Movie Review

  • The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

    The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video On-Demand, January 2020) As much as I’d like to dismiss The Bridges of Madison County as overcooked romantic pap (and I will–just keep reading), it’s more difficult to do that with the movie than the overwritten, overwrought novel on which it is based. Directed by Clint Eastwood (and upsetting a number of assumptions about Eastwood’s range along the way), this middle-aged romance wisely cuts away much of the characters’ inner dialogue and leaves things to Eastwood’s sparse naturalistic approach. It would have failed without Eastwood and Meryl Streep doing heavy lifting on a mediocre script—indeed, the film gets noticeably worse when the obvious dialogue is handled by the supporting actors. Still, it does get annoying if you’re not part of its intended audience: Easily seen as a wish-fulfillment story in which a handsome worldly stranger comes to town and sweeps a lonely housewife off her feet, The Bridges of Madison County (which I keep misspelling as The Bridges of Madison Square County) strikes a very familiar note, as the female lead must decide between a high-risk new relationship or continuing with her dull husband. (Also see the near-contemporary The Horse Whisperer.) I do have a bit of a moral objection to that kind of plotting, but I haven’t figured out yet whether I’m being overly moralistic à la The End of the Affair in thinking so. Still, it does allow Eastwood to cry (sort of), look dispirited in the rain and for Meryl Streep to use another accent (this time; Italian) for a character that didn’t really need one. There is something a bit cheap and easy and manipulative in the whole thing that leaves me baffled, but then again, I am not the audience for this film. Plus, there’s the added fascination of Eastwood directing a film aimed at a female audience—no matter what, The Bridges of Madison County is always going to stick out in his filmography.

  • Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019)

    Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Cable TV, January 2020) I don’t have much direct experience with Pokémon (I was clearly too old to respond to the craze when it first hit North America in the late 1990s), and that places me in a strange position in trying to evaluate Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. On the one hand, I clearly don’t have enough knowledge to evaluate how well the film reuses the series’ mythology on the big screen. On the other hand, I had quite a good time immersing myself in the imagined world portrayed here in which humans co-exist with fantastic creatures. Showcasing a Science Fiction noir atmosphere is another surefire way to get my interest. The plot itself is very familiar and toned down somewhat to address a younger audience, but fortunately, there’s more than the plot to take in. Namely, we have Ryan Reynolds providing colour commentary as Pikachu, coming closest (as many others have said) to reprising Deadpool for the PG set. Reynold’s irreverent patter does a lot to elevate Detective Pikachu from the usual doldrums of contemporary fantasy movies for kids—the sass and reaction lines are often genuinely funny and add a lot to the result. Once you throw in the numerous special effects that manage to create the reality of the film’s world (and throw in a vertiginous forest-set action sequence), the result is a bit better than expected and more distinctive than many others. Director Rob Letterman keeps a lot of things going and the result is simply fun for the entire family. I’m glad I got my first full-sized introduction to the franchise through Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. By the time the sequel rolls in, I expect my daughter to have schooled me in the finer aspects of the mythology.

  • The Flintstones (1994)

    The Flintstones (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On TV, January 2020) I remember seeing The Flintstones in theatres upon release… in its original English version. The distinction is important because the French-Canadian dub of The Flintstones’ TV series achieved near-legendary status due to its refusal to adopt even the semblance of a mid-Atlantic French accent—it’s pure Québec joual, meaning that generations of French-Canadian kids felt that the series somehow came from not too far away. (Twenty years later, The Simpsons did the same trick.) I was reminded of that distinction all over again while stumbling over a French-Canadian broadcast of The Flintstones movie—I generally prefer to watch films in their original language, but this was almost a welcome exception, as the characters speak with a pronounced Montréal-area accent. Sound aside, there is something magnificent about The Flintstones’s late-analogue-era dedication to recreating the funhouse visual representation of Bedrock. Nearly every single frame of the film is strongly art-directed with custom sets, costumes and gadgets. There is some clunky CGI used here for some of the supporting animal characters (including a surprisingly fluffy big cat), but much of The Flintstones heroically does its best with painted foam and practical effects. The commitment to the visual humour of the original series is admirable, and it almost compensates for a fairly dull family-sitcom story and the outdated social conventions taken straight from the early-1960s TV show. The portrait of the nuclear family that was straight parody in 1960 felt creaky in 1994 and now looks increasingly dumb… but that’s what you get. At least, from an acting talent, John Goodman is picture-perfect as Fred Flintstone. The rest of the casting is… debatable. Halle Berry (as “Sharon Stone”) is a delight to watch but she seems to belong in a different, racier movie. Elizabeth Taylor seems just as misplaced as a prototypical mother-in-law, although she’s good for a few laughs. Elizabeth Perkins is fine as Wilma, Rick Moranis is borderline acceptable as Barney but Rosie O’Donnell continues to mystify new generations of movie reviewers when miscast as Betty. The Flintstones is nowhere near being a good movie, but I can practically guarantee that a twenty-first-century watch (especially for new viewers who have no idea about the original TV show) will be a can’t-stop-looking experience.

