Movie Review

  • L’Empire Bo$$é (2012)

    L’Empire Bo$$é (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) It’s not a bad thing when filmmakers get ambitious and start aiming at well-deserving targets. But when the result can only be described as “perplexing,” then maybe that’s a hint that something got lost during execution. In a way, it’s not that surprising that a French-Canadian film would use comedy to take aim at institutional corruption — after all, French-Canadian society loves its comedians (they’re arguably more popular than singers) and the way to French-Canadian box-office success is paved with broad comedies. So, when L’Empire Bo$$é tracks the career of a Québécois businessman from humble origins to international success, there should be a built-in comfort level to the entire thing. Even more so given that noted comedian/celebrity Guy A. Lepage plays the lead character throughout the decades covered by the film. Some of the material is quite good — by the time the film draws a summarized but troubling portrait of the ways corruption has been built into the Canadian political system (explicitly parodying elements of the sponsorship scandal a few years earlier), it’s hard not to be impressed by the film’s willingness to go there. But the portrait isn’t as convincing when you get down to the execution—in its hurry to get to the end, L’Empire Bo$$é often diminishes itself—there’s a lack of focus, an inconsistent comic tone and a willingness to overuse cheap laughs even as it aspires to a more cerebral comic register. Director Claude Desrosiers’ intention to fit everything in a mockumentary format isn’t as savvy a decision as it could have been, considering how the format flattens the comedy. I still liked the result, but I can see why others wouldn’t — it would take a major overhaul of the film, at the script level, for it to achieve its full potential.

  • The Witches (2020)

    The Witches (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) While I’m not that big of a fan of the 1990 adaptation of The Witches, there’s no question that this 2020 remake is clearly inferior — overdone, bleak and without much charm. I realize that there must be this irrepressible impulse in Hollywood to remake all pre-CGI special effects spectacles, and the corpus of fantasy movies from the 1980 onward must be a prime target. Alas, it takes much more than CGI and twenty-first century actors to recapture the magic that drew audiences to the original. Here, The Witches goes back to the original Roald Dahl novel for much of its inspiration — setting up a fantasy universe in which non-human witches want to kill all kids. It’s bleak, and it gets bleaker once lifelong vengeance is affirmed, protagonists get transformed into mice and there are plenty of violent deaths to go around. The ending is far from the return to normal you’d expect (even if the original novel is even worse), and the framing device (even when bolstered with a racial component) doesn’t add as much as you’d think. You can clearly see why director Robert Zemeckis accepted the project: as is now usual for him, it’s a film that offers nearly wall-to-wall opportunities for CGI flourishes. Unfortunately, it’s also once again the script that doesn’t do much with the top-notch effects. Anne Hathaway is mildly entertaining as the top witch, but once again there’s something too dark in the script that holds back the film from achieving whatever potential it was going for — too dark for kids, too dumb for adults, The Witches seems to live in the nether realm of remakes that should not exist because they didn’t understand what they should be going for.

  • All for Love (2017)

    All for Love (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) As far as premises go for Hallmark movie romances, All for Love doesn’t do too badly: Everything gets going once our lonely romance writer is convinced by her editor to go do some field training in anticipation of her next novel about a Navy SEAL. Before long, she finds herself in a bootcamp, falling for the sexy instructor who’s making her life hell. It’s a cute premise, with both Sara Rue and Steve Bacic being adequate in the lead roles. The film does get a bit of comedic mileage out of throwing a woefully unprepared novelist into a situation where mental effort and discipline are required, but don’t go in the film expecting anything like depth of characterization — All for Love is to be evaluated strictly against Hallmark romantic comedy standards, all the way to the meaningless obstacles that the film throws in the way of its protagonists in lieu of a real third act. Also don’t expect too much from the low-end production values — the bootcamp will never be convincing on-screen. Still, the opposites-attracts thing is handled relatively well, and the entire film makes no major faux-pas that would make it less than likable. All for Love is not great cinema, but it’s an acceptable made-for-TV romantic comedy according to the usual formula.

