Movie Review

  • The World, The Flesh and The Devil (1959)

    The World, The Flesh and The Devil (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) What an interesting film. Decades before I am Legend, here is The World, The Flesh and The Devil featuring one black man (Harry Belafonte) alone in post-apocalyptic New York City, except that he meets a white woman (Inger Stevens) at the beginning of the second act and they fall in love except when another man enters the picture (Mel Ferrer) at the beginning of the third act and then the action gets downright primal. Often meditative, but simply eloquent by the choice of featuring a lead black actor (playing an engineer, no less) romancing a white woman as the (potentially) last two people on Earth, this is a film worth remembering for its explicit acknowledgement or racism and mental illness due to isolation. Belafonte was Sidney Poitier before Poitier, and he gets to show his charisma and singing abilities here, either by himself in the early minutes of the film, alongside Stevens later on, or in an increasingly antagonistic relationship with Ferrer late in the film. Some haunting shots of late-1950s Manhattan, completely empty of people, are good for a frisson or two. The ending doesn’t quite satisfy—it seems to push things to a breaking point, then draws back for less than convincing reasons. But at least it’s an ending everyone can live with.

  • It Chapter Two (2019)

    It Chapter Two (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) To clown a phrase; there are a whole lot of conclusions in this conclusion to the It diptych. At a staggering two hours and forty-nine minutes (for a horror film!), It Chapter Two clearly sets out to provide the ultimate definitive adaptation of Stphen King’s novel and succeeds despite some middle-act fatigue. The story skips forward twenty-seven years after the events of the first film, as the killing cycle begins again and the Losers, who won a temporary reprieve in Chapter One, are called back to Derry to finish Pennywise once and for all. If there’s one thing to be said about this film, it’s that this is big-budget high-grade horror: Director Andy Muschietti gets to use plenty of good special effects in the achievement of the film’s vision, also making an effort to dig into thematic concerns (about memory) and go beyond the obvious scares to deliver something a bit deeper. Having A-grade actors also helps, with Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy providing most of the dramatic heavy lifting, with Bill Hader as the self-recognized comic relief and some fine work by others, such as Isaiah Mustafa and obviously Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. The meta gets thick once Stephen King shows up as “The Shopkeeper” in order to criticize his stand-in writer for bad endings and the adaptation of The Shining. But, as good as It Chapter Two can be in bits, pieces, intentions and means, the overlong duration eventually takes its toll, leading to exasperation during the schematic setup of the film, and then again during the ending that can’t stop ending. On the other hand, there’s nothing more on the other side of that ending: it’s refreshing to see a horror film that dares do a definitive conclusion without any hint of a follow-up. While it has its issues, this wrap-up to the It series is a success: it knows what to adapt from the original novel and what to forget (readers know what I’m talking about), and the result is likely to be the best adaptation of that novel we’re likely to get.

  • Jing wu men [Fist of Fury] (1972)

    Jing wu men [Fist of Fury] (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Tubi Streaming, April 2020) It’s sobering to realize that most of Bruce Lee’s feature-length filmography (aside from a few very early efforts) is a mere six films, from a supporting turn in Marlowe to Game of Death—and even that last one is a posthumous salvage job. In this list, Fist of Fury is arguably his breakout feature. Given that the plot takes us to Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1908, much of the film’s running time is about historical context, setting up the fight sequences between a Chinese dojo and a Japanese one. There is some perceptible nationalistic material considering how the Japanese invaders are depicted not only as enemies, but perfidious, cheating ones. Considering this, it’s fine if any North American viewer finds much of the film duller than expected—it’s immersion in an unfamiliar era, and we’re here to see Lee fight, not talk. It doesn’t help that the film is a prime example of early-1970s Golden Harvest Hong Kong martial arts film—it’s technically rough, grainy and sometimes amateurish. Still, writer-director Lo Wei wisely steps back to see Lee do his thing during the fight sequences, and they make the film come alive. Watching the film, it’s obvious why Lee commanded such charismatic respect—he dominates fight sequences, putting personality where other films would have just run with the combat. Various techniques work at maximizing the coolness factor of Lee’s fights, whether it’s slow motion, overprinting, multiple bosses to defeat, tense moments in which nothing happens in-between the fights, and so on. There’s a bit of romance to round out the whole—and more nudity than I expected. Clearly, this is Lee’s showcase, even if I found Enter the Dragon significantly more memorable. The English dub is not particularly good, but it was the only option available. Jackie Chan briefly appears as an extra in one of his earliest roles. The freeze-frame ending ends up being elegiac, considering what would soon happen to Lee.

