Movie Review

  • Libeled Lady (1936)

    Libeled Lady (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) If someone tells you that Libeled Lady is one of the top comedies of the 1930s, believe them—there aren’t many better ones. Firmly ensconced in the screwball subgenre, this is a film that plays into the whole weddings-don’t-mean-much (but they do!), harebrained-schemes-are-better-than-honesty, let’s-see-who’s-the-craziest ethos of those kinds of films. The cast alone is a solid treat, what with the legendary William Powell/Myrna Loy screen duo, bonified with Jean Harlow (who was romantically involved with Powell at the time, adding another layer of interest) and a dark-haired Spencer Tracy to round off the main cast. Everything takes place in a gloriously escapist Manhattan upper-class society setting (with a bit of newspaper journalism thrown in) where people have no better things to do than to pursue demented schemes, maintain misunderstandings and riff off quips at each other. It’s a hugely enjoyable film [April 2024: And one that appreciates upon subsequent viewings] because director Jack Conway’s execution is so smooth, not to mention the acting—Powell being Powell, his line delivery is perfect, but every main player has three other gifted comedians to play with, and the result is a small triumph. Even the outdated period detail becomes charming or at least easy to forgive. (There’s a bit of casual racism at the very beginning of the film, but it’s early, quick and more annoying than insulting.) The cavalcade of last-minute twists that serve as resolution is part of the joke: having no reasonable way to untangle the plot, the writers added more things and called it quits while daring anyone to say anything about it. Libeled Lady was, upon release, a box-office hit and an Academy Awards Best Picture nominee. It’s still a marvel even today—easily worth a watch.

  • Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)

    Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) The Broadway Melody series goes out with a bang in the fourth and final instalment Broadway Melody of 1940. If you want to talk about individual films leaving a legacy, consider that this is the only on-screen pairing of two of the era’s greatest dancers at the height of their powers—Fred Astaire in fine youthful form, and the equally-impressive tap-dancing sensation Eleanor Russell. They share two dancing numbers, and they are both terrific: the first number is loose, flirty and fun, while the second is polished (musically and visually) and carefully controlled. Other delights abound; the film gets started on a strong note with a dual-tap dancing sequence featuring Astaire and George Murphy. Then there’s a fun ball-balancing act. The nautical stage number is a prowess of set design. The Broadway-themed plot shows up just enough to string along the dancer numbers, and that’s all we need. Movie musicals historians will tell you that this was Powell’s last major film, the first of Astaire’s second MGM contract, and the last big black-and-white musical from MGM. But what’s important is that Broadway Melody of 1940 captures some incredible performances and can still be watched with great interest eighty years later. Now that’s a legacy!

  • Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937)

    Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) Decades before Internet movie reviewers started babbling about film franchises, here was Hollywood tapping the Broadway Melody IP for all it was worth with no less than four yearly instalments. Fortunately, there was still enough gas in the tank for the third instalment Broadway Melody of 1938 to showcase a few highlights. What’s worth remembering here? Eleanor Russell tap-dancing in a barn, Russell again dancing in New York City streets, a young Judy Garland singing the Broadway Melody song, and her fannish ode to Clark Gable. Otherwise, what’s thrown into this glorified sketch show is fairly ordinary stuff for 1930s musicals—all subplots revolving around new ingenues trying to make it big on Broadway (“Where thousands of young people come… to write home asking for money.”) Horses are also popular here, for some reason. It all ends with a Broadway show, of course, whose first highlight is a tap-dancing number featuring Judy Garland and a cute white car. But the piece de resistance is Russell’s end number, singing the Broadway Melody while tap dancing on a vast cityscape stage while surrounded by tuxedoed dancers. In between the musical numbers, it goes without saying that Broadway Melody of 1938 isn’t designed to be quite as strong. There is, for instance, an inexplicably recurring bit about a sneezing guy that was probably a lot funnier to the writers than the audience. Still, it’s intermittently impressive and interesting throughout for the unapologetic way it plays into the star system, the Broadway myths and film franchising opportunities of the time. The previous two films in the series are better, but sometimes you learn more from the imperfect ones.

