Movie Review

  • Blown Away (1994)

    Blown Away (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On TV, January 2020) Back in 1994, there were many comparisons made between Speed and Blown Away, most of them to the second film’s disadvantage. The pairing wasn’t arbitrary: here were, after all, a pair of movies talking about a mad bomber targeting protagonists in picturesque American cities. Most reviewers felt that Speed fully indulged in the craziness of its premise, while Blown Away was too dour and, crucially, disarmed its bombs when, in the words of Speed’s script, “A bomb is made to explode. That’s its meaning. Its purpose. Your life is empty because you spend it trying to stop the bomb from becoming.” Having seen both at the time (Blown Away at a drive-in theatre, if I remember correctly), I definitely agreed: Blow Away was too dull, too serious about itself, especially in comparison to Speed, which remains one of the all-time greatest action movies. A second take on Blown Away twenty-five years later is more generous, but not by much: Absent unfair comparisons with Speed, Blown Away is a good-enough thriller—conventional but with a few good moments, although with too many odd missteps along the way to be fully satisfying. Jeff Bridges does well as the protagonist, although the film’s troubles start at the opening scene as it mines the murky fractious nature of the Irish Troubles for backstory and uncomfortable character motivations. (He does get a few scenes playing opposite his father Lloyd Bridges.) Tommy Lee Jones is far more enjoyable hamming it up as a crazy villain, although it’s worth noting that his character’s various eccentricities run dramatically at odds with the more serious tone of the rest of the film. This issue pops up again and again throughout Blown Away: A crazy idea creating tone problems when placed against the darker underpinning of the story. It tries to be both a hard-edged thriller but can’t resist the pull of an overblown action scene or funny moment. Forest Whitaker hangs at the edge of the plot as another bomb specialist with personal animosities with the lead—he’s an unconventional choice for the role, but the adversarial relationship between the two characters works well. Finally, Boston plays the fourth-biggest role in Blown Away, as the script gives up a highlight tour of some of the city’s tourist attractions. As someone who has visited Boston more often than any other American city (perhaps even combined) since the mid-1990s, I really enjoyed seeing big action sequences set in places I’ve seen a few times—with a particular affection for the explosive Trinity Church sequence. Blown Away does exemplify a kind of thriller that we frequently saw in the 1990s and less since then—it’s pretty much the same exact “killer psycho fixates on protagonist, kills his friends and colleagues, etc.” plot although with bombs. Still, it doesn’t quite understand how to have a consistent tone and exploit the elements it has at its disposal. A common critique of 1994 remains just as valid today and tells much: Here is a film with a climax in which an orchestra plays the 1812 overture… and it doesn’t even bother synchronizing the music with the climactic explosion.

  • Thunderheart (1992)

    Thunderheart (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) On the one hand, there’s something admirable in seeing Thunderheart tackle the deplorable state of native reserves in the United States by setting a murder mystery within its borders. Our way into this setting is done through the dispatch of an FBI agent of mixed ethnicity (Val Kilmer, who is also of mixed ethnicity) but no cultural affiliation to native causes. As he gradually investigates the murder, he also gains an appreciation for his own origins. Standard Hollywood character development, but handled well, especially within the context of an unvarnished depiction of reserve living in the early 1990s—not that things have changed very much since then. Director Michael Apted makes effective use of helicopter-mounted cameras to give a good sense of space, action and the neighbouring landscapes—an essential when setting a film in the Badlands. While Kilmer ably headlines, the highlight here is once again Graham Greene as a local agent. Still, this could have been a better film: Thunderheart remains very much the story of a non-native protagonist exploring “the other,” and not a story told from within the native community. As revelatory as it could be in the early 1990s, it does feel limited today at a time when movies increasingly reflect diverse voices from their own perspectives. I liked it, but I can see how we’ve gone a bit beyond that.