    (Second Viewing, Amazon Streaming, May 2021) It only took a look at the biographical documentary I Am Bruce Lee to get me rewatching Fist of Fury. It’s not disrespectful to note that this isn’t quite the best Lee showcase: this was an early film to feature him as lead, and writer-director Lo Wei didn’t necessarily how to best showcase his talents. Lee is clearly the hero with some impressive moves, but the camera doesn’t quite capture him as well as later films. It’s also worth noting that the overall plot of the film, going back to early-twentieth-century China to depict their struggles against foreigners, would become nearly a cliché in the following decades, as it formed the backbone of numerous martial arts epics. Fist of Fury is also noticeably grimmer than other Lee films—or other martial arts films, actually—with a freeze-frame ending right before things turn bad. Still, Lee remains remarkable here as a young Chinese martial art student who comes to fight against Japanese intruders. His wiry physicality remains impressive and while the film is rough in presenting its action sequences, there’s no mistaking his raw talent. The film remains a reference for Lee fans for a reason — not the best, but still an impressive showcase. The only problem is the same as when I contemplate the rest of his filmography — I can’t help but wonder what else Lee could have done had he lived longer. Fist of Fury is an impressive first draft, but it’s far from being the ultimate depiction of what he was capable of.

  • Sleepaway Camp (1983)

    Sleepaway Camp (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Tubi Streaming, April 2020) I’ll admit it—I didn’t go into Sleepaway Camp totally blind. I knew that there was a twist, and even remembered much (but not all) of it. Knowing this, I spent much of the film wondering whether the twist was enough to raise it above the many, many standard summer camp slasher movies that multiplied in the early 1980s. At first, I had a hard time believing that it would—Sleepaway Camp may eventually have shock value, but it does not have cinematic quality. The opening sequence is a flurry of shots that never seem to connect together, along with character relationships that aren’t that clear yet. The following sequence will make you question whether the film is going for a specific style or if it’s simply incompetent, with an overdone performance by Desiree Gould that highlights the titular CAMP. Things don’t necessarily get better once the action moves back to the camp, but they sure get less interesting: Our heroine (in what is actually a remarkable performance from Felissa Rose) is unresponsive to the point of catatonia, and the murders soon fall into the usual dull rhythm of slasher movies. Even my hazy memories of the twist were enough to get me to guess the killer—which isn’t all that hard, even though you run into basic physical problems in most of the kills. Still, there are, from time to time, touches of very stylized sequences—one of them being far less homophobic than you’d think, another being unusually sadistic in its cosmetic instrument of death. Sleepaway Camp doesn’t rise above its slasher nature for much of its duration… but then comes the ending. The shocking, bombastic, now-transphobic ending. The reason why the film’s final minutes dominate any discussion of Sleepaway Camp isn’t as much for its narrative merits: while it does justify the camp performance of one character, it also introduces basic believability problems that almost entirely destroy the narrative. No, the ending is a piece of work because the film revels in its glory for what feels like half a glorious minute, rubbing the viewers’ faces in the full-frontal freeze-frame evidence and insisting that we “SEE? SEE? THAT’S HOW SCREWED UP THIS IS!” Whew. Not a good movie. Not even a good twist. But I guarantee you that you won’t forget Sleepaway Camp the way you’ve already forgotten about so many other summer camp slasher movies.

  • Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World (2017)

    Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2020) I don’t know a lot about art, but I have vivid memories of reading Don Thompson’s The 12 Million Dollars Stuffed Shark and look at that—he’s one of the several experts interviewed by director Barry Avrich in Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World. It’s a documentary that gives us a snappy but fascinating 94-minute overview of the modern art world, with a heavy emphasis on the eye-watering prices that some of the best-known artists fetch. You can draw a fairly clear line between the money people and the art people throughout the film as it studies various components of that universe. The money people shrug and consider art as possession (although they acknowledge that regulating the market is practically impossible when every piece has its own distinctive history), while the artistic people are a bit embarrassed by the amount of attention that the money brings to the field. Still, there are tons of great shots here, an overview of many major players in the field and a timeline of significant events in the past few years. Blurred Lines doesn’t package everything in a transcendent story (Avrich’s subsequent Made You Look is better as a visual arts documentary) but it’s a rather good overview of the subject—frankly, I was disappointed that it had to end, because I probably could have enjoyed 15–30 minutes of it.

  • Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art (2020)

    Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2020) My knowledge of visual art is pitiful, but I’m always enthralled with books, articles and documentaries about the modern art world. While Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art focuses on the Art fraud scandal that led to the closure of New York City’s venerable Knoedler art gallery, it’s also a lens through which we can gauge the dynamics and the insanity of the contemporary art world, where fakes may be so rampant that people choose not to ask too many questions. Meticulously, director Barry Avrich introduces what we need to know in order to understand this incredible story, then carefully allows talking heads to explain and comment on the multi-year fraud, all the way from a talented Chinese forger to unethical middlemen to celebrated dealer Ann Freedman, who convinced herself that what was too good to be true… was, in fact, not true. It’s quite a feat to describe all of this in scarcely more than 90 minutes, but Made you Look also wants to explain what happened, bringing in an expert on confidence games to explain how these outlandish schemes work from a psychological viewpoint. There’s even some fun to be had, as two heavyweight art figures start contradicting themselves in separate interviews, edited rapid-fire. I strongly suspect that much of my fascination with art forgeries is pure schadenfreude at seeing so-called smart and rich (never forget the rich) people being fooled like rubes—greed is not specific to lower classes, explicitly says the film. It also doesn’t help that art investment is, frankly, a status symbol that is almost entirely incomprehensible to IKEA-is-good-enough rubes like me. Experts being fooled, institutions being brought down, people fired—if you’re looking for a happy ending here, there’s little to be found: nearly everyone who was forging and misrepresenting has fled the United States, were indicted, or had lawsuits brought against them. Stepping away from the story a bit, it’s striking that it is, again, is an indictment of untruth in the information age—as with so many other things, people lying and getting rewarded for it at a time where we expect much better. As for the conclusion of Made You Look—of course the guilty rich go free and unpunished.

  • The Human Factor (1979)

    The Human Factor (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) Maybe you want to watch director Otto Preminger’s last film. Maybe you’re interested in a quasi-domestic British film about the mundanity of espionage. Maybe you want to gawk as a young Iman (and who wouldn’t?) In any case, your path has led you to The Human Factor. It starts on a surprisingly dull note, with subtle British spycraft jargon, side glances, cryptic language, elliptical dialogue and a dark outlook on national betrayal—everything is beige and boring even during the colourful strip club sequence in which Preminger gets to show nudity after spending so many films wishing he could. It all feels like substandard Le Carré, his cerebral style being unusually susceptible to bad adaptations. At least there’s Iman: She looks terrific, of course, and while she’s not a gifted actress, this is probably the best performance she’s ever given. The Human Factor, as it develops and improves, belongs to the subtle low-key school of murky British counterespionage, which may not be to everyone’s taste—certainly, when compared to much better examples of the form, this one feels lifeless and far too long for its own good despite being adapted by Tom Stoppard from a Graham Greene novel. Non-Iman actors are quite good, though, what with David Attenborough, Nicol Williamson and Derek Jacobi. The third act gets slightly better as it heads to Africa via flashbacks, to tackle issues of apartheid and interracial relationships in a more vital fashion. After idling for most of its duration, The Human Factor eventually, finally, builds up to a decent conclusion. It’s a bit too late, you’ll say, and I’ll agree—Some serious retooling would be required to make this a more interesting film, but Preminger did not succeed with this one.

  • The Killer Shrews (1959)

    The Killer Shrews (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) From The Killer Shrews’ first few bombastic moments, we’re clearly in 1950s B-grade horror movie land. There’s an interesting story behind the film, as it began as a small-scale independent regional production that was eventually distributed nationwide—and then revived by “Mystery Science Theater 3000” in the 1990s. That last fact, however, may prove more salient to modern audiences—it’s just not a good movie. Much of the first hour is spent managing the film’s budget by featuring lengthy dialogue in a living room, while the special effects were terrible even by 1959 standard. Still, it’s a time capsule of 1950s monster movies, and those are more exemplary the worse they are. The Killer Shrews is not good, but it’s not as terrible as it could have been either.

