Movie Review

  • Beaches (1988)

    Beaches (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) If you’re wondering what a title like Beaches has to do with the adventures of two headstrong women played by Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, may I suggest pronouncing the title again with a slight accent? (Sure, there’s the setting going from the sandy shores of Atlantic City to San Francisco—but my explanation is funnier.)  The friendship drama spans decades, antagonistic romantic triangles, showbiz success, many personal milestones and one big sob at the end—exactly what a deliberate tearjerker needs to be successful. For many viewers, the best reason to watch the film remains Midler, here in the upswing of her movie career as a powerhouse performer. She’s terrific, although at the cost of taking away some of Hershey’s more delicate work. Director Garry Marshall does good work in executing the film’s intention in a mostly unchallenging manner, keeping its emotional punches for the tragic finale. The flip side of that mere competence is that Beaches feels far too deliberate to be affecting: it goes exactly where you expect in more or less the expected manner. While this may be an issue with jaded film critics and people falling outside the film’s intended demographics, this is unlikely to be much of a problem for that core audience seeking exactly what the film must deliver—the proof being all the other movies before or since taking up exactly the same formula. But, hey, this one had “Wind Beneath My Wings” to sob about.

  • Demon Seed (1977)

    Demon Seed (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Considering what came out of Hollywood during the hazy 1970s New Hollywood era, it’s probably an exaggeration to call Demon Seed one of the wildest movies of the decade. But that doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near sedate—even by the entire Science Fiction genre’s standards, it remains way outside the norm. Much of it stems from the primal premise of the film (adapted from an early Dean Koontz novel), in which a malevolent artificial intelligence impregnates a young woman to ensure its immortality. Or would that be its mortality? This is one of those movies where you really shouldn’t waste brain cells examining the premise—just run with “woman impregnated by computer” and that’s enough. This ludicrous starting point isn’t helped at all by the now laughable 1970s execution—Demon Seed is all unconvincing special effects, moronic gadgets and eerie music. And yet, and yet—considering that the whole fear-of-AI thing is not growing any less urgent and the evergreen moral quandaries about reproductive plot elements, it’s almost shocking that there hasn’t yet been a remake re-examining those elements in light of contemporary developments. But I’m sure someone is working on it. In the meantime, you can enjoy the vintage 1977 film as a wacky ride of its own, both ridiculous and yet unnerving. Julie Christie gives it all she’s got even in being stuck in such a film, and she’s an essential component of why viewers won’t immediately collapse in laugher when confronted to such bonkers nonsense. Demon Seed, against all odds, remains surprisingly entertaining in the sense of keeping your attention, even if you may feel slightly dirty afterwards and never revisit it.

  • I’ll Follow You Down aka Continuum (2014)

    I’ll Follow You Down aka Continuum (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) As a Science Fiction fan and relapsing critic, one of the most exciting developments in the genre throughout the 2010s has been the emergence and maintenance of a stream of low-budget SF movies focused more on character-driven emotional issues than whiz-bang spectacle. They’re really not always good (some of them are, in fact, quite terrible) but they offer a more mature than usual, less thunderous alternative to the special-effects extravaganzas privileged by Hollywood studios. I’ll Follow You Down is one such film, focusing on a time-travel premise not as an excuse to strangle baby Hitler, but to help a young man find closure about his missing father. Gillian Anderson stars (this not being the sole small-scale SF film in her filmography) as the mother of the protagonist, although a grown-up child star Haley Joel Osment may earn the most attention as the tale’s protagonist. Alas, despite writer-director Richie Mehta’s best intentions, I’ll Follow You Down does fall flat. The stakes are clear but rarely exploited, Osment doesn’t quite have the intensity required of the role, the film does fall into clichés (not all of them science-fictional), and the ending is a muddled unsatisfying mess that loses itself attempting to do something other than the expected. (Here’s a note to those filmmakers mulling small-scale SF movies: The expected is forgivable if it makes audiences happy. That it all.)  Time-travel films work best with, appropriately enough, a deadline of sorts to meet and I’ll Follow You Down is far too laid-back to crank up that ticking-clock element. The cinematography is also quite reserved, meaning that there’s no execution bonus to compensate for an underwhelming substance. But while I’m somewhat disappointed in the result, I’m still upbeat about the existence of the film (a Canadian production!) as a further data point that the Science Fiction genre is perfectly viable—and interesting—to filmmakers without a sizable special effects budget: it’s always about the characters and how the science fictional premise affects them.