  • The Black Cat (1934)

    The Black Cat (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I wish I had a bit more to say about The Black Cat, the first movie that managed to get Béla Lugosi and Boris Karloff as antagonists. It starts as a sympathetic and rather dull film, as newlyweds take a train to eastern Europe—where, as all classic horror movie watchers know, only bad things happen. Out of nowhere, a mysterious man (Lugosi) joins them and says that he’s off to see an old friend. Nobody will be surprised to see that Karloff plays the old friend in question, or that the two men are locked in a mortal struggle. When the couple is forced to stay at the old friend’s home, well, all the bets are off. To be fair, The Black Cat does a lot of mileage on subtlety. As a classic-era horror sound film from Universal, it doesn’t enjoy the notoriety that its contemporaries do—the lack of a distinctively supernatural (and iconic) monster certainly doesn’t help. But, much like the near-contemporary The Phantom of the Opera, it may hold a few more surprises in store than the deeply familiar takes on Frankenstein and Dracula. At the very least, it’s a remarkably short movie (barely 69 minutes), and it’s heavier on atmosphere than one would expect. Perhaps a bit too esoteric for the average moviegoer, The Black Cat is nonetheless an interesting surprise for classic horror movie buffs.

  • Sisters (1972)

    Sisters (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) The amazing thing about digging deep enough in writer-director Brian de Palma’s filmography to watch Sisters is how much it announces elements of his later career. This is pure uncut de Palms with split screens (justified!), a narratively unusual first act not featuring the protagonist, a shocking first-act twist, mysterious identities, hypnotism and other deviations from pure objective reality. You can map a lot of Sisters’ plot elements to later de Palma movies, starting with its niche as a psychological thriller in which anything not explicitly supernatural can happen no matter how unlikely it can be. (Once you throw hypnotism in a psychological thriller, it’s a clear marker that you shouldn’t expect the rest of the film to make sense.) I was amused to find Margot Kidder playing a French-Canadian character, although Jennifer Salt ends up being the main character once the first act is sorted out. The visual complexity of the film (notably in its use of split screens to see the same thing from opposite perspectives, or the copious amount of audiovisual exposition, or the changing film stocks and techniques) is more contemporary than many films of its era. Sisters doesn’t end particularly well, which limits its appeal and certainly brands it as being from the early-1970s, but it’s fascinating in its own way as an early de Palma work.

  • Her Cardboard Lover (1942)

    Her Cardboard Lover (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) Once you’re deep into classic Hollywood movies, you start picking movies for their stars and directors rather than their plot or historical importance. That’s how I ended up watching Her Cardboard Lover, a somewhat forgotten George Cukor film that nonetheless features the ever-cute Norma Shearer playing off George Sanders (in a typically antagonistic role) to the rather likable Robert Taylor. The plot of the film isn’t much to talk about—it’s the old-fashioned formula of one woman using a man to make another jealous. But it’s handled with enough whimsy to make it fun despite the familiarity. Some surprisingly enjoyable dialogue and repartee, especially between Shearer and Taylor, do keep things entertaining during the entire film. The two male leads even get into a very funny fight scene, which is somewhat atypical for the reserved Sanders. We can quibble about the lead female character’s flightiness and her overall romantic suitability when she’s happy to pit two men against each other, but Her Cardboard Special remains a romantic comedy that wraps up nicely—nothing special, but highly enjoyable.