  • God Told Me To (1976)

    God Told Me To (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, April 2020) I’m several decades late coming to this conclusion, but in between Q, The Stuff, Maniac Cop, the Phone Booth/Cellular story diptych and now God Told Me To, Larry Cohen was a really interesting story teller. Not the smoothest, not the most accomplished and not really the one who was best served by directors (even when he was himself directing), but they all have something unusual and often interesting to say. God Told Me To does begin with what seems to be an intriguing but familiar premise: several strangers going on mass murder sprees, ultimately claiming as a motive that “God told me to.” As our cop protagonist investigates, things initially seem to point toward the kind of religious horror film that we’ve seen before. But then there’s the last half-hour of the film, which goes in an entirely different direction (albeit one foreshadowed by the prologue) to deliver something a bit scattered, a bit unsatisfying but so wild and crazy that no other movie since then had dared replicate. (Well, except maybe in the X-Files’ salsa blend of tropes.) I’m not going to claim that God Told Me To is good—but it’s certainly intriguing, engaging and then crazy enough to be memorable. I did like Tony Lo Bianco’s performance in the lead role, even though any actor would be driven crazy by the script’s wild turn toward the end. There’s a convincing argument to be made that Gold Told Me To best plays as a series of strong scenes not very gracefully being held by a mad collage of contradictory ideas, but compared to a lot of downbeat SF movies of the 1970s, it still holds up as being more than the usual clichés.

  • Area 51 (2015)

    Area 51 (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) Five years later, the only thing anyone remembers about Area 51 is that it was writer-director Oren Peli’s underwhelming follow-up to the Paranormal Activity series. After four years on the shelves (as per the final credit card clearly stating that the film has a 2011 copyright notice), Area 51 got scathing notices, dismal box-office results and no cultural impact whatsoever, landing Peli in the so-called director’s jail from which he hasn’t emerged. (Don’t cry for him—he’s making bank out of producing endless Paranormal Activity and Insidious sequels.) It has a promise that could have been interesting, as it follows a few young conspiracy theorists as they infiltrate… you’ll never guess it… Area 51. Alas, it’s all executed found-footage-style, which sounds even worse now than in 2015. The best kinds of found-footage horror movies use the form to heighten the realism of a story, but in this case, it only serves in making it seem much smaller and contrived. It doesn’t help that Area 51 merely riffs off the usual clichés of found footage and alien abductions all the way to a trite ending, not making much out of its science-fictional setting. The characters are annoying and the sets are so dark that you wonder how it’s supposed to be real. Accordingly, it’s hard to care even in what the film intends to showcase as its big moments. Some of Area 51’s concepts are good, but the execution simply irritates more than it succeeds. No wonder everyone forgot about it.

  • The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018)

    The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) I’m usually a good audience for documentaries, but The Eyes of Orson Welles lost me along the way. In theory, the idea of exploring Orson Welles through his private art (drawings, sketches, paintings) is intriguing—but then writer-director Mark Cousins takes a very stylized approach to the topic by narrating the film as if to Orson, penning thoughts and wrapping up movie excerpts, location footage, an interview with one of Welles’s daughters, and so on. I will defend that choice on novelty alone, but it is intrusive and showy to an unusual degree. As a film-length musing on a beloved subject, it’s immensely detailed: Cousins weaves in and out a dizzying number of very pointed comments about Welles’s life that clearly show his understanding of his topic. But while I can appreciate the intent, I had a surprising amount of difficulty in remaining interested. (Lack of closed captions on a noticeable Irish accent did not help.) It gets wilder: Cousins wraps a critique of his own work by having Welles (via impersonator) answer back at the end of the film. By that point, though, I was pining for dull and boring objective documentary rather than what The Eyes of Orson Welles ended up becoming. A disappointment, then, although I suppose that some will like it more than I did.

  • Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)

    Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) One of the most interesting things about the creative freedom allowed to the DC Animated Movie Universe are the occasional leaps into alternate realities that play with familiar characters. In Justice League: The New Frontier, the film adapts the classic Darwyn Cooke run of the Justice League being credibly transposed in the 1950s. It’s not unpleasant to watch, but it’s familiar, rushed and busy. While I’m not that big of a DC comics fan, I do have a nice slip-cased edition of The New Frontier (Why? Because of how Cooke draws his women characters, that’s why) and I’m slightly disappointed by the adaptation. It can’t quite play by the same codes of the original, nor sustain Cooke’s very distinctive visual style. But worse is how The New Frontier tries to condense a silver-age-style story into a far-too-fast 75 minutes focused on plot. This is a film that could have used 15 more minutes of atmosphere and character development in order to let the plot breathe and the 1950s styling make more of an impact. One word of warning to casual fans: the pace at which the film goes means that it does assume a lot of knowledge about the characters: that works for some of the more familiar ones, but not so much for the niche characters. In the end, well, The New Frontier is serviceable but not particularly satisfying, and a significant step down from the comics run itself.

  • It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)

    It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) A very strong selling point for It’s Always Fair Weather is that it reunites a good number of people who worked on Singin’ in the Rain: Director Stanley Donen, choreographer-star Gene Kelly, dancer-actress Cyd Charisse, and so on—this was, after all, one of the “Freed Unit” musicals handled with impeccable craftsmanship by people who knew what they were doing. The lineage from Singin’ in the Rain to The Band Wagon to It’s Always Fair Weather is not only obvious—it’s playful and very much self-aware. There is a lot to like here: Many distinctive musical numbers (trashcan tap-dancing, roller-skate tap sequence, boxing-ring serenade), innovative filmmaking (decade-passing montage, triple-split screen), some cultural commentary (poking at the advertising culture of TV, with a live-confession climax that must have felt far more innovative back then), clever musical touches (such as the brilliant use of Blue Danube as an internal musical number) and a far more wistful tone than you’d expect from a 1950s movie musical. Plus, well, there’s Cyd Charisse—her green dress is wonderful, her first long scene in a taxi is a delight, and those are only two of the reasons why she gets here one of her most substantial roles—singing, dancing, comedy and romance, almost as much as in Silk Stockings. It’s not exactly perfect—the missed opportunity to make this a sequel to On the Town still rankles—but sometimes, even its flaws are endearing. The wolf-whistling bit, for instance, is awful by today’s standards, but it’s so dated, so overdone (and kind of cute) that it becomes hilarious. The 1950s were a very strong decade for musicals, and the production history of It’s Always Fair Weather suggests that this was the beginning of the end of an era at MGM, with slashed budgets and less interest in the result. No matter—I’m ranking this film high on my list of top 1950s musicals, and if it signals the end of an incredible streak, then it’s a pretty high note on which to go out.

  • Marked for Death (1990)

    Marked for Death (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2020) In his third movie Marked for Death, Steven Seagal takes on Jamaican drug dealers because, hey, the endless body count has to come from somewhere, right? Dating from the time when Seagal’s films were still professionally made and theatrically released, this is still a somewhat average circa-1990 B-movie action thriller: don’t get your hopes when people will tell you that “it’s better than average Seagal” because the floor on those movies as a whole is incredibly low. Considering that the film takes on Jamaican voodoo-dealing criminal gangs shooting up an all-American city, it’s about as stereotypical as you can imagine, and occasionally even more so. Seagal eventually takes the fight back to the entire island of Jamaica for good measure. The Seagal persona is almost, but not completely solidified at this point of his career—although, amusingly, there’s a point when he gets in a tight spot and is still slim enough to slip through. It’s not all boring, but the rewards are rare and slight—the decent car chase midway through is notable largely because it’s a break from Seagal stone-facing his way through endless fights.

  • Just Before Dawn (1981)

    Just Before Dawn (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) The only thing worth noting about run-of-the-mill slasher Just Before Dawn is the location—set deep in a northwestern forest, it evokes feelings of folk horror more than urban (or summer camp-set) slasher films. But it’s still a kill-based slasher (no matter writer-director Jeff Lieberman’s protests) with an ever-dwindling cast until the Final Girl does her thing. Whatever ambitions or distinctions it may have held are lost in an absolutely undistinguished morass of 1980s slasher ennui. Not even Jamie Rose as a cute redhead can make it better. Frankly, Just Before Dawn is a pain to get through, and not solely because it’s so similar to other movies in the subgenre.