  • She Done Him Wrong (1933)

    She Done Him Wrong (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) There are many things that are simply wrong about She Done Him Wrong if you take a look at it from a conventional perspective. The script’s pacing is lopsided, with nearly nothing happening for a while, only for the movie to rush through murders and revelations in its last third. In many ways, this 69-minute-long film feels like the first two acts of a longer movie, as it spends so much time setting up a situation that is quickly defused without going further in plotting. Even worse is how the lead character has all the spotlights (narrative and literal) aimed at her—prior to her entrance, characters keep talking about how wonderful she is, her entrance practically comes with a fanfare, and she spends the rest of the film cutting down other characters with withering bon mots followed by a repetitive moue. In other hands, this would have been a laughably bad movie, forgotten in the fog of time. But here’s the thing: This isn’t just any lead actress—this is Mae West, and she wrote much of the script, adapting her own theatrical showpiece. She Done Him Wrong was deliberately planned to be a celebration of her sex appeal, and sold as such: everyone involved in this film in 1933, filmmakers and audience alike, knew what they were there for. As legend has it, they may have gone too far: She Done Him Wrong was a key justification for the enforcement of the Hays Code that would emotionally stunt American cinema for decades and clamp down hard on the kind of sexually liberated character that was Mae West’s stock-in-trade. West herself is an interesting case study in sex appeal: While her appearance is nothing special, things are different when considering her attitude and quips, several of whom would still have HR departments apoplectic if used in a corporate setting. The film is built around her (yes, Cary Grant plays the hero here—but let’s not pretend that the film is about him) and still acts effectively as a primer for contemporary audiences as to what Mae West was all about. She Done Him Wrong is far more interesting as a monument than a movie… even though you may have to power through much of the film’s weaker moments to get to its finest ones.

  • The Fan (1996)

    The Fan (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) I’ve written elsewhere about the spate of good mid-1990s thrillers, but there were a lot of not-so-good ones too, and The Fan definitely qualifies as one of those, although not necessarily a bad one. Considering that the film features Robert de Niro, Wesley Snipes, a young Benicio del Toro and a non-annoying early turn from John Leguizamo, this may be more a case of inflated expectations than anything else. Still, the troubles start at the script level, which chooses to follow a deranged San Francisco sports fan as he begins stalking a baseball star, then violently murdering perceived opponents. While mid-1990s audiences may have found this implausible (well, maybe not), the age of social media has uncovered plenty of deranged fans with weapon fetishes and difficult personal relationships who turn to violence for affirmation—it’s a pathetic choice for a viewpoint character, and the execution does nothing to make it any more interesting. To see de Niro in the lead role is a waste of talent when his usual screen persona by the mid-1990s was closer to mob boss than crazy cuckoo à la Taxi Driver. Coming from director Tony Scott, it’s no surprise if The Fan’s execution is bombastic, filled with dated music video stylistic tics and an aggressive rock soundtrack. The ending doesn’t manage to elevate the material, and leaves viewers with an undiluted sour and unpleasant feeling.

  • That Thing You Do! (1996)

    That Thing You Do! (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) I have a surprisingly soft spot for band movies—basically, anything having to do with the rise and fall of music groups. The Commitments ranks high on my list of favourite films, I unaccountably liked Bohemian Rhapsody despite knowing better and no amount of familiarity will keep me away from musical biopics. With his directorial debut That Thing You Do!, Tom Hanks goes straight for comforting familiarity in charting the unlikely path of a one-hit wonder musical band (called, knowingly enough, “The One-ders”) during the mid-1960s. The period recreation is solid, and so is the formula followed by the film: As our teenage protagonists are plucked from obscurity by a catchy up-tempo take on their song, we’re also driven across America from Pennsylvania to California. The screenwriting is deceptively straightforward, going right to the heart of the formula and never letting go. The performances are just as good as they need to be, with Tom Hanks hovering in the background as a record executive, Liv Tyler in a likable supporting role, and a longer list of cameos than is worth listing here. Musically, it helps a lot that That Thing You Do! can depend on actors with the ability to convincingly play instruments, and sports an insanely catchy tune. (In one of the film’s best touches, this one-hit wonder band almost always plays that one hit, meaning that the audience gets tired of it within the span of the film just as the audiences do in the film’s reality.) There are plenty of references here to mid-1960s pop culture—I caught some of the obvious movie-related ones, such as the wink to the “beach party” series, but there’s a lot more for those who know the period. This captivating historical recreation more than supports the rest of the film and the result is a solid hit for Hanks-the-Director, and a highly enjoyable film in its own right.

