Movie Review

  • Cavalcade (1933)

    Cavalcade (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, December 2019) Not all Oscar winners age gracefully, and Cavalcade often does feel more dated than many of its contemporaries. This may have been inevitable given the subject matter: the life of a few English characters from 1900 to 1933, through the tumultuous first decades of the twentieth century. It’s not exactly a cheery topic—thanks to wars, bar-fights and shipwrecks, several characters die along the way. Adapted from a Noel Coward play, the film came with impeccable Hollywood pedigree which probably explained its critical and box-office success. But from a contemporary perspective, Cavalcade has a few issues. Putting aside our knowledge of how the first thirty-three years of the twentieth century were merely an appetizer for far worse eras, Cavalcade is saddled with a tepid rhythm, episodic structure, flurries of short subplots, and early-cinema clichés. While some sequences work well (the montage that accompanies much of WW1, for instance), other moments land with a thud—the April 14, 1912 Ocean Liner sequence is utterly predictable and almost plays as comedy as the doomed characters maintain an extended bout of happy patter before the camera reveals that they are on (dum-dum-DUM!) the TITANIC. Oh well; clichés must come from somewhere, right? There’s an annoying stop-and-go quality to the plotting that’s also bothersome: Almost half of the period’s duration from 1918 to 1933 is skipped over through a very moralistic montage, illustrating the perils of tying plot to world events rather than take a more organic approach. There’s also something to be said for the character’s stoic approach to tragedies—as part of the whole British Stiff Upper Lip tradition even if it may mute some of the emotions. Sets and costumes are quite good in a theatrical fashion. I still liked parts of Cavalcade—it’s certainly fascinating in a time-capsule kind of way—but even limiting myself to 1933, I can think of more interesting and far more influential films who should have walked away with the biggest Academy Award. But if we’re going to start playing the “Who should have won the Oscar instead?” game, we’re going to be here all night.

  • Vice (2018)

    Vice (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2019) As a non-American US political junkie, Vice is my kind of movie: An exuberant, engaged, clever and uncompromising look at a contemporary political figure that makes no apologies for its critical viewpoint. Taking on the unusual life of Richard “Dick” Cheney from early struggles to the vice-presidency of the United States, Vice is a lot more than a standard biopic: Through various impressionist devices, it gets to discuss the decades-long machinations of the Republican Party in consolidating power for power’s sake, the perils of Unitary Executive Theory, the way Cheney masterminded his way through opportunities to get what he wanted, and his unrepentant assessment of his own life. Far from being a dry recitation of fact, it’s narrated by Cheney’s replacement heart and features several filmmaking stunts such as a hilarious end-credit fakeout, quasi-subliminal visual fishing metaphors, a satirical restaurant sequence offering political options “on the menu” during post-9/11 madness, a visible narrator, faux-Shakespearian dialogue, and focus-group commentary on the film itself. It’s been fascinating to see writer-director Adam McKay transform himself from a silly comedy director to an engaged, even ferocious filmmaker, and after the exceptional The Big Short, Vice feels as if he’s applying everything he’s ever learned to take on the biggest topic of all: political power. It certainly helps that the film is an actor’s showcase at nearly every turn: Christian Bale turns in a mesmerizing impression of Cheney, while Amy Adams is almost unrecognizable as his wife. Steve Carell makes for a surprisingly likable Donald Rumsfeld (wow, I just wrote that!), with several other actor/figure pairs along the line of Tyler Perry as Colin Powell. The impact is interesting: for one thing, the film is a treasure box of delights as Bush-era political junkies will be able to recognize real-world figures before they’re introduced by name. For another, it can be surprisingly humanizing: Despite their heartless agendas, both Cheney and Rumsfeld occasionally come across as sympathetic (I either didn’t know or forgot that Cheney had humble origins, while Rumsfeld comes across as self-aware and funny). I’m not so happy with the easy portrait of Bush as an amiable dunce with daddy issues—even in a film that prizes caricatures, it feels like a cheap shot and an underestimation of his abilities. (I suspect it’ll take a while before we get an accurate Bush portrayal.)  There are several nuggets for those who have followed political history closely—including an expected poke at the whole bizarre incident when Cheney shot a guy and got the guy to apologize for it. As a non-American viewer, the reaction to Vice was amusing to see—while the film got a much-deserved Best Picture nomination, it also got scathing reviews from the right-wing press and even some centrist outlets as well—almost as if people should be scared of a movie that dares make a political point, almost as if everyone had to tiptoe around Cheney’s political clout. I’ll be blunter: Bring out more movies like Vice. Americans need them.