  • They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

    They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) There are movies that are best approached cold, considering that the mythology around them often leads to erroneous viewing assumptions. In the case of They Shall Not Grow Old, it means that a terrific film by itself was actively harmed by a disingenuous marketing campaign. The basics of the film are these: Director Peter Jackson wanted to pay homage to his family members having fought in WW1, so he produced and directed a documentary that used modern technology to breathe life into century-old archive footage. The film works almost as an oral history, as colourized and sharpened footage is accompanied by sound effects and narration adapted from contemporary accounts of the war. The point here is to present a soldier’s view of the war without much context other than the experiences of the men on the ground. As such, it is a remarkable achievement—the touched-up footage springs to life in near-contemporary fashion, and the film is emotionally effective in presenting the experiences of a generation that saw many killed in combat, never to go home or grow old. It’s a deeply effective, finely tuned moviegoing experience that makes history come alive and viewers realize that century-old events retain considerable relevance. If that was your experience in watching the film cold, or if this praise piques your curiosity to the point of watching the film then congratulations—no need to read any further. The rest is a commentary on how overly enthusiastic marketing can end up harming a film. They Shall Not Grow Old’s trailer strongly (wrongly) suggested that the original documentary footage of the war was in disrepair by the time it was enhanced by the filmmakers. (This plays into contemporary perception of old film footage as being scratchy, low-resolution and jittery—far from being true in many cases.)  Paradoxically, I can live with colourizing for dramatic impact better than misleading claims that the original footage needed almost heroic restoration work—the duplicity of the marketing being worse than the filmmaker’s liberties with the material. Of course, this should not be a concern if you, blissfully living years after the promotional push for the film, just happen to see it. But call it a cautionary lesson is believing the next promotional campaign you hear.

  • Frankenstein 90 (1984)

    Frankenstein 90 (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) It’s amusing to note how some stories create their own subgenre of adaptations, remakes and parodies. Horror-comedy Frankenstein 90, starring a descendant of the OG scientist in then-contemporary France, is one such alternate take on the classic Mary Shelley story—filtered through movie adaptations, early-1980s French society and the comic sensibilities of writer-director Alain Jessua. The result is interesting, but it would be a stretch to call it good—often too slowly paced to be particularly funny, usually far too timid to bring anything really new to the table, it exists as an object of contemplation for those who have seen many other Frankenstein stories but struggles to say anything new. Refreshingly, Frankenstein 90 does present a smarter-than-usual monster rather than the frequently portrayed brute, and also adds some typical casual French eroticism to make it even more fun to watch. Jean Rochefort and Eddy Mitchell are a bit disappointing as (respectively) the scientist and the monster. Not a good movie but not a terrible one—on the other hand, not a memorable one either.

  • Bug (2006)

    Bug (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) William Friedkin is no stranger to bold movies and while Bug certainly doesn’t rank high in his filmography, it’s clearly meant to create reactions. Adapted from a theatrical play by well-known playwright Tracy Letts, the vast majority of the film takes place in a small three-room motel suite, focused on two increasingly paranoid characters egging each other on with their own conspiracy theories. It escalates to foil-lined rooms, bodily harm to take out implanted foreign objects and world-altering imaginary plots. But if you’re expecting all of this to have a tidy resolution, then calm down, because the film delights in a conclusion that blurs the lines between what happened and what didn’t. While that severely harms the film, it doesn’t really take away from Ashley Judd’s intensity and an early starring turn for the always-excellent Michael Shannon (who originated the character in its initial theatrical run) in the lead roles as they one-up their own delusions and try to find some companionship. The directing is audacious in its determination to get inside the protagonists’ minds despite a very limited setting and some very weird material. Ultimately, though, it’s hard to avoid feeling that the film loses steam as it goes on—that a tight and creepy first half devolves into an everything-goes, nothing-matters conclusion. But while the destination may be disappointing, part of the trip may be worthwhile for fans of the lead actors or the director or movies that aren’t supposed to make sense. (Although if that bothers you all that much, do what modern film critics do and claim that the film is “all about trauma” and call it an analysis.)