  • Grumpy Old Men (1993)

    Grumpy Old Men (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) As its stars age past retirement, Hollywood also developed its subgenre of victory-lap movies—one last chance for actors with recognizable screen persona to strut their stuff once more, and run on memories of past performances. Grumpy Old Men is a classic example of the form: It once again features Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as a bickering pair of lifelong elderly friends in wintry Minnesota, with none other than Ann-Margret looking amazing as the middle-aged temptress driving a further wedge between them. (It’s acceptable to have mixed feelings about this trio—While it’s rare and welcome to have a female romantic interest older than 30, there was still a 16-to-21 years difference between Ann-Margret—aged 52 at the time of the film’s release—and the Matthau/Lemmon duo—aged 73 and 68 at the film’s release.) Still, the point of the film isn’t to add thirty years to the usual Hollywood age difference, but to allow Lemmon and Matthau one more chance (which ended up being four more chances) to bicker on-screen decades after The Odd Couple. Anyone watching the film for the marquee names certainly knows what they’ll get: biting repartee and petty pranks are what keep those two characters bonded, and it’s not a September-November romance that’s going to get between them. It’s a romantic comedy, after all, and it even has a B-couple made up of the protagonist’s children. (Ann-Margret looks better than Darryl Hannah, but it’s a close thing.) There’s an adequate mixture of jokes, romance, jokes about romance and a bit of heart-driven drama toward the end to put everything in perspective. The ending fake-out won’t fool anyone. In those movies, the biggest measure of success isn’t about the plotting complexity or the quality of the filmmaking but whether the stars got a chance to remind audiences of what made them famous. On that criterion, Grumpy Old Men achieves its objective: Ann-Margret looks fantastic with red hair (at least this time nobody thinks it’s a natural red), Matthau is grumpy, Lemmon is funny and anyone even remotely familiar with 1960s cinema has also been driven once more around the lap.

  • Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)

    Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) Sigh. I suppose that I knew what I was going to get. Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS is infamous for having popularized the baffling Nazi Exploitation subgenre combining gore and nudity. Sadly, it’s a Canadian film and it spawned three sequels (the first of which I saw before the original, further establishing what I was going to see) and remains a standard reference for trash cinema buffs. Much like the wider torture-porn horror genre, I have a hard time understanding the appeal of such movies, and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS remains its exemplar. The first thirty seconds are not bad, as we’re shown a buxom blonde (series protagonist Dyanne Thorne) having sex and then taking a shower. So far so good… but then the coercion becomes apparent (she’s the warden of a concentration/prison camp; he’s a prisoner) and then the film moves on to castration… The rest of the film is an unrelenting ordeal of nudity, gore, sexual abuse and torture. The Nazi camp setting becomes a plot permission to portray terrible atrocities, and seldom has so much nudity been so less arousing. By the first ten minutes, you will be contemplating existential questions such as: Why does this film exist? Who in their right mind would make this or watch this? What am I doing? In a charitable mood and with the ever-worse example of Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks in mind, I will recognize exactly three qualities to the movie: 1. Ilsa is a terrific character in her depravity and while the film is difficult to watch as it is, it would have been unbearable had that character been played by a man, which leads me to: 2. There is an unnerving sense of masculine fear running through the movie (which starts with castration) that, while common to exploitation movies and subservient to thrilling its audience, is still interesting to contemplate (the sequel would remove some of that female agency) even though: 3. There is an actual plot here and an all-out final rebellion that restores some sense of order to things (the sequel would have far fewer excuses and a more perfunctory ending.). But none of those actually make Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS worth a look except for strong-stomached film historians—it’s certainly not arousing, fun, thought-provoking, uplifting or any adjective we associate with worthwhile cinema.

  • Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)

    Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I had a hard time staying interested in Ruggles of Red Gap despite elements that should have made it interesting. Blame mood if you want, but this story of an English butler going to America to eventually become a successful immigrant felt unusually turgid and dull. Coming from the first decade of sound cinema, much of the stiffness can be excused away—movies of the time aren’t always exceptionally dynamic, and the theatrical lineage of the story (first a novel, then a stage musical, then two silent movies) translates into a film that doesn’t move much. My lack of interest in the film is even more inexplicable given that it features the great Charles Laughton and one of my favourite early-Hollywood actresses Zasu Pitts. It’s a generally lighthearted comedy, and it ends on a somewhat stirring adoption of American freedoms by an immigrant who, until then, has always lived his adult life on other peoples’ terms. In short, Ruggles of Red Gap should have made much more of an impression but didn’t. I may revisit it under different circumstances to see if it works better.

  • Kill List (2011)

    Kill List (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) Maybe I was expecting too much. Kill List came highly recommended, hailed as a fine piece of British horror filmmaking from iconoclast writer-director Ben Wheatley. Of course, I’ve had mixed reactions to Wheatley’s other movies (High-Rise, Free Fire)—They get roughly three fourths of the way to a good movie, and sputter along the way. Worse yet; it seems to be an intentional refusal to go all the way, as Wheatley would rather follow his own artistic intentions than to deliver anything conventionally entertaining. So it is that from afar, Kill List certainly sounds interesting—it starts as a domestic drama that features a hitman with PTSD, then turns into an eerie contract killing film, then goes full bore in folk horror with mysterious cultists in modern Britain. But in the end, it’s intriguing, then annoying, then frustrating. The mysteries introduced are not resolved, the film gets increasingly violent and sadistic the longer it goes on, and it gets so dark (in a detached kind of way) that it’s hard to actually care about any of it—even the protagonist is severely flawed, and not necessarily someone for whom we’d feel anything. The lead actor himself isn’t particularly charismatic either, but the biggest issue is with the script or lack thereof—apparently, much of the movie was improvised, which is a surefire way to make me grumpy. By the end, I was more ready to shrug than care for the ending offered on-screen. Kill List is not a complete loss—the sense of domesticity gradually succumbing to unknowable horror is not bad—but it just doesn’t make the most out of its assets.

  • Empire Records (1995)

    Empire Records (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) I started watching Empire Records without great hopes, expecting that I’d go do something else while it played. But I ended up unexpectedly captivated by the result. It’s not much of a movie in strictly conventional terms: Structured as a day-in-the-life of record store employees (albeit on the store’s last day as an independent, as they also host a major 1980s singer), it’s a mixture of various short subplots thrown together around a common setting. But there’s quite a bit of charm to the result—and even more now as a time capsule of what it could have felt like to work in a record store in the mid-1990s. As befits the setting, Empire Records has a wall-to-wall soundtrack of 1990s alternative music, and it sounds even better today than back then. The script has a pleasant rhythm to it, with some characters inhabiting a slightly different reality from the others—at least two of them have a special relationship with the fourth wall, leading to some of the film’s funniest moments. Other characters have their own far more conventional dramas, and the ensemble show the fun dynamics of a close-knit group. The cast is remarkable for featuring early appearances by some actors who would go on to better things. Robin Tunney and Liv Tyler are both eye-catching enough, but the out-of-persona surprise here is probably Renée Zellweger as a promiscuous teenager. Empire Records is all slight but good fun, although I suspect that my age (I was twenty in 1995) has something to do with it. [January 2025: It’s funny what sticks in mind from a film, and five years later my favourite quote from the film is still “Empire Records, open ’till midnight, this is Mark. (beat) Midnight.”]