  • Wine Wars aka Qiang Hong (2017)

    Wine Wars aka Qiang Hong (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) When I say that Wine Wars is a bit of an odd movie, I’m unfortunately using “weird” along the lines of “disappointing.” Taking the Chinese fascination for all things French to a logical extreme, this is an action film that largely takes place in France (well, “France”—not sure if it was where most of it was shot) and revolves around a priceless bottle of wine. As a pretext for a few action scenes and a plot that revolves around greed, violence and betrayal, that’s more intriguing than usual. I liked the leads (and so does the director—Leon Lai directs himself as one of the lead roles) and some of the cinematography is very slick, but the film doesn’t do as well overall. The action sequences may be remarkable, but they’re not that numerous, and the entire film is harmed by awkward directing and staging, with the narrative not always being easy to follow, even allowing for translation issues. The visual interest, however, never outranks the narrative confusion. There are a few chuckles to be had in a Chinese film so preoccupied with European winemaking even as it tries to reclaim some of it—at one point, one of the characters mentions something about how “if [historical figures] would have remained in China rather than go to Italy, China would be the world’s finest wine producer!” Wine Wars may be worth a look if you’re interested in Chinese action cinema, or the veneration in which Chinese culture seems to be holding France, but don’t complain if you’re disappointed that it never reaches its potential.

  • Father of the Bride (1950)

    Father of the Bride (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) There’s a reason why Father of the Bride remains a classic seventy years later, after a (rather good if far more histrionic) Steve Martin remake and many social upheavals that make the 1950 world of the film feel distant: It’s still sweet, humane and a terrific showcase for both Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. Adapted from a then-bestselling novel, the story is simple to the point of being archetypical—Daddy’s favourite daughter is getting married, and that’s cause for emotional, financial and comic upheaval. Handled by director Vincente Minelli in a manner reminiscent of his other musicals, the film moves at a steady pace, starting with a quiet but very effective monologue that sets the frame for the rest of the film. Spencer is typically good as the harried everyman father pushed to his limits in organizing an extravagant upper-middle-class wedding, while Taylor here plays the cute ingenue without the sex-symbol mystique that would accompany many of her later roles. Father of the Bride was an Academy Awards favourite, earning nominations for best picture, screenplay and a nod to Tracy’s performance (most likely cinched by his bittersweet narration that wraps up the film). It almost goes without saying that the socio-economic context of the film is almost entirely alien at this point, with much of the film treating the protagonist’s patriarchal viewpoint as the default assumption, and multiplying rich-people’s-problems as a source of comedy. But is it really so outdated? For all of the intervening social upheavals, there’s still a solid core of drama (expressed as broadly-accessible comic sequences) in seeing a middle-aged man go through the realization that his daughter has become a woman and is leaving his orbit. Father of the Bride is not quite as time-bound as you may think—for all of its circa-1950 context, it still works quite well today.

  • Hooper (1978)

    Hooper (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I repeat myself, but I’ll say it again: I’m astonished that there aren’t more movies about stuntmen. It’s a naturally dramatic premise, it’s Hollywood-related, it’s meta and it’s spectacular. What else do you need? At least there was a brief spate of such films back in the late 1970s, with Hooper being the best of them. It’s really not an accident if the film came from a collaboration between Burt Reynolds and director Hal Needham—both actors/former stuntmen who had a streak of successful collaboration on stunt-heavy comedies from Smokey and the Bandit to Stroker Ace, through one of my favourites The Cannonball Run. Hooper was the second of their big collaboration, and it’s as definitive a statement on the life and thrills of professional stunts as you can still imagine. The film goes into the nitty-gritty of the profession and the tolls it takes, the kind of personality it attracts, and the relationships between stuntmen and other people around them. The biggest surprise here is that the film is as much of a character study as it’s a showcase for big stunts, with a finale that collapses chimney stacks, blows up tanker trucks and has the protagonist jump over a damaged bridge. Reynolds is ridiculously charismatic here, and there’s a sense that he’s spending accumulated starpower to work with Needham in delivering an homage to their former profession. (It was several years in the making.) Then-veteran Needham seems to be having fun as well in staging action setpieces, poking fun at the Hollywood machine and letting Reynolds play in his element. The stunts, as befit such a film, are exceptionally impressive, especially in a post-CGI world—for a film dealing with danger, it’s appropriate to fear (even a little bit) for the characters and the stuntmen stepping in for the characters. And that, unfortunately, may clue us in as to why the late 1970s were the golden age for stunt movies—as special effects grew during the Modern Hollywood era, so did the artifice—while stuntpeople are still risking their lives for movies today (and still too often dying for it), no one will ever greenlight a project perceived as dangerous and even if they did, there would be so much CGI as to contradict the theme of a stunt film. Audiences simply wouldn’t believe it unless extraordinary care would be taken in selling the illusion. The other thing is simpler: Hooper does such a terrific job at exploring the world of stunts that it may never be equalled. Maybe it’s better not to attempt it.