  • The River (1951)

    The River (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) If you’re looking for the hidden link between French and Indian cinema, look no further than The River, a film for which Jean Renoir went to India and ended up hiring no less than Satyajit Ray as an assistant. The rest, as they say, is history as Ray (who previously worked in advertising) became one of India’s most acclaimed directors. The irony here is that if you stripped off every name from The River, showed it to cinephiles and asked them which of Renoir or Ray made this, many would pick Ray. The River has, for better or for worse, the characteristics of a certain kind of slow meandering classic Indian cinema—starting from the subject matter, which describes a coming-of-age story during the British Raj era. While skillfully made, I’ll admit to my limitations in trying to appreciate the results—this isn’t my kind of cinema, and while I find the Renoir/Ray historical connection fascinating, it doesn’t make the film more interesting to me. That’s fine—considering the number of best-ever-movies lists on which The River figures, it doesn’t need my approval.

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, May 2023) I’m surprisingly happy to report that The River is a lot more interesting a second time around — perhaps thanks to a batter understanding of what the film tries to be about — once you focus on the theme of life, death and rebirth as linked to the meandering, unstoppable flow of a current, a lot of the film comes into much better focus. In hindsight, it’s also easier to appreciate the accessibility of the film: Sure, colour shouldn’t make any difference but compared to a lot of similar movies of the era (or decades later), The River’s terrific colour cinematography makes it a great document of the era. Sure, the perspective on India from a foreigner living there and exploiting local labour may be not be our idea of ideal, but it is a smooth way inside the atmosphere of the time and place, and it is a perspective that you can’t really get any more. The somewhat mean plotting of the film’s last third becomes much more meaningful when you look at it thematically than narratively, and the rather surprising charm of its teenage narration becomes more apparent. I’m glad I ended up revisiting The River — I don’t exactly love it, but I like and respect it well enough this time around.

  • Dive Bomber (1941)

    Dive Bomber (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Calling Dive Bomber a pre-WW2 military aviation thriller is underselling it severely—shot in colour in near-documentary style, it’s a showcase for the pre-Pearl Harbor US Navy aviation, and it’s far more colourful than you’d expect from other black-and-white thrillers of the same era. (Especially given the bright peacetime livery of the planes.)  It’s also strong in terms of marquee names—Errol Flynn headlines as a military doctor trying to find a way to prevent high-G blackouts, while Fred MacMurray plays a rival officer. Behind the camera, Michael Curtiz handles the demands of a highly technical production with a veteran’s aplomb, although the film’s history is rich in on-set clashes between Curtiz and Flynn: this would end up being the last of the twelve collaborations. As far as the result is concerned, Dive Bomber is remarkable without being all that good from a strictly narrative viewpoint: the script is made to string along the aerial showcases, although the focus on medical research is not necessarily something you’d expect from an airborne military thriller. (Just ignore the omnipresent cigarettes smoked by the doctors.)  Flynn and MacMurray probably would have been better in each other’s roles, while Alexis Smith wanders in and out of the film as female lead without much to do. Still, I found Dive Bomber more fascinating than I expected—although I suspect that my fondness for techno-thrillers had a role to play in this.

  • Mary of Scotland (1936)

    Mary of Scotland (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Considering the sheer number of 1930s historical dramas, no one will blame anyone for overlooking Mary of Scotland—neither a terrible nor extraordinary example of the form. But there are a few interesting names here, and a vexing historical conundrum to resolve. Considering that the real story of Mary of Scotland does not end well, history-minded viewers will be most interested by the film’s almost-desperate attempts to rewrite history so that the ending is palatable to audiences. (I’m not sure how the Catholic propaganda played in 1936, but let’s just say that it has not aged well.)  But so did nearly every other historical costume drama of the time—and Mary of Scotland certainly fits within the lavish production means used for those movies—extravagant costumes, scripts that combined historical material with accessible dialogue, and sets that crammed the most they could fit in a Hollywood sound stage. Where the film gets interesting, perhaps for the wrong reasons, is in the top names involved in toe production. Fredric March, sure (I’ve never been much of a fan), but Katharine Hepburn yes! She wasn’t particularly well suited for the role at that stage of her career (her take on royalty in The Lion in Winter would be far more successful) and the film seems to be using her for royal demeanour and little else. But the surprise here is seeing John Ford, best known for all-American westerns, undertake an early job-for-hire here as the film’s director. None of his trademarks show up here, which is reasonable considering that this was a fairly early effort limited by mid-1930s Hollywood technical means. None of this makes Mary of Scotland particularly interesting, unless you’re using the film as a parallax measure against other films or later entries in the principals’ filmography. Or if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool fan of 1930s period dramas, of course…

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I hoped that a second viewing of Mary of Scotland would help me warm up to the movie, but I don’t think it changed much: Katharine Hepburn’s royal performance is the film’s single best asset, and the film spins its wheels for a very long time before delivering a rather good final sequence in which our two strong female protagonists finally meet face to face. It’s mildly interesting to put Mary of Scotland up against more recent historical epics and see how they did things back in the 1930s, but there are probably more engaging films in which to do this kind of comparative analysis. John Ford directs a picture as a costume drama that we wouldn’t necessarily associate with his later career or favourite themes (scuttlebutt has it that he and Hepburn had an affair during the film’s production), but that only brings marginal interest to a surprisingly average film.