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

    The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) Few things are timeless, but Oscar Wilde’s witty, acerbic dialogue comes close to standing out of time. While all of his bibliography is impressive, The Picture of Dorian Gray still stands among his best-known work given a narrative genre hook that literalizes a metaphor of universal currency. The idea of a portrait that ages while its subject doesn’t is well suited to the medium of film, where screen characters never age even though their actors do. This reflective funhouse mirror is enough to power this 1945 adaptation, which benefits from George Sanders’ snide skills in delivering some of Wilde’s best lines. The story may be familiar, but the execution is rather good. Writer-director Albert Lewin cleverly lets the story play out, but throws in a few shocks by portraying Dorian’s portrait in colour in the middle of a black-and-white film. (The film won an Oscar for cinematography) Wilde’s dialogue is quite good, with enough one-liners here and there to keep everyone happy—it’s a film worth listening to at least once. A very young Angela Lansbury shows up repeatedly crooning “Yellow Little Bird” (charming the first time, a bit annoying the third time). The inclusion of a supernatural explanation is not entirely satisfying, but the rest of The Picture of Dorian Gray happily shrugs off that issue.

  • Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

    Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) I’m not sure about others, but in my mind Creature from the Black Lagoon’s Gill-man is one of the major Universal monsters. An often forgotten or maligned one, but still part of the line-up. (I suspect that its aquatic nature means that he’s not as reusable as Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, or the Mummy in the popular imagination, but that’s how it goes.)  What’s perhaps more interesting is that his introduction took place twenty-three years after the first Universal Monsters, in a very different environment for horror. The 1950s were nothing like the 1930s—the fantastic was getting more commonplace even outside the core audience for horror, and an entire slew of monster movies emerged during that decade to reflect various Cold War anxieties. As a result, it does feel slightly different—but it’s clearly among the best of those 1950s monster movies, playing off themes of unrequited romance and a somewhat sympathetic monster. There’s a clear line going from Creature from the Black Lagoon to 2017’s Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, perhaps reflecting the nature of empathy throughout decades. The film’s production values are not bad, especially when you get to the underwater sequences that present obvious acting and plot progression challenges when straight-up dialogue isn’t possible. It remains essential viewing for anyone interested in the origins of lasting cultural icons, but it’s also, thankfully, an entertaining film in its own right.

  • Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)

    Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2019) Twenty-first century Gérard Depardieu may not strike anyone as an ideal Cyrano Bergerac—what could an overweight old actor with a scandalous past have to do with a dashing figure known for his wit, grace, charm, and sword-fighting abilities? The point of Cyrano is that he’s an ideal figure if it wasn’t for his unusually pronounced nose and the story keeps revolving around that idea. But peak-era circa-1990 Depardieu is not the figure we know thirty years later—his performance here is a good part of the reason why I consider this to be the finest adaptation (so far) of Cyrano de Bergerac on the big screen. As far as I’m concerned, Cyrano is part of the classics—you don’t judge an adaptation of it on its plot or characters, but on the way it brings them to life. On that measure, writer-director Jean-Paul Rappeneau does well—helped along by Depardieu’s earnest take on the character, a strong visual sense and some great historical recreation. As much as I like Steve Martin’s Cyrano-adjacent comedic take Roxanne, this is the real deal right here, and it’s played as the romantic tragedy that it is.

  • Brightburn (2019)