  • The Little Things (2021)

    The Little Things (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Once in a while, a film goes out of its way to irritate its audience. This usually takes the form of a film that deliberately sets out to break the rules of formula storytelling. As much as many loathe to admit it, the reason why genre fiction uses formulas is that formulas work: they are distillations of many previous attempts to satisfy audiences and leave them with a positive impression of what they’ve seen. For instance, an integral component of crime fiction for more than a century has been the release of catching/punishing the evildoer. Screenwriters can choose to make a point and not punish the villain, and the audience can choose to make a point and hate the result. So it is that The Little Things (not adapted from a novel, surprisingly enough) sets out to unbolt the familiar assumptions of crime fiction. Its protagonist is a doomed man, condemned to replay a mistake made years before. He interacts uneasily with a younger man who doesn’t seem to need his mentorship. The mood is grim, the epiphanies are few and the finale is guaranteed to create reactions on a scale of annoyance to infuriation. The execution is slick, mind you: writer/director John Lee Hancock is after a few specific emotions and he certainly gets them, with the support of capable actors such as Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto. The Little Things is a grim crime thriller that deliberately refuses satisfaction. Viewers will decide whether this is something they want, but let’s not bet much on the long-term popularity of this film.

  • Lunatics: A Love Story (1991)

    Lunatics: A Love Story (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Much as you can tell much about people in the way their personalities are praised over their other qualities, there’s a kind of movie out there that defines itself by its weirdness above everything else, and that’s where we find Lunatics: A Love Story. There’s a quirky aspect to it that does make it endearing, even as it deals with damaged, mentally ill characters. Ted Raimi stars as a poet with a number of irrational fears that have kept him from getting out of his apartment for the previous six months (this was pre-pandemic times, so considered outrageous). Meanwhile, Deborah Foreman shows up as a troubled young woman who ends up with the male lead out of sheer happenstance. Bruce Campbell is often mentioned in relation to the film, but he’s a few supporting characters at best — but his presence is an additional sign of the filiation between writer-director Josh Becker and fellow Detroit native Sam Raimi. The low-budget energy similarities between Lunatics and early Raimi are there, but the film quickly comes into its own. The mixture of eccentric romance between damaged characters and nightmare-like visuals is intriguing enough and ensures that Lunatics will appeal to viewers looking for an offbeat film.

  • Hansel & Gretel Get Baked (2013)

    Hansel & Gretel Get Baked (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) As someone with no association or affinity whatsoever with stoner culture, there’s always an additional layer of craziness in films addressed at that particular market segment. They’re not always duds—I have my favourites—but when they don’t work, they look particularly stupid. Low-budget comedy/horror Hansel & Gretel Get Baked does have a promising start, adapting the Hansel & Gretel fairytale away from the Black Forest of Germany to the suburbs of Pasadena, where a witch attracts young delicious teens through a potent strain of cannabis rather than old-fashioned candy. Alas, the high-concept comedy of the first few minutes soon ends in cannibalism and bargain-basement horror. I did like Molly Quinn quite a bit as Gretel, and the casting of Lara Flynn Boyle as the witch is much appreciated, but the longer Hansel & Gretel Get Baked goes on, the less interesting it becomes, as it goes through the usual house-of-horror shenanigans without much more than drug jokes as punctuation. At the end, it looks as if the film made a miscalculation halfway through — the shift to horror is definitely not feel-good, and the low-end production values can’t sustain what the film is going for. Reportedly stuck without a distributor for years after completion, Hansel & Gretel Get Baked gives off the impression of a creative team running amuck without having anyone telling them that they were heading in the wrong direction. Too bad — the first few minutes had potential.