  • Attack of the Killer Donuts (2016)

    Attack of the Killer Donuts (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) Don’t get your hopes up for Attack of the Killer Donuts: This is one of those cheap low-budget movies where the title makes up roughly fifty percent of the film’s enjoyment and almost all of its later disappointment. A premise-in-a-title, it does effectively announce a horror comedy in which people are slaughtered by donuts. The mechanics (killer serum dropped in a vat of oil, bla-bla-bla) are irrelevant—the point here is the succession of implausible scenes in which homicidal donuts kill much of the ensemble cast. Our plucky teenage protagonist and his soon-to-be girlfriend are in the middle of the action, but viewers’ attention will be glued to the special effects and low-budget craziness more than any meaningful characterization. It … works. Barely. If your expectations are low, that is—with its tiny budget and trashy execution, director Scott Wheeler can’t make Attack of the Killer Donuts become more than a ridiculous horror comedy earning a chunk of laughs at its own expense. In that Friday-night-at-the-grindhouse spirit, the film meets expectations. But don’t think you’re going to see an unheralded cult classic here: it’s what it presents itself to be and nothing more. At least the protagonists aren’t detestable, and the result isn’t reprehensible. The same film with a duller title would be noticeably less enjoyable.

  • Shane (1953)

    Shane (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Often hailed as a western genre classic, it’s worth wondering if Shane still holds up today. Many of its innovations—notably its use of widescreen colour cinematography, as one of the first films to be produced in a format aiming to outclass television—could be seen as temporary and outclassed by several better movies. The then-shocking use of violence and reflections on its consequences, for instance, marked a departure from the trigger-happy standard of the genre throughout the 1930s and 1940s but was soon outclassed by far bloodier westerns to come in the next decades. But thanks to director George Stevens, there’s a welcome texture and complexity to Shane that works even today—layers of subtlety overlaid over the “gunman comes to a divided town” classic plot template. Forbidden attraction between the mysterious protagonist and a married woman; longing for permanent fatherhood; some acknowledgement of the costs of violence; and that classic ambiguous finale that skirts between a poignant finale and a feel-good one. (I could do with less of the kid, though.)  Add to that the still-effective colourful widescreen cinematography and, yes, Shane does remain a reference all these years later: sometimes outclassed, but no less effective on the fundamentals.

  • They Died with Their Boots On (1941)

    They Died with Their Boots On (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) It doesn’t take much for me to admit that as a boring straight white male, watching classic Hollywood movie is made easier by inherent privilege—those movies were (largely) made by straight white males, featured straight white males and incorporate the unconscious biases of straight white males. No disagreement there. I may twitch and make a note when films are unusually sexist, racist or outdated, and mention how terrible the French dialogue sounds, but in between my privilege and ready acknowledgement that “the past was another country,” I’m rarely scandalized out of my suspension of disbelief. But then comes a movie like They Died With Their Boots On to remind me that, no, I do have my limits. The problem is not that it’s an old-school western glorifying the Caucasian invasion of the West while showing them heroically battling anonymous hordes of Native Americans—there are plenty of those, and even the best come with an implicit warning for westerns: “You must accept this terrible viewpoint if you are to enjoy the film.” What puts this film over the top is that it is a (mostly inaccurate) depiction of George Armstrong Custer as a heroic, likable fellow before he died at Little Bighorn. That’s when my inner fuses blew up. Look: Custer was a terrible person—self-promoting as a symbol of crushing American Imperialism, but little more than the gun at the end of the American Government’s policy of betraying alliances and waging total war against Natives. He was a documented racist, rapist and executioner of noncombatants—and his own folly led to a well-deserved death. To see, even eighty years later, that a major studio like Warner Brothers sunk considerable expense, slick directing (from veteran Raoul Walsh) and marquee stars such as Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in this kind of project is still revolting. Worse yet—three people died in the expansive action sequences that mark the film. (But apparently no horses, a consequence of reforms following many animal deaths on the set of Curtiz’s previous The Charge of the Light Brigade.) We’re well past the point of an unjustifiable movie here. I’m a good sport for many surprising excesses, but They Died with Their Boots On is intolerable.