    Brightburn (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) Oh, yuck to Brightburn. I’ll be the first one to say that the commercial dominance of the superhero film is a creative dead-end, that it harms movies more than it benefits them, and that the sooner we get to something else the better off we’ll be. But that doesn’t mean that we need to extend the genre into an even worse one. The concept of blending super-powerful characters with kid/slasher horror is something that raises my hackles from the get-go, and nothing in Brightburn’s gleefully sadistic execution changes my mind about. Simply put, this is a film that wonders what would have happened if the Superman origins story (super-powerful alien crash-lands as a baby in Kansas, is raised by human parents) had led to a psychopathic character unable to be stopped by anyone. The result of this isn’t in doubt? Well, prepare to spend 90 minutes being reminded over and over of this obvious conclusion, except with enough gore and blood to make it even more obvious. Just in case you hadn’t figured it out. Of course, it’s unfair to compare Brightburn to a superhero film turned to horror—it’s far more honest to see the project (produced by famously gore-friendly filmmaker James Gunn) as a horror film looking to superheroes in its escalation of violence. Much of the structure of the film is borrowed from those hateful killer-kid movies, in which a child goes around killing playmates and adults while no one can believe that the adorable little cherubs could be capable of so much evil. Except that this time, our killer-kid can smash people with cars and punch holes in their heads with laser beams. The only bit of dramatic tension is about the killer-kid’s parents attempting to strangle baby-Hitler in the crib (so to speak), but since this is a sadistic film, you can probably imagine how that turns out. So yeah: yuck to that movie, and let’s hope that its existence is enough to stop other similar projects from taking off. No matter my growing antipathy to superhero film domination, I’m even less sympathetic to gore-filled horror films. I look forward to an era where I don’t have to check my humanity at the door before peeking at the newest film releases.

  • Watchmen, Season 1 (2019)

    Watchmen, Season 1 (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) Like nearly everyone with knowledge of the Watchmen comic book run of the late 1980s, I was not convinced of the necessity of a TV series adaptation at all. Watchmen is a singular work of comic-book genius—it doesn’t need to be transformed into an ongoing multimedia franchise of adaptations and follow-ups. But the critical response to the TV show was highly positive, and I ended up with a day in which I could run through the entire thing in a single marathon. My conclusion? I’m pleasantly surprised. Acting as a sequel and remake but also striking out in directions that the original comic never could have anticipated, Watchmen ends up being a powerful statement about American-specific racism, the dubious use of superheroes, the dangers of vigilantism and the opportunities of personal empowerment in a very literal sense. With a bit of retrospect, it’s a show that popularized interest in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre—something I hate myself for not knowing beforehand. But it’s a show that also tapped into very contemporary issues: no one would have expected the original Watchmen run to be such a rich springboard from which to talk about American racism. Blending American history with the aftermath of the Watchmen mythology is one of the surprises of the series—the quality of the production and the writing being one of them. One segment is worth singling out as a particularly fine piece of television: penultimate episode eight, “A God Walks into Abar,” which jumps around in non-chronological segments that finally bring everything together for a spectacular climax. Show-runner Damon Lindelof is a divisive creator, but his work here is nothing short of exceptional, delivering a complex, slick, provocative and quite entertaining piece of prestige TV that’s not afraid of not being overly slavish to its source material. Consider me convinced of the project’s reason for existing.

  • Alexis Zorbas [Zorba the Greek] (1964)

    Alexis Zorbas [Zorba the Greek] (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) You can say that Zorba the Greek gets a lot of mileage out of opposing a prim shy Englishman (Alan Bates) to an earthy, lusty, boisterous Greek (Anthony Quinn), but that’s only half-true. It gets as much mileage out of opposing a formidable character (Quinn as the titular Zorba) to a plot that goes in various directions, many of them so melodramatic that they lose their tragic edge. Much of the story takes place in a small Cretan village where our two protagonists are working on a mining project, a village where casual violence and savage behaviour seem to be the norm. The Englishman isn’t ready for such a place; Zorba does better but even he can be defeated by so much traditional madness. But Quinn overpowers the picture as Zorba—his career-defining performance is easily more compelling than the plot, to the point where you can ask if the plot is strong enough for the character. I’m not entirely convinced by the results: the most memorable scene of Zorba the Greek is an unbearably tragic death that would send most characters (and viewers) running away from that bloodthirsty village, but here it’s one more thing on the way of many more things just as bad. Quinn makes the most out of his character, but the film itself leaves disappointed, not quite making a point, not quite delivering a satisfying ending, not quite playing in a specific tonal registry. It remains a landmark of mid-1960s cinema, but it hasn’t aged all that well—the “rural savages” angle smacks of bigotry more than opposing modern values to traditional ones. Plus, well, Irene Papas is so cute that what happens to her leaves a bitter taste—not to mention the end of Lila Kedrova’s performance as well.