  • The League of Gentlemen (1960)

    The League of Gentlemen (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) As far as competent and entertaining crime capers go, The League of Gentlemen feels like a successful prototype of something that would be perfected in later years. The premise of having an ex-military officer recruit fellow veterans to organize and carry out an ambitious robbery is something that would often be reused on both sides of the Atlantic (starting the following year with the Las-Vegas-set Ocean’s Eleven and extending—so far—to 2021’s Wrath of Man), but it’s interesting to see a variation of that formula at that stage of history, clearly playing on the British male audience’s memories of WW2 fellowship and past glories. The production date does mean that they don’t quite get away with a purely happy ending, but no matter — the film is executed with some flair, and the ensemble cast (including Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins and Nigel Patrick) makes it work. The other thing that’s not quite there is the humour of the modern(ish) caper film — as a justifiable lesser crime against rich people and institutions that clearly deserve to redistribute those riches among the poor. You can further evaluate the roughness of the emerging formula by how the supporting players are introduced — not just as veterans, but with a proven track record of deviancy that enables them to commit another crime. Such deviations from the increasingly polished formula of genre movies are what makes films such as The League of Gentlemen so interesting: they play to expectations… up to a point and while the result may frustrate audiences used to the refined formula, it can be interesting to be surprised from time to time.

  • Wicked Stepmother (1989)

    Wicked Stepmother (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Somehow, it makes perfect sense that Bette Davis’ final film role was that of a witch in Wicked Stepmother. It makes even more sense that the production on that film was immensely troubled, all the way to Davis quitting midway through production, leaving writer-director Larry Cohen to try to patch the holes left by a half-performance even though the role had been written for her. (Cohen explains everything in the rather wonderful essay “I Killed Better Davis.”)  Considering behind-the-scenes drama of that magnitude, you’d be forgiven for thinking of the film as a mere adjunct to the story of Bette Davis’ last role. But it turns out that Wicked Stepmother manages to remain an adequate B-movie. The plot follows as a young woman as she returns from vacation and finds out that her father has married an old woman (Davis), who turns out to be a witch and has the ability to transform herself into a young woman. (…and there’s the trick used by Cohen to keep the film going after Davis’ departure.)  The rest of the film is a battle between our protagonist and the witch, escalating in a bunch of special-effects heavy sequences. Wicked Stepmother is not something particularly good, mind you, but it generally holds up on its own as a B-movie, and makes even more sense considering the film’s production problems.

  • The Blue Gardenia (1953)

    The Blue Gardenia (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) One of the reasons for the continued popularity of film noir decades after its heyday is how it enabled female characters to be empowered. The femme fatale was deadly, but she was an active participant in her fate — and such strong female characters weren’t always found in other genres. The Blue Gardenia may not be the ideal film to illustrate this thesis, but it does something that few other films did at the time — play with the idea of violent retribution for sexual assault while on a date. The conclusion zig-zags a bit as to the identity of the killer, but the core idea does remain the same. In many ways, the execution of The Blue Gardenia is strictly professional — director Fritz Lang knew what he was doing, and this film marked the first of three journalism-focused movies. The film’s hurried production schedule didn’t allow for much refinement, but the spirit of noir remains intact and enjoyable here through the touches of romance, investigation and drama. Raymond Burr shows up as the unrepentant womanizer who earns a fatal fire poker to the head, while Anne Baxter plays the conflicted lead who may or may not have been at the other end of that fire poker. Still, the details may be what makes The Blue Gardenia so much fun — a clear-eyed depiction of dating for young single urban women at the beginning of the 1950s that fills in what other movies wouldn’t touch. By wallowing in darkness, noir could be more reflective of the times in which it was set, and you can see the impact of this frankness in the way The Blue Gardenia is still relevant and enjoyable well into the twenty-first century.

  • Moon Over Miami (1941)

