at a time when major film studios were reluctant to even put black performers on-screen at all. The story is a religious-themed (but funny) parable about God and the devil battling it out over a man’s soul, but the film exists for the decent musical numbers, showing a very different rhythm than other musical comedies of the time. Clearly, the reason to see the film is for Lena Horne as a sexy seductress… whew! This being said, she’s not the star here: Ethel Waters has more to do (musical wise) and deserves the spotlight. Elsewhere in the cast, Louis Armstrong shows up playing the trumpet. Cabin in the Sky is billed as Vincente Minelli’s first solo directorial effort even if some of the musical numbers are directed by Busby Berkeley. The worth of the performances that the film captures easily outweighs the sometimes-racist plot elements (and the other assorted stereotypes, such as facing off the mammy against the town harlot). It’s easy to make comparisons between this and Stormy Weather, as both were rare examples of black-cast MGM musicals in successive years—Cabin in the Sky is stronger on plot, but weaker in just about everything else, most crucially dancing and music. Still, both make a compelling case for a parallel universe in which black cinema from studios would be kick-started decades before the blaxploitation era—and it’s hard not to notice how these musicals play on an entirely different and more uplifting register.

  • Troll 2 (1990)

    Troll 2 (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) A legend of the so-bad-its-good genre, Troll 2 does manage to bring together the counter-intuitive elements of the best of those movies: Halfway-competent technical credits that offer the basics of a watchable film, albeit with occasional terrible dips that bring attention to themselves. Also included: A nonsensical script that offers renewed surprises of the bad sort. Plus: Incompetent acting, confounding sequences, botched conclusions, extraneous characters… it’s all there, and the result actually lives up to the anti-hype and the Internet memes. (This being said: watching it in French, the badness of the result is hampered by good-faith efforts from the translators to make a better product and the competency of the dubbing voice actors. Although there’s a limit to how much they can improve it.) Troll 2 is best watched in a double feature with Best Worst Movie for added context. It’s really a bad movie, but it’s bad in entertaining rather than dull or depressing ways.

  • Mark of the Vampire (1935)

    Mark of the Vampire (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) There’s an ongoing conversation about “subverted expectations” in some fannish circles that constantly frustrates me. If you believe the conversation (and it’s not always clear how ironic it’s meant to be), fans are fragile little creatures incapable to dealing with anyone that messes with their preconceived expectations of how a show, a series or a story should go. As much as it frustrates me to admit it, there may be a point to this—genre stories have their own expectations, and messing with those expectations comes with some peril. That conversation isn’t new, and my case in point is Mark of the Vampire, a 1935 film that, not even five years after Universal’s Dracula, already played with genre expectations. Specifically (and sorry for the 85-year-old spoiler), it starts by following the Dracula plot template faithfully, only to conclude by having the vampires be an acting troupe out for some nefarious purpose. Something that started out as a horror film thus ends up strictly mainstream (although of the crime genre). Reviews at the time were divided, and they kept on being divided in the decades since then. While the rug-pulling trick may be conceptually interesting (especially as part of a critical conversation about, indeed, subverted expectations), it’s not doing any favours to an audience that settles in to watch a vampire movie that operates according to the plot template of vampire movies. There’s probably a mitigating factor in noting that up until the twist, Mark of the Vampire is a very familiar film—if you’ve seen, well, anything close to a Stoker adaptation, it doesn’t seem to do anything better or all that different. The twist sets it apart even as it sabotages the implied contract between audience and filmmaker. Of course, there’s no real reason to get annoyed about it—I’ll wager that the numbers of Mark of the Vampire fans is in the hard dozens at this time, and the way to approach old movies is often more analytical than personal. I suspect that as a result, Mark of the Vampire is going to remain a footnote to other more straightforward vampire movies of the era. But, at least, it will be remembered.

  • Raid dingue (2016)

    Raid dingue (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2020) The big-budget segment of French cinema is equally capable of matching Hollywood when it comes to crowd-pleasing crime comedies, and that’s the spirit in which Raid dingue begs to be seen. It’s not meant to be anything but an action comedy, with a heavy emphasis on the comedy. Written and directed by well-known French filmmaker Danny Boon, this is a film about a well-meaning but clumsy woman trying for France’s elite RAID squad (the equivalent of the FBI’s SWAT). There is a criminal gang to provide a true antagonist, a rather annoying sexist subplot to provide romantic tension, and a few montages to show the protagonist going from zero to hero. Alice Pol has a great blend of comic timing and candid attractiveness as the heroine, while Boon gets a plum role for himself as the love interest. The structure of the film will be intensely familiar to anyone who’s seen a handful of Hollywood comedies, but it’s the journey that counts. Here, the results are uneven: While Raid dingue would have been strong enough on its own with a well-meaning heroine, insisting on sexism distracts from the heroine’s own merits. Her clumsiness also seems overdone to the point of being hardly forgivable when it leads to injuries and national peril. Some of this lack of script polish can be blamed on slightly different cultural expectations, but it does damage the film on the way to its conclusion. Still, Raid dingue is an easy watch and a good showcase for Pol. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of mainstream filmmaking in French.