  • Babes in Toyland (1934)

    Babes in Toyland (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) This is not going to be a long review, because I’m not big on Christmas movies and I’m not big on Laurel and Hardy. Sure, I like both, but not to the point of obsessiveness, and watching Laurel-and-Hardy-meets-Christmas film Babes in Toyland as a January leftover is a few weeks too late to get into the spirit of things. It’s perhaps more interesting as a proto-fantasy film in which the comedy duo doesn’t quite know what to do with animated toys. If you’re here for the comedy duo, prepare to be disappointed, as the demands of a big-budget family fantasy overwhelm their usual brand of comedy—and then wonder why Laurel and Hardy had to be the anchor of a film (adapted from a decidedly non-Laurel-and-Hardy stage musical) that could have been just fine without them. Mickey Mouse shows up in what’s bound to be a surprise to most viewers. As a family film, though, it’s a bit rougher than more contemporary fare—they didn’t coddle kids back then, and it shows through some unpleasant imagery even deep in the fantasy. There are many versions of the film (monochrome or colourized), but I believe that the one I watched from TCM is the original one. Anyway—Babes in Toyland is intriguing, but I didn’t hate it and I didn’t love it either. A rewatch may improve things—and you know it’s bound to play at least once a year.

  • Holiday Inn (1942)

    Holiday Inn (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) Most of Fred Astaire’s musicals are good, and almost all of his good ones are easy recommendation. Holiday Inn, while ranking high on musical and dancing value alone (I mean— it does have Bing Crosby as a co-star, and it introduced the holiday standard “White Christmas”) now comes with warnings—the film is structured around seasonal songs, and one musical number comes with blackface. Like—a lot of blackface, Bing Crosby in blackface, a grotesque blackface getup for the female lead and real black people singing a verse but segregated from the film’s stars. Oh, and all of that to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday. Like—whyyy? You can’t even rationalize it as a homage (like Astaire in Swing Time) or as thematically apropos: Practically nothing about the song would have changed had been done without blackface. Anyway— that’s why Holiday Inn shown on non-specialist channels often cut out this sequence. I disagree with the edit (films should reflect their production era, warts and all) but I can’t quite find fault with those who want to show the film as a holiday classic without getting deep in the discussion of what’s appropriate for all audiences. The catch is that once you excise that blackface sequence, the rest of Holiday Inn becomes far less controversial. Parts of it are even fun: Crosby and Astaire make for a good on-screen match, with Astaire playing the fiancée-stealing cad, getting drunk and dancing while Crosby’s singing. The premise (a hotel only opens for holidays, with big musical numbers taking on a seasonal flavour) barely makes sense but we’re not really here for verisimilitude. The blackface may be the lowlight, but the highlights include firecrackers to enhance Astaire’s tap-dancing, a first draft of “Easter Sunday” (later re-used in one of Astaire’s better movies) and a funny Washington’s Day skit mixing all kinds of music. For Astaire fans, Holiday Inn ends up toward the middle of his filmography—good production values, decent music from Irving Berlin, a few interesting set-pieces, but dragged down by a scene that you almost want to fast-forward through and can’t really recommend to anyone.

  • The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)

    The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) Part of Hollywood history is finding films that were, in retrospect, far too ambitious for their own good considering what would be possible later on. From this perspective, you can identify 1967 as the year where thematic barriers were blown wide open, and roughly 1995 until visual obstacles were crushed by CGI. When it comes to The Absent-Minded Professor, the trouble here isn’t thematic: it’s a silly live-action family comedy handled by Disney, and that means that there isn’t much to be improved by franker depictions of themes, sex or violence. The adventures of a genius but scatterbrained chemistry professor who invents flying rubber are innocuous and broad—the kind of thing you could (and still can, notwithstanding the young ones’ tolerance for black-and-white cinematography) take the entire family to see. Fred MacMurray is in complete charmer mode as the titular eccentric scientist—the kind of amiable leading performance he would repeat many times in the Disney-dad stage of his career. Where this first version of The Absent-Minded Professor reaches its limits, however, is in the inability of the special effects to do justice to the high-flying imagination of the script. While the efforts of the special effects crew (nominated for an Academy Award) were undoubtedly heroic and occasionally effective, the seams are clearly showing compared to later-generation digital effects (including the 1997 remake) and may be worth a look just out of bemused not-always-suspended disbelief. As for the rest of the film itself—it’s family fare, too focused on one single joke but otherwise as harmless as it comes. But don’t confuse The Absent-Minded Professor with Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor—it’s on an entirely different comedy register.