  • The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

    The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2019) I’m old enough to remember the furor accompanying the release of The Last Temptation of Christ—the controversy, the editorials, the protests. Of course, with some distance, it’s yet another demonstration of why you can’t trust conservatives when they create their own moral panic—the film ends up being a powerful examination of the subtleties of faith by presenting a compellingly human portrait of Jesus Christ. Written by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese (both devout Christians, as further demonstrated by their later films), the film dares to take a non-mythological look at the character of Jesus Christ, balancing his own human desires with the fate that awaits him as God’s emissary/sacrifice. It’s a surprisingly realistic take on a familiar story, bringing a considerable amount of dramatic tension to something that’s often glossed about in religious teachings. It’s a film that makes the essential point that faith is hard—it’s not supposed to be easy, it’s meant to clash against human desires and it requires sacrifice. As someone raised Catholic before turning to atheism, I found considerable power and depth to what The Last Temptation of Christ attempts to do—and in daring to consider a tainted portrait of Jesus, the film ends up being approachable to a wider variety of audiences than the ready-made audience for religious-themed films. I have no trouble watching The Last Temptation of Christ next to Jesus Christ, Superstar and then The Greatest Story Ever Told—all of those have something to say.

  • Men in Black: International (2019)

    Men in Black: International (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) As much as it pains me as a movie critic to recognize that someone else (I forget who) said it best, the biggest problem with Men in Black: International is that it takes a blue-collar premise and tries to make it glamorous globetrotting. This shouldn’t be much of a revelation—after all, much of the humour of the first film boiled down to the sight of two policemen being confronted to the hidden wonders of the universe and taking a decidedly jaded approach to it all. The sequels faltered when they went too big, and Men in Black: International again stumbles when it expands the mythology of the series into international espionage intrigue—this is not what the series is about, and the laughs get increasingly distant the more you get away from the initial core idea. I’ll give it one thing, though: the absence of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones isn’t that big of a deal when they’re replaced by Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. (Regular readers of these reviews know how much I like Thompson, so I won’t dwell on it again. Much.) The decision to take the series out of New York City to a country-hopping series of episodes isn’t as compelling, though, and ties into the film losing the focus of the series. None of this would necessarily be fatal if the execution had been up to par, but unfortunately it isn’t—the plot is basic by espionage standards (since that’s the standard that the film is going for) and the identity of the mole being hunted throughout the film is absurdly, insultingly easy to guess well ahead of time. The jokes frequently fall flat, and even the magnetic charm of the lead actors can’t save the film from falling flat. There’s quite a bit of dashed expectations here—the series was uneven—but even low expectations wouldn’t have saved Men in Black: International from the constant disappointment of the film being unable to make good use of its potential. Some behind-the-scenes drama may explain the dismal result (through a bad case of producer interference) but the damage is done and doesn’t care about production problems: the film as available is more forgettable than anything else once you throw in the lead actors and that’s a clear step down from even the divisive second and third instalments. Save the world, stop the sequels.

  • The Crowd Roars (1932)

    The Crowd Roars (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) There’s a blend of familiarity and strangeness at play in The Crowd Roars that I find quite interesting. On the familiar side, this is a racing film, and it’s directed by Howard Hawks. You get much of what we’ve come to expect from both Hawks (action, tough men and articulate women) and from car racing films. The dramatic arc is intensely melodramatic, but we know where we are and there aren’t many surprises along the way. But there’s an alien quality to The Crowd Roars that makes it interesting as well. As one of the first sound films to look at auto racing, it reflects the rougher, sometimes fatal nature of such events—different cars, different attitudes toward accidents as well. It’s clear that the film comes from a Pre-Code time when the grammar of racing sequences was still being defined—there’s some surprisingly good racing footage here, as well as some jarring rear-projection work that does not do any favours to the actors. James Cagney stars as a borderline-unlikable protagonist, but he doesn’t quite fit the role and isn’t as intense here as other films of the era. Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell are more interesting as the romantic interests (spurned by the men!)  Hawks’ work here is decent but not overly impressive: he gets the importance of thrilling audiences, but his interest in the film doesn’t seem to extend to the dramatic moments. The Crowd Roar is not an essential film—in many ways, it feels like the kind of material that Warner Brothers churned out by obligation at the time. But it does present an interesting glimpse into racing at the dawn of the 1930s, perhaps the best we have captured on film. Given this, it may be worth a particular look for those interested in cars and their portrayal in Hollywood history.