  • Boys Town (1938)

    Boys Town (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) There’s an immediately recognizable rhythm to Boys Town that works even eighty years later, so closely does it adhere to some conventions of Hollywood feel-good movies. It starts with our heroic priest protagonist (in an understated performance by Spencer Tracy) visiting a death-row inmate and resolving to do what he can to save boys from criminal destinies. Moments later, he’s establishing a reform establishment for troubled boys in the hopes of putting them on a straighter path. (It’s based on a true story.) As regular as clockwork, this is all a setup for the redemption of a particularly troubled soul played by… Mickey Rooney. That’s right. All-American ruddy-cheeked teenage heartthrob Rooney playing a bad boy, going against the establishment and vowing that nothing and no one will even tame him. You can imagine how the rest of the film goes, and that’s actually part of its charm—the utter comfort of watching a film eighty years later and still being able to know with confidence where it’s going. Boys Town was an Academy Awards favourite back in 1938 and the formula it adopts is still being used these days. Still, the fun of the film is in the details and the performances. Even if you don’t buy Rooney as a hoodlum, Boys Town (helmed by then-veteran director Norman Taurog) is a movie that clearly understands what it’s doing, and executes it with good details. The Christianity of the lead character is present without being overbearing; the bad-boy antics of its teenage co-lead are easily acceptable by the audience and the film rides this kind of middle-of-the-road sensibility all the way to a feel-good conclusion. Is it inspiring but predictable, predictable but inspiring or simply both?

  • Last Night (1998)

    Last Night (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I can name at least three “the end of the world is coming and here is how the characters react” movies in recent memory—Melancholia, These Final Hours and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World—but Last Night predates all of them, and still offers its own unique take on the premise. Shot and set in debris-strewn Toronto streets, writer-director Don McKellar’s film feels like an exceptionally Canadian take on cozy catastrophes: the rioting and panic having taken place earlier and offstage (aside from a few brief moments of crowd craziness midway through the film), we’re left with characters reacting with dignity and black humour to the impending apocalypse as the clock counts down to the end. Some indulge in hedonism, checking off their bucket lists, while others retire home to pray. Meanwhile, our lead couple (McKellar and a captivating Sandra Oh) improbably connects despite very different plans. Add TTC streetcars, some French-Canadian dialogue with Geneviève Bujold, the eye-catching Sarah Polley and a rare (but dignified) acting performance by director David Cronenberg and you’ve got one of the most Canadian of all 1990s Canadian movies. I enjoyed Last Night far more than I thought I would, but then again, I have a soft spot for that exact premise, and it’s substantially funnier than I expected. The only thing that marred my experience is that Canadian Cable TV channel Encore must have dredged their copy of the film from their old TMN/Moviepix archives because the transfer here is markedly low-resolution with faded colours and standard aspect ratio—not a good way to present a good film.

  • One of our Aircraft is Missing (1942)

    One of our Aircraft is Missing (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) A surprising number of WW2 movies were shot during WW2 itself, and while many of them were straight-up propaganda movies with little lasting power, a few of them managed to deliver an enjoyable adventure story that can still be rewatched today with some pleasure. Sahara and Air Force both come to mind on the American front, but One of our Aircraft is Missing is a good British counterpart, as it depicts the adventures of a bomber crew forced to parachute over the Netherlands and make their way home thanks to a sympathetic homegrown resistance movement. Written and directed by the legendary Powell-Pressburger team, it’s a well-handled thriller with some good character moments and a few unusual choices. I specifically liked the roles given to the actresses in what could have been an all-boy’s adventure: Googie Withers is spectacularly beautiful here, but her role as a resistance leader is interesting, and Joyce Redman gets a great dramatic role as another resistance participant actively fooling the Nazis. One of our Aircraft is Missing is a workmanlike film, but it’s handled well enough that we can watch it today without dissonance regarding later events, and focusing on the adventure thrills of the film rather than its role in inspiring younger viewers to enlist and fight.