    Moon Over Miami (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) While Moon over Miami doesn’t do many things wrong (although I could do without its “Solitary Seminole” number) — and, in fact, does most things right, I’m not convinced it goes much beyond that to achieve its fullest potential. The building blocks of the narrative are solid enough, with two sisters blowing through their meager inheritance with a last-chance trip to Miami in order to seduce and marry millionaires. (Not much of a twenty-first century model… or is it?)  The film’s single biggest asset becomes its setting, taking a look at a very different Miami but also letting its distinctive atmosphere influence both the looks of the film (which was partially shot on location) and the nature of some of the musical numbers to incorporate some Latin material. Don Ameche and Betty Grable make for good romantic leads, and the film gets a boost from being shot in colour when there’s so much material here that would have been duller in then-standard black-and-white. Another unexpected bonus: Seeing noted choreographer Hermes Pan on-screen as a dance partner. Director Walter Lang keeps the pieces moving pleasantly enough, although his track record on other musicals reflects a heavy-handed approach that doesn’t go for comic material. And that’s perhaps where Moon Over Miami meets its limits: despite some good and promising material, it doesn’t deliver on its fullest potential. It’s amusing but not comic, its musical numbers are lively but not memorable and the result should be more interesting but merely settles for a pleasant time. I strongly suspect that a similar film made ten years later, as musicals were perfecting their approach, would have been far more striking.

  • Five Golden Hours (1961)

    Five Golden Hours (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) By the time the 1960s hit, Cyd Charisse was out of a persona — as wonderful as she could be playing the icy leggy dancer in MGM musicals, her acting range did not always extend gracefully to more demanding non-dancing roles. When the MGM musical died of overexposure in the late 1950s, her career did not immediately stop — she was attractive enough and had sufficient name recognition to parlay her presence in other films and genres but the results of her later work are not as transcendent as the films she’s best known for. In Five Golden Hours, for instance, we see her try her hand at comedy alongside noted comedian Ernie Kovacs, with George Sanders in a supporting role. The plot has a con man taking aim at Roman widows, but eventually facing women with sharper and deadlier instincts. The result is… mixed. While Kovacs gets a few opportunities to shine, much of the film is a disappointment — a bit weak, slightly mishandled in matters of tone, not quite as eager to fulfill its potential. In that light, Charisse’s presence also feels not-quite-there: her talent for beautiful ice princesses is a good portion of what the role requires, but she can’t quite go the extra mile to round off a character with hidden depths. Shot in Rome by Mario Zampi, Five Golden Hours does remain worth a look for Charisse fans — it’s generally amiable even when it doesn’t reach its goals, and you can watch it while knowing that Charisse also used her Italian trip to film the much better-known Two Weeks in Another Town.

  • Murder on a Honeymoon (1935)

    Murder on a Honeymoon (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) It may not be much of a film, but Murder on a Honeymoon does bring together two of my favourite things of 1930s Hollywood — the amateur-sleuth genre, and Edna Mae Oliver. I have a lot of sympathy for those numerous B-movies that featured an ordinary person suddenly asked to investigate a murder. There were frequently short (as in: 60 to 75 minutes), witty, fiercely plot-driven, surprisingly reflective of their time and still often a pure joy to watch. Meanwhile, Oliver wasn’t a beauty by any means — but her tall, thin and severe appearance belied a sharp talent for comedy and an incredibly distinctive screen appearance even decades later. Murder on a Honeymoon was the third “Hildegarde Withers” mystery — Oliver’s third and last in a six-film series churned in five years. Withers is a school teacher who, thanks to her origin in a series of novels, often finds herself sleuthing around murders happening in her vicinity. Here, a holiday in Santa Carolina gives her another opportunity to investigate a case in which organized crime is involved and bodies keep hitting the floor. The tone is comic but the whodunit is authentic — she gathers the clues and ultimately confronts the suspect. Oliver is thoroughly enjoyable here, adding quite a bit of likability to a film that would have been more than adequate merely by itself. Such 1930s amateur-sleuth films keep scratching a persistent itch for no-nonsense murder mysteries: I don’t need to tell you that such films have almost completely disappeared from the cinematic landscape, and that’s too bad.