  • Tacones lejanos [High Heels] (1991)

    Tacones lejanos [High Heels] (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2020) I wouldn’t exactly call myself fascinated by writer-director Pedro Amodovar’s movies—but I seldom miss an occasion to watch them when it’s convenient, and I can usually look forward to something interesting in each of them. It’s not always happy with the results—Amodovar’s films are often self-indulgent (for good or worse), slow-paced, and his weirdest films often pile up so many wacky implausible hijinks atop each other that they become performance art rather than narrative. Still, there’s something intensely personal about most of his movies, and his way of writing female characters is distinctive. High Heels does manage to strike a sometimes-uncomfortable balance between character drama and wacky hijinks: it’s a murder mystery that pays far less attention to the murder than to the way that the characters react to the aftermath. It’s about a complex mother/daughter relationship that often appears to have no basis in reality but somehow works in-context. It’s a film with three male characters all played by the same actor, which raises a tremendous number of questions about the true importance of male characters in it. It’s crazy, unbelievable, and weirdly compelling because of it. High Heels may not be acknowledged as being in Amodovar’s top tier, but it certainly has its rewards.

  • Spite Marriage (1929)

    Spite Marriage (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) It’s interesting to see Buster Keaton’s Spite Marriage on the heels of its Red-Skelton remake I Doot It. The similarities between the two are friendlier than most—Buster Keaton participated in the remake, and there’s a feeling that he was able to fix some of the structural issues found in Spite Marriage. This first film does feel different — by virtue of having been made in the waning days of the silent era, it minimizes the title cards and lets Keaton’s physical comedy tell the story. (Although, unusually enough, the soundtrack heard today is the one produced for the film, and often has sound effects synchronized for the action… including what’s best described as one of the earliest laugh tracks.) As often happens in Keaton films, the result often feels like two or three comic ideas smashed together: here we have a fan getting a chance to sneak in as an actor in a Broadway play to be close to his favourite actress and botching it completely; a newlywed couple doing their best to avoid consummation, leading to a surprisingly wholesome bedroom routine involving a passed-out partner; and extended hijinks set aboard a yacht. Only the first two acts (roughly the first half of the film) are reused in the remake, with some creative reordering to make for a stronger three-act structure. The original has Keaton at his usual silent self—perhaps not as hilarious as in other movies, but funny enough to warrant attention even for those who don’t really like silent movies. (The relatively short running time, at a bit under 80 minutes, also helps.) Dorothy Sebastian looks better than many other silent-era actresses, and seems game to be Keaton’s foil. Spite Marriage may not be the best introduction to Keaton’s gift for physical comedy, but it’s well worth a look by fans going down his filmography or anyone who (like me) just happened to have seen I Dood It.

  • You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

    You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) As far as Fred Astaire movies go, You Were Never Lovelier is roughly in the unremarkable middle. The humdrum plot sees Astaire as an American expatriate in Rio de Janeiro being pressured into courting a businessman’s daughter. It’s not bad, but its origin in an earlier Spanish-language film does seem to limit its nature: rather than something custom-made for Astaire’s strengths, we have something that approximates other better Astaire films without quite giving him something particularly distinctive to do. Many (most?) of the dance sequences appear to be in the same ballroom, for instance—it’s a nice set indeed, but it does contribute to the film’s featurelessness. Fortunately, one distinction is the gorgeous Rita Hayworth, holding her own as Astaire’s dance partner and looking substantially sexier than many of his other co-stars. Astaire dances like the movie legend he is, with the requisite solo number and the courtship duet. The Latin American location adds a little bit to the result. The love story, built on false pretences, is also very familiar (especially to modern audiences having overdosed on “seducing for profit, surprised by honest love” tropes)—although—and I realize how crazy it sounds—there may be a bit too much plot to support it. Still, You Were Never Lovelier is fun viewing: its unremarkable nature is only true if you’re used to Astaire’s dancing, which remains astonishing on its own terms.