  • Fletch (1985)

    Fletch (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) The paradox of Chevy Chase is the paradox of Fletch—which makes sense considering how much the film relies on Chase’s comic persona. And that paradox is that Chase’s comedy always ran very close to abrasiveness: arrogance, showboating and self-satisfaction can either lead to good jokes (“I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” remains a great one-liner) or sheer exasperation. Thus Chase’s performance here as a disguise-loving undercover journalist who turns to amateur sleuthing: while the bones of the story (adapted from an acclaimed Gregory McDonald novel) are solid, the script never misses an occasion to get Chase’s protagonist to play another character, multiplying accents, props, hairstyles and over-the-top histrionics. If you’re a Chase fan, the substantial plotting comes as a bonus to make this a better-than average Chase film; if you’re a mystery fan, Chase’s antics are annoying and stop the narrative drive of the film whenever it indulges him. As far as Chase films go, however, Fletch remains significantly better than the average, even with him indulging in his own worst excesses—director Michael Ritchie walks the fine line between extracting laughs from Chase without necessarily letting him run away with the film. The mid-1980s atmosphere as aged into a period patina and the technical credentials are well in-line with mainstream Hollywood studio polish at the time. Fletch may not necessarily work equally well on everyone, but it usually scores higher than average and that’s not too bad considering the very large Chase-shaped wildcard at its centre.

  • Captain Ron (1995)

    Captain Ron (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) As far as mid-1990s family comedy vehicles go, Captain Ron is… pretty much what you’d expect. There’s a bit of a twist here having Martin Short in the straight-man role and Kurt Russell (with a Pliskinesque eyepatch) as the tornado of chaos upending the other characters’ lives, and that generally works: Short’s everyday-man charm is an anchor, while Russell rampages from one comic set-piece to another. It’s not particularly sophisticated, but it’s well engineered, and there’s some Caribbean scenery to take in. There are a few chuckles, with the titular character not to be trusted on anything – especially given that the film plays various ambiguities to the point where nothing really matters. Otherwise, Captain Ron is your average family comedy with a more memorable than usual character—but that’s already not too bad.

  • Above the Law (1988)

    Above the Law (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2020) Notable for being Steven Seagal’s movie debut, Above the Law is a bit of an odd duck in retrospect—Seagal is still his usual I-can’t-believe-he-was-an-action-star slimy self, but at least he’s younger and not yet calcified in his increasingly tedious screen persona. At times, we get sequences that would be very much out of character later on. It’s clearly a Seagal film that doesn’t know that it’s a Seagal film yet, so the formula’s not quite there. Alas, this means that the film is a somewhat bland 1980s action movie instead: the film built around Seagal’s star-making manoeuvre (let us be reminded that Seagal was, at the time, a protégé of super-powerful agent Michael Ovitz) is a generic vehicle representative of the era—slick and polished, like the middle-grade Hollywood movies of the time, with a plot that blends a cop protagonist with an overstuffed plot made of drugs, weapons dealing, CIA shenanigans, Catholic imagery and even a Vietnam flashback to round things up. At least things are better when it comes to supporting actresses, with an early turn for Sharon Stone and Pam Grier with such a presence that even the film itself seems awed by her. There are, eventually, a few decent-for-the-time action sequences once the narrative throat clearing is over, and even Seagal skeptics may find themselves intrigued by his turn here—before his ego took over and led to the career he had. Still, this isn’t much of a film—and so we come to the curious conclusion that if it wasn’t for Seagal, Above the Law would be better but utterly unmemorable.