  • Astérix et Obélix: Au Service de sa majesté [Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia] (2012)

    Astérix et Obélix: Au Service de sa majesté [Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia] (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) The history of big-screen adaptations of the Belgian comic book series Astérix et Obélix is long and inconsistent, going from all-time classics (the first few animated films) to regrettable failures (the live-action Olympic Games one). Fortunately, Astérix et Obélix: Au Service de sa majesté seems to have learned a few lessons from the Olympic-sized debacle of its predecessor, and delivers a rather good take on the mythos, helped along with writer-director Laurent Tirard’s confident execution and state-of-the-art special effects. Adapted from the classic albums Astérix chez les Bretons and Astérix et les Normands, it features the irreducible Gauls heading across the Channel to help the Britons defend themselves against the invading Romans. If you’ve read the albums, much of the film is a greatest hits of their best jokes, from the wonderfully observant translation jokes to the pirates getting demolished once again and a jolly rendition of the invention of tea. Anchored by Édouard Baer and Gérard Depardieu (with plenty of French celebrity cameos), the main duo is back at the forefront and everything is right again. Astérix et Obélix: Au Service de sa majesté is hardly a perfect film—the cartoonish humour register is well done, but may grate—but it’s a great deal better than its predecessor, and an honourable entry in a storied tradition.

  • Fighting with My Family (2019)

    Fighting with My Family (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Looking back at the past few decades, it’s interesting to see how wrestling has gone from vaguely disreputable status to something approaching family-friendly entertainment, and Fighting with My Family only underscores this evolution. Loosely adapted from a true story first presented as a 2012 documentary of the same name, it features a young woman (played by Florence Pugh) who, from unenthusiastic participation in low-budget wrestling leagues, goes to being drafted to compete in the World Wrestling Entertainment’s woman division and becomes a celebrity of the sport. Considering that the WWE played an integral part in the film (which features an extended cameo-as-himself from co-producer Dwayne Johnson, arguably the most successful wrestler-to-actor so far), Fighting with my Family doesn’t try to expose anything about the WWE except its rigorous physical requirements. The film is presented as inspiring family-friendly entertainment, with the most surprising name in its crew being Stephen Merchant as writer-director. (He also shows up briefly in a small role.)  A few familiar names appear in the cast, perhaps most notably Vince Vaughn as an imposing coach. Narratively, Fighting with my Family is familiar material, with wrestling taking the place of many other kinds of endeavour in being the backdrop to the heroine’s progression. The violence of the sport is downplayed as it moves closer to the WWE, with “career failure” being shown as brass-tack injuries in low-rent matches. A flurry of family (and family-friendly) values are constantly promoted, perhaps for fear than anyone would think Fighting with my Family is a grungy film. As someone whose understanding and interest in wrestling is tepid at best, I had perhaps more fun reading about the film and its deviations from reality than I had simply watching it. But it’s accessible even to non-fans of the sport.

  • Time Out for Rhythm (1941)

    Time Out for Rhythm (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) One of the certitudes about tracking down lesser-known movies from favourite actors is that the more obscure they get, the less good they are. (Well, usually.)  Time Out for Rhythm will never make anyone’s list of best movies—not in general, not for musicals, not for films of 1941. It’s almost obscure these days, but never mind me—I’m here for Ann Miller, who gets a substantial supporting role here in addition to singing and dancing. Others will focus on the scattering of appearances by The Three Stooges, but they’ve never been my kind of comedians in the first place. The rest of the film is a bit dull: It’s another showbiz comedy set in New York, with talent agents having a falling-out when an opportunistic woman (played by Rosemary Lane) comes between them. The production values are fair, with a highlight being the glow-in the-dark “Boogie Woogie Man” number. Thematically, mentions of a television show are unusual for a film of the early 1940s—While movies of the 1950s obsessed over TV as more and more sets made their way into homes, it was still fancy new technology back in 1941 and having characters speak about the potential of TV shows marks them as forward-looking. Time Out for Rhythm doesn’t hold a candle to many other musicals of the time, but it being a musical, it’s never uninteresting for long: there’s usually a musical number or a comic routine to perk up our interest at regular intervals. As for myself, I got to see Miller tap-dance through a few more good numbers showcasing her, so at least that’s it. I doubt I’ll remember much of the film in a few weeks, though.