  • I Dood It (1943)

    I Dood It (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) One box-office formula is as old as time: funny man plus attractive woman. In I Dood It, it’s then-popular comedian Red Skelton playing a humble pants presser, paired with the supremely gifted Eleanor Powell as a Broadway star. Through various shenanigans and misunderstandings, the two end up married, leading to further confusion and set-pieces. An entertaining blend of comedy, dancing and singing, I Dood It is not exactly a film with a strong plot: What is in place is just enough to get us from one sequence to another, and while the dancing and singing are fine, the comedy bits tend to be stretched just a bit too long—if you’re dubious about Skelton’s brand of comedy, some passages based on his verbal humour are borderline unbearable. Meanwhile, the physical comedy bits (including a sequence featuring a passed-out Powell manhandled by Skelton) are a bit better—Skelton had some help from gagman Buster Keaton in conceiving the physical comedy, as the film is a partial remake of Spite Marriage. Powell does quite well in her role, with two impressive original dance numbers (a Western-themed one at the beginning of the film, then a Polynesian one near the two-third mark) with a final reprise from Born to Dance that’s telegraphed by having the protagonist describe his ideal dance sequence in suspiciously familiar terms for Powell fans. While some moments drag on too long, I can’t fault I Dood It for those—one of the highlights of the film has the story stop cold in order to have the great Hazel Scott deliver a dazzling piano number, immediately followed by Lena Horne headlining a rather amusing “Fall of Jericho” number. Who can complain about that? Wartime topical content includes a saboteur subplot that provides just enough drama to prop up the last act, and a rather amusing precision that a French poodle is a “Free French Poodle” (as opposed to a “Vichy French Poodle.”) It’s not particularly well directed by Vincente Minelli (although there is a flourish during the piano and dance sequence), who would go on to better things. While I Dood It starts slowly and doesn’t amount to much more than a collection of scenes, it’s worth it for the Powell, Scott and Horne trio.

  • The Last Hurrah (1958)

    The Last Hurrah (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Hollywood has long been fascinated by the American political system, and even older films still have something relevant to say about it. In The Last Hurrah, John Ford directs a rumpled Spencer Tracy as he plays an older veteran mayor facing his last election (his “last hurrah,” although the title clearly anticipates a more definitive conclusion) and letting his perceptive nephew tag along for the ride. Perhaps the biggest strength of the film is Tracy’s weary and captivating performance as the engine of a vast political machine — although this is not necessarily portrayed all that negatively as he fights against the blueblood elites and still has the interest of the people at heart. He’s a canny operator, capable of unorthodox power plays such as threatening to install a clearly incompetent person in an important position just to see his family squirm with the anticipated disgrace. The election night itself is portrayed with some skill, as victory ends up yielding to the sum of the various incidents in the film. The Last Hurrah veers into more sentimental territory toward the third act, although it doesn’t quite yield to sappiness at the end. It’s often surprisingly nuanced, even-handed in considering the trade-offs inherent not just in elections, but in governing as well.

  • Life with Father (1947)

    Life with Father (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) When the point of an old film’s popularity is that it’s old-fashioned, I suppose it’s natural to react with very mixed feelings to the result. Life with Father is a film of the past in many ways—a 1947 adaptation of a long-running 1939 Broadway play looking nostalgically upon life in 1880s Manhattan, it’s triple-piled-up nostalgia even before we begin digging into it. As the patriarchal title suggests, it’s an examination of a family with a strong-willed father at the helm, a role that would have been unbearable without the considerable charm of William Powell, completely in his element here. He’s hard-headed, unwilling to listen and impervious to the damage he causes, but the saving grace of the film is how it shows the rest of the family subtly manipulating him into serving their own objectives, taking advantage of his own bluster in order to get what they want. Still, much of Life with Father is subservient to the 1880s and 1940s, all the way to a baptism subplot that seems inconsequential today, but somewhat harms the free-thinking nature of the protagonist. (Significantly enough, film historians tell us that the film’s final line, “I’m going to get baptized,” is a bowdlerization of the Broadway play’s punchline, “I’m going to get baptized, damn it.”) If you’re willing to let slide those things slide, the film does have its charms. In addition to Powell’s performance, we have smaller roles for silent film veteran ZaSu Pitts, a charming turn by a very young Elizabeth Taylor, great matrimonial dialogue between Powell and Irene Dunne, and a few comic set-pieces that still work well. There are times where a film’s appreciation hinges on how much you can surrender to an earlier era’s idea of feel-good movies, and Life with Father is definitely one of those.