  • The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)

    The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) I had been waiting far too long for writer-director Joe Cornish’s follow-up to Attack the Block, and the result isn’t a disappointment: The Kid Who Would Be King brings the Arthurian Legend into modern schools by featuring a kid picking up Excalibur and defeating the evil that threatens the land. If this feels familiar, it may very well be that it’s in step with a spate of recent British movies (many of them also starting with the Arthurian Legend) consciously indulging in national myth-making. The movie doesn’t waste any time in portraying the current world as one that needs saving, preferably using homegrown magic and prophecies. Clearly, there’s a link with Brexit here that I’m not fit to explore—but as with so many things British these days, it’s almost enough to send a message overseas: Dear United Kingdom, is everything OK? Do you need any help in figuring this out? Signed: Your former colonies. At least Cornish is an able ringmaster in coordinating the various elements of his movie: Tons of special effects support an adventure that ventures across Britain, conjures up fantastic creatures and deals with teenage protagonists. Cornish does write a movie clearly set in modern times, reuses some plot structures from Attack the Block (notably in initially portraying two characters as deeply unlikable before zigzagging their way to a heroic finale) and know how to use a spectacle. It’s decently effective—the tone effectively zig-zags between despair and triumph, some clichés are overturned along the way, and the film remains effective both with teenage audiences and older ones. The kid actors are fine, but Angus Imrie gets a showcase role as the eccentric Merlin (also played by Patrick Stewart). Skillfully made, The Kid Who Would Be King revisits familiar places in new ways and provides quite a thrill to the audience. Sadly, the film earned good reviews but bad box office results—meaning that it may be a while before we get another Joe Cornish movie.

  • Office Christmas Party (2016)

    Office Christmas Party (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2019) There’s a Christmas movie ghetto that may limit some movies from getting the attention they deserve the other eleven months of the year. In most respects, Office Christmas Party is as good as R-rated comedies got in the mid-2010s: An efficient script, an escalation of madness that justifies the adult rating, a great soundtrack, tight editing, and especially a solid ensemble cast doing what they do best in their usual screen persona. The plot is right there in the title, as a corporate Christmas Party gets wilder as its stakes go up. There’s some perfunctory narrative to wrap up the madness and bring comic personalities together (something to do with a brother and sister fighting to keep a technology company open despite a dearth of big clients and low morale) but let’s not fool ourselves: the high point of the film is in its third-quarter, when everyone goes wild in the corporate party of the century-so-far. (In a decent example of the directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s cinematographic craft, there’s a great pullback shot of the company’s two floors engulfed in wild partying as the rest of the office building is shut down for the night.)  If you’ve seen any of the contemporary R-rated comedies, you know what to expect from Office Christmas Party. Still, when it works it works: Jason Bateman is once again the level-headed straight man of the bunch, holding the core of the film alongside the always cute (and sensible!) Olivia Munn. Jennifer Anniston adds another unsympathetic comedy character to her repertoire in the footsteps of the Horrible Bosses movies. Other known comic quantities such as T. J. Miller, chameleonic Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Rob Corddry, and others all contribute their part to the anarchic mess. Given that it ends on Christmas, there’s some techno-magic to save the day. Office Christmas Party is great good fun, fully lives up to its name and should provide raucous entertainment for anyone driven to distraction by their own dull office Christmas celebrations. But it’s sufficiently upbeat that it remains decent viewing for the rest of the year— this Office Christmas Party is worth attending even in January.