  • I Am Steve McQueen (2014)

    I Am Steve McQueen (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) The “I am” series of hagiographies is a better fit for some dead celebrities than others, and it strikes me that Steve MacQueen is a more interesting pick than many of the series’ other subjects. For one thing, he is long dead — there aren’t as many fresh emotional issues to navigate than with (say) Paul Walker or Heath Ledger. This allows the friends and family interviewed in I am Steve MacQueen to be more honest, and for a certain historical flavour to help drive the film — a “life and times” kind of polish. But I suspect that the biggest factor may have more to do with MacQueen’s persona itself and how well it lends itself to the tone of the series. MacQueen, simply put, is a personality that demands a legend. He was the cool bad boy of filmmaking, barely interested in acting only for what it allowed him to do in-character and to fuel his passions away from the screen. Sex-symbol, race-car driver, risk-taker, much-married, tragically deceased before achieving his fullest potential: that was the King of Cool himself and you can’t really go for a warts-and-all look here—the legend makes more sense, so I Am Steve McQueen play up the legend. The mostly chronological look at MacQueen’s life and career is quite satisfying, from his origins as a small-town thug to the cancer that took him far too soon. The variety of archival footage and talking heads (including many modern-day celebrities expressing their admiration for someone they didn’t personally know) is up to the series’ standard, and MacQueen himself enhances the result by virtue of being more interesting than many other people whose life is celebrated in the series. Despite the obvious limitations of a rah-rah series with heavy involvement by his family (don’t expect explorations into his temper, violence or on-set difficulties) and frustrating lack of depth, I am Steve MacQueen works because it delivers the expected — a reverent look at the coolest man in Hollywood, brought up to an untouchable icon. If you want more, you should be reading books.

  • Twilight for the Gods (1958)

    Twilight for the Gods (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) I like Cyd Charisse a lot, but let’s face it — it’s more for her beauty and dancing performances than for her limited acting skills, which barely budge from icy to reserved. Still, she does really well in late-career entry Twilight for the Gods, stuck onboard a slowly sinking steamship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with Rock Hudson and a motley crew of passengers who all have a secret to hide. There’s an admirably theatrical concision to how the action remains limited to the damaged ship, even as the cinematography makes the most out of its oceanic surroundings and sustains the film’s noticeable atmosphere. The gradual revelations about the passengers make for steady dramatic fuel, and the ending does cap off a nice harrowing journey. This being said: Twilight for the Gods is dramatic but not all that exciting, which does hint at ways the result could have been improved… if it wasn’t being so slavishly faithful to its literary origin. Despite the danger of the ongoing degradation of the ship, the film can’t quite bring danger to top off the excitement. There’s also a notable lack of action from the characters (primary and supporting) that annoys a bit — the tension of the film seems to be in waiting to see if they will outlast their trials, not which action they take to fight against the danger. Still, by the end of the film, it does feel like a journey completed. For Charisse, it’s one of her better dramatic roles — by the time this film was completed, it was clear that the classic MGM musical was losing steam (ooh, there’s a parallel) and that she needed to branch out even as she was aging out of the job. (Indeed, looking at her filmography, I can’t find any full-blown musical role after this film — Party Girl is an edge case, and her presence in Black Tights is only for a segment of the film.)  Twilight for the Gods is a decent movie — it could have been better, but nothing is worth complaining about too much.

  • The Return of Doctor X (1939)

    The Return of Doctor X (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Saying, “You have to see this!” isn’t always a measure of how good a film can be. So, when I point at The Return of Doctor X and recommend that it should be seen, it’s a very specific recommendation, based on the idea that any classic film fan would enjoy seeing Humphrey Bogart play a zombie vampire in what ended up being the only horror/Science Fiction film of his career. Not that this is the only weird thing about the film — an unwieldy mixture of thriller, horror and comedy (with frankly more comedy than horror), The Return of Doctor X is the kind of B-grade film that studios churned out in industrial numbers during the 1930s, using their stable of actors and filmmakers to the fullest extent of their contracts. Unrelated to the much-better Doctor X, it plays along uncanny lines rather than outright horror themes — despite the presence of a blood-drinking vampire, the comic relief almost overwhelms the picture. The result is definitely odd, and made odder by Bogart (not anyone’s idea of a horror/SF fan — indeed, he overtly dismissed the picture a few years later) as a bespectacled, white-streaked presence. You have to see this is you like Bogart, 1930s horror or studio misfires — but don’t expect too much out of it. At least it won’t waste your time at barely 62 minutes.