  • New York, New York (1977)

    New York, New York (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) My working theory at the moment is that all 1970s movie musicals were terrible and/or depressing, and New York, New York only adds more fuel to it. There’s some logic to that theory—the 1970s were marked by excess, as Hollywood found itself freed from the constraints of the Production Code and compelled to look again at past Hollywood successes. But in typical Hollywoodian/American fashion, they went too far with their newfound freedoms and the result feels incredibly dated rather than timeless to twenty-first century audiences. There are other very specific problems with New York, New York: Director Martin Scorsese wanted to go big in an homage to musicals, to New York City, to jazz standards… and was largely (ahem; reportedly) fuelled by cocaine throughout the shooting of the film, upsetting the fine control a director should have over that kind of production. But then again, the project was flawed from the start: the entire thing revolves around an abusive, depressing relationship between rather unlikable characters. Robert de Niro is miscast here—while he’s fine as an explosive terrible man (essentially rehearsing Travis Bickle), there’s no world in which he feels right as a saxophonist. Liza Minelli does better because she can sing and her character is meant to be more pitiable, but her long wig here does nothing to make me like her more than usual. (I used to think that her short hair was what I didn’t like about her, but at least this film proves me wrong.) As for the rest, New York, New York is a depressing exercise, as it charts a doomed romance between two volatile characters. The tale’s darkness definitely fits the 1970s, but also limits the film’s more exuberant goals. The “Happy Endings” number is a blunt lie considering the rest of the movie, and for a film that tries to celebrate classic Hollywood musicals, it’s a self-limiting move. But it’s not a complete loss, and I don’t loathe it nearly as much as Cabaret—For better or for worse, this is a Scorsese film and it does have lavish sequences, striking images, untapped potential as a stylized musical, and it coasts a long way on its rousing rendition of the classic “New York, New York.” But as far as homages to classic musicals go—no. New York, New York is far too long, loose, glum and rarely as purely likable as the best of the genre that he’s trying to honour. What 1970s Hollywood hadn’t yet figured out in its rebellious adolescent phase is that sometime, happy funny romance is exactly what audiences want.

  • Vivacious Lady (1938)

    Vivacious Lady (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) In retrospective, there was a different James Stewart for every decade. While he never abandoned the likability that made him one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Stewart played to different strengths every decade. His best 1930s persona was that of the young romantic lead, a bit naïve, pursuing women more sophisticated than his character and over his head most of the time until came a conclusion that made good use of his good nature. In this light, Vivacious Lady is an almost prototypical Steward feature for the 1930s—not the best, but one of Stewart’s earliest starring roles and one that’s just as representative of what he was doing then as anything else. Here he plays a shy intellectual who falls in love with a Manhattan nightclub singer (Ginger Rogers) and marries her after a whirlwind romance. If that setup seems implausible, keep in mind that it’s a mere prelude for the real plot of the film—returning home to his parents, his job, and small-town prejudices. Forced in increasingly contrived situations (such as introducing her as his newest student), Vivacious Lady deftly plays with comic situations and character types, setting up situations to make us anticipate the result, then subverting them slightly for a surprise. Stewart is quite good in the leading role, but Ginger Rogers is just as good opposite him—she gets a few of the film’s biggest laughs, and she shares a slapping/counter-slapping sequence with Frances Mercer that quickly escalates into one of the film’s best scenes. The third act is a bit weaker than the rest, as it finally has to pull all of the subplots together. Still, Vivacious Lady is a pretty good screwball comedy, and it happens to star two of the best-remembered stars of the 1930s. Rumours have it that Rogers and Stewart had an affair while shooting the movie, and some of that energy is clearly perceptible on-screen.

  • Little Darlings (1980)

    Little Darlings (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) There were a lot of summer camp movies in the early 1980s and most of them had something to do with losing one’s virginity, so you can be forgiven if you’re thinking of putting Little Darlings in the same category. After all, it’s about two teenage girls heading to summer camp and making an anti-virginity pack. But that’s ignoring some fairly important differences, starting with how the film was written by female screenwriters taking a decidedly female approach to the story. The emphasis here isn’t on the appeal of losing one’s virginity as much as the consequences following such an event. Our two protagonists (played by Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol) are mismatched girls each from a different side of the track, and they allow the story to approach the issues coming at it from two different perspectives. The result is still very much in line with other coming-of-age films, but with a sufficiently different perspective that it still works—it’s not exactly a wholesome movie, but it’s a great deal less mindlessly raunchy than other comparable movies. In part, it almost feels considerably more modern at times—I was reminded of 2013’s The To Do List in trying to find comparable films. But only at times—in most ways, Little Darlings is definitely a film of its time, disco-era fashions included.