  • K-9 (1989)

    K-9 (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2019) Let’s appreciate honesty in filmmaking: K-9 is not a good movie, but it doesn’t waste any time in pretending otherwise: Within the first few minutes, we’re quickly familiarized with the film’s casual disregard for anything like subtlety or realism, what with the cowboy cop protagonist racking up what should result in disciplinary actions and lawsuits. The premise consists in pairing up a bad (oops; “lovably rogue”) policeman with a dog in order to … something to do with international drug trafficking. (The script isn’t strong in detail or plausibility.) But the dog is a dog, and the human is even more of a dog than the canine character and you can pretty much script the rest of the script yourself. Once you combine the cowboy cop theatrics with some serious sexism and the low-brow humour of John Belushi (nearly every film featuring Belushi is miscast), the result is almost repellent. K-9 is the kind of film to use when you want to show how the male gaze (and approving representation of toxic masculinity) can damage what could have been a far better film. Not only do we have a typically guy’s-guy character (openly abusing his authority, ignoring the law, roughing up suspects, threatening and sexually assaulting civilians), but the script smiles and aw-shucks whenever he enables canine fornication (with the bitch as the prize, if you’ll excuse the technical language) and reduces his girlfriend to nothing more than a kidnapping target. As the problematic issues pile up, K-9’s amiable potential dissipates and so does our patience with the result. This is no mere “fictional problem”: The Hollywood cowboy cops of the 1980s enabled the bloodthirsty ones of the 1990s, then the real trigger-happy one of the 2000s and 2010s, and K-9 is part of the problem. Even silly comedies can be awful in retrospect.

  • Kakushi-toride no san-akunin [The Hidden Fortress] (1958)

    Kakushi-toride no san-akunin [The Hidden Fortress] (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Noteworthy for inspiring good chunks of Star Wars, The Hidden Fortress once again finds writer-director Akira Kurosawa in feudal Japan, this time following two lowly peasants as they find themselves embroiled in serious matters of war and dynastic succession. You can clearly see R2D2 and C3P0 here, but the film is more episodic in how it constantly sends its viewpoint characters (not necessarily protagonists) from one difficult situation to another. There’s an undercurrent of dark humour running through it, and there’s a clear intention to entertain audiences through various set-pieces. While the film often gets short thrift compared to Kurosawa’s better-known and more serious samurai films, The Hidden Fortress does hold up well, and may represent a surprise for those more used to Kurosawa’s other better-known films.

  • Les diaboliques (1955)

    Les diaboliques (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Mid-1950s French cinema isn’t exactly high on my list of favourite viewing attractions, but Les diaboliques is one big exception. Even after decades of imitators, ever-stronger thrills and jaded audiences, that pure thriller still has the power to shock and surprise. Much of the plot revolves around two women plotting to murder a man and what happens afterwards. But the plot is best kept under wraps, because there’s That Scene where the impossible happens, you jump in your seat and think that the supernatural has invaded the film. It hasn’t, and the film eventually delivers a Hitchcock-grade explanation for everything. It’s quite a shocker, and writer-director Henri-Georges Clouzot, working from a suspense novel by Boileau-Narcejac, here delivers one of his best movies. Simone Signoret is also remarkable in one of the main roles—as is the crisp black-and-white cinematography. I won’t say more—good movies speak for themselves, and Les diaboliques explicitly told me not to spoil it.

  • 101 Dalmatians (1996)

    101 Dalmatians (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on-Demand, November 2019) Long before the recent spate of Disney live-action remakes, there was 101 Dalmatians, reprising the animation film with actors such as Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels and Hugh Laurie. While Disney will argue to this day that the box-office receipts justified the film, us non-shareholders will instead point to Close’s performance as one of the few reasons to watch it. She is deliciously evil playing the cruel Cruella, and some of the special effect work is rather amusing now that the state of the art has evolved far beyond what’s in the film. The rest of the film skews heavily to young audiences, with much of the shenanigans being handled by bumbling associates of Cruella. The remake simply doesn’t bring enough to the original to displace it, although we can count our blessings that it’s better that the sequel 102 Dalmatians. It’s rather amusing to read 1990s reviewers complain about the pointlessness of the remake—they clearly hadn’t seen what was yet to come.