  • Memory: The Origin of Alien (2019)

    Memory: The Origin of Alien (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I’d like to think that I knew quite a bit about Alien and its making—after all, the film (in its “Quadrilogy” boxset) even comes with its own three-hour-long making-of film, challenging anyone to add to that. But that’s exactly what Alexandre O. Philippe attempts with Memory: The Origin of Alien, a 90-minute attempt to explore the roots of the film through the lenses of its first screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and his inspirations. There are critics and cultural commentators bringing their perspective on the film, sometimes flagging underappreciated aspects of Ridley Scott’s direction and sometimes tackling bigger cultural issues through the movie. Perhaps the most successful section of Memory is its short presentation of O’Bannon’s life prior to Alien (through testimony from his widow, as O’Bannon passed away in 2009) and the catalogue of possible influences on his script—including the reminder that O’Bannon suffered (and eventually died) from severe Crohn’s Disease, something fit to make any Alien viewer say, “I knew it!” Of the commentators featured in the film, the most entertaining is easily TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, who brings his usual charismatic humour to explaining aspects of Alien’s lineage in earlier Science Fiction stories. On a thematic commentary level, the documentary is most successful pointing out subtle class rivalry aboard the Nostromo, and less convincing in admiring the film’s feminist content. Memory also loses itself in self-importance once it starts discussing Alien in a wider cultural zeitgeist, almost imbuing the film with mystical importance—look, it’s a classic already, there’s no need to make it a psychic projection of the noosphere’s anxieties. I’m also not that happy about the weight placed on the filming of the chest-burster sequence: Memory spends comparatively so much time on it, even placing it as its conclusion, that it seems to trivialize other aspects of the filming and leave us wanting more. This being said, Memory is a slick documentary with some lively tricks up its sleeve to jazz up talking-head footage and clips from the film. It doesn’t duplicate much of the existing documentary material on Alien, and it should make existing fans of the movie not only happy with the result but eager to re-watch it once again.

  • The Ice Pirates (1984)

    The Ice Pirates (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) Even knowing that The Ice Pirates is supposed to be a B-grade Science Fiction satire is not quite enough to reconcile me with the daft result shown on-screen. The first few minutes are certainly laborious, as the film makes little attempt to camouflage its low budget or its ludicrous sense of comedy. As a crew of space pirates chases down water (already we’re in bad SF territory), it’s all cheap costumes, leather outfits, ridiculous attitude and campy intentions. The SF devices are dumb, the comedy is dumb and the film itself is dumb. Some of the gags are fit to make people gag rather than laugh, and the visual look of the film seems inches away from horror at times. To be fair, The Ice Pirates does improve slightly the longer it goes on, possibly because viewers eventually get used to the film’s low-end aims. There is a semi-amusing take on Mad Max 2 midway through, and the ending does sport a demented and relatively clever take on relativistic time, although I’d be overstating things if I advanced that it redeemed anything in the rest of the film. (For all I know, I’m reading too much into a plot development from a movie that seems to be making it up as it goes along.) Mary Crosby is deservedly featured on the poster, but most contemporary viewers will get a far bigger kick of seeing distinguished serious screen legend Anjelica Huston as a leather-clad space pirate pin-up able to swordfight and drive a spaceship. Alas, The Ice Pirates is nowhere near what it should have been even as a parody of SF movies up to that point. It’s too juvenile for adults and too smutty for kids and generally too dumb for everyone. Consider that its director, Stewart Raffill, is also responsible for Mac and Me, Mannequin 2: On the Move as well as Tammy and the T-Rex—geez. Wasted opportunities and all that—The Ice Pirates fails to meet even its low ambitions.