  • Tôkyô monogatari [Tokyo Story] (1953)

    Tôkyô monogatari [Tokyo Story] (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Everyone is free to come up with their own personal top-100 films. Mine is filled with less-than-respectable spectacles, thrills, jokes, and musical numbers. But it’s important to check out the canon of accepted “greatest movies” to see what the fuss is about—and maybe see something different along the way. Many will call Tokyo Story one of the best movies of all time. I notice it doesn’t show up on top-100s, but does pop up on top-250s, 500s and 1000s. You would probably have to expand that to 10,000 if it was to figure on my own top lists, but that’s fine—this is something very different from the usual movie in themes or presentation. For one thing, it’s an early-1950s Japanese film that’s firmly set at that specific time and place, poking at the lasting impact of World War II and the social dislocation in a society transitioning to the western model. If you’re familiar with writer-director Yasujirō Ozu’s body of work, you won’t be surprised to find out that the film is incredibly slow paced, observant, meditative and character-based. The plot isn’t much more than an elderly couple travelling to Tokyo to visit their kids. That would be a safe premise for most filmmakers. But here, Ozu goes for something that is still, seventy years later, not often depicted in film—the very common experience of children rebuffing their parents, not being overly enthusiastic about their presence, and being solely focused on their own lives. It gets worse, because if you’re expecting a heartwarming moment of reconciliation, you’re going to outlast the end credit sequence: one of the leads dies, the kids still don’t care, and the survivor must continue living alone. This isn’t exactly the cheeriest of topics, nor a dramatic arc that makes viewers happy.  What’s more, the execution of the film—all static shots and languid editing—won’t make new converts either. But Tokyo Story is an important film and an unusual one. I don’t particularly like it, but I can respect it.

  • Marwencol (2010)

    Marwencol (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) A lot of people initially went from documentary Marwencol to the better-known dramatization Welcome to Marwen, but as time goes by, I expect that most viewers will go in the opposite direction. Both films are about Mark Hogancamp, a man who recovered from serious trauma by building a miniature city and developing an elaborate mythology about it, taking pictures of the evolving installation. While Robert Zemeckis’ fictional take on the story sanded off many of the edges and added eye-popping special effects to reinforce a Hollywoodized narrative, Marwencol is, from the title onward, a far more difficult work. It has reality on its side, which works to further astonishment, but also makes it more difficult to watch as well, stripped from the arms-length nature of fictionalization. There aren’t feel-good romantic arcs here, no strong therapy-completed-now-on-to-brighter-thing going on either. Hogancamp has created something remarkable out of pain, but the pain is never too far away. It limits Marwencol’s appeal, but doesn’t minimize the remarkable achievement chronicled here, or the remarkable resilience of human creativity. Interesting, but not necessarily comforting viewing.

  • Roma città aperta [Rome Open City] (1945)

    Roma città aperta [Rome Open City] (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) My objection to Italian neorealism (or neorealism of all stripes) is how unremarkable it feels—what if I don’t want to be confronted with mundane reality of ordinary people leaving ordinary lives? But that’s presuming boring lives—and there were times where (unfortunately for those who went through it) reality wasn’t boring and faithfully presenting it took us to the edges of genre films. Case in point: Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City, which leaps up my rankings of Italian neorealist films by the sole virtue of being about exciting times—resistance to the Nazis in occupied Rome during World War II. In execution, it’s about as down-to-earth as other films of its subgenre: accidental cinematography, naturalistic dialogue, non-professional actors, found locations. But where the film becomes interesting, even if you don’t know about its production history, is in inhabiting a period that would soon pass in history. It’s immediate, unromanticised, almost documentary in its approach and knowing about the film’s production confirms it: the film was shot as World War II was winding down, seven months after the Nazis left town and were replaced by the Allies. The film was released nine months later, barely after the armistice. Rome Open City thus represents a quasi-documentary capture of Rome as it blinked in the sunlight after years of totalitarianism, a plot (inspired by real events) being almost inconsequential to the portrayal of life as it was, in circumstances that we would find extraordinary. I can’t say that I had a load of fun watching the result, but considering what I usually think of Italian neorealism, my muted reaction to Rome Open City is praise enough.

  • Vredens dag [Day of Wrath] (1943)

    Vredens dag [Day of Wrath] (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) There are movies out there—many movies out there—that are critically acclaimed to the stratosphere, acclaimed as some of the greatest movies ever made, oft mentioned on extended best-of lists and basically untouchable if you want to keep showing up unharmed at movie reviewers’ secret conferences. (I kid—If there were such conferences, no two critics could agree on what to order for lunch, let along drafting a film canon.)  But when shown to any ordinary person, the film will produce a very different response: a muted sigh out of a duty completed, a checkmark on a list, a resigned sigh of satisfaction that we can go back to more entertaining fare, and the satisfaction that the film will never need to be revisited. So it is with writer-director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath, a slow-paced witchcraft romance that plays as an allegory of life under totalitarianism at a time when Dreyer was working in a Nazi-occupied country. It’s clearly made with high ambitions and high competence—but you have the time to fall asleep three times before the credits roll. Pacing is not the sole issue here—monotonous pacing with humourless writing add to the heavy atmosphere of a historical drama in oppressive times. Amusingly, the initial reaction to the film was a lot like mine—accusations of a slow boring film. Later appreciations were far more positive. But I’m sticking to my guns on this one—saw it once, don’t need to see it again.

  • The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

    The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Post-war British film studio Ealing produced some solid hits, and the best of them usually managed a delicate balance between crime and comedy, executed in a debonair manner that made it all feel even more amusing. A near-exemplary illustration of this is The Lavender Hill Mob, a suitably funny take on a heist film in which a shipment of gold bullion is stolen, transformed, smuggled, pursued, and chased again. Alec Guinness stars with a bunch of other capable actors with none other than Audrey Hepburn making her (very short) movie debut in the framing device. It’s handled with what could be called a British flair for ridiculousness, complications and deadpan humour. Despite a bit of a mid-movie lull, The Lavender Hill Mob is 78 minutes of great fun—worth watching if you’re mining the Ealing comedies vein of cinema.

  • La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] (1937)

    La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) As one of the proclaimed great films of all time, there is a lot to like in La grande illusion, but one of the most striking aspects of its success is how it blends surface thrills with much deeper concerns in a package that’s certainly not seamless, but has plenty of material for everyone no matter their level of film or historical literacy. Not only that, but the film delivers everything in ample style—writer-director Jean Renoir being one of the great figures of the French poetic realism movement. At face value, it’s a story about French prisoners of war in a WW1 detention camp, and their escape and flight to neutral territory. So far so good—there’s a compelling narrative to follow right there for those uninterested in deeper material (although the pacing of the film makes it clear that it’s not just a war escape story). But there is plenty of deeper material as well, starting with the kinship between upper-class French and German officers, and an examination of characters in the confined environment of a prisoner-of-war camp. This is where the film scores some of its best moments, some of them shamelessly quoted in later films (such as escape mechanics in The Great Escape, and a defiant rendition of La Marseillaise in Casablanca). Deeper still, however, we get into Renoir’s central themes about the crumbling European upper clauses, and the necessity of humanism even in time of war. It’s not a mean-spirited war movie, nor does it glorify it as an adventure. It does make for an impressive even today—firing on all cylinders, delivering a very controlled film. La grande illusion remains essential for students of cinema. But if you want a real story, dig into the amazing journey of the original film negative during and after World War II—especially since everyone presumed it had been lost.

  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

    The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, November 2019) As much as it won’t please its fans, silent cinema is often an ordeal to watch: if you’re not interested in the history of cinema, there’s not a lot in there to like other than a few comedies. So it is that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a struggle to watch. Let’s not deny its importance: It was a box-office hit in 1923, it was a large-scale production that clearly warranted much of Universal Studio’s confidence, it featured Lon Chaney and it’s considered by some as the start of the Universal Horror line-up. But if you’re looking for straight-up entertainment, well, there’s the 1939 version with sound and Charles Laughton to watch. Even then, the silent version is not that unbearable—as mentioned, a lot of effort has been made in bringing this version to the screen (recreating Paris in Los Angeles with thousands of extras), and you can at least appreciate that kind of craftsmanship. It’s historically important, at least, and you can chart the evolution of the Victor Hugo novel into its later, much streamlined adaptations by using this as an early data point. If you can get into the mindset of silent movies, this one is significantly more interesting than average by virtue of production means and horror-adjacent moments. But this should not be anyone’s introduction to silent film—so keep The Hunchback of Notre Dame in reserve for after you’ve built up your tolerance to the slow pacing and title cards.