Movie Review

  • Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006)

    Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) I wasn’t expecting much of Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny largely because I have long grown cold on Jack Black’s brand of in-your-face crude comedy. Yes, School of Rock was cute and his supporting performances in larger casts are often a highlight, but most of those don’t present Black’s favoured persona to its fullest. You can’t say the same about The Pick of Destiny, considering that it’s fronted by his own rock duo Tenacious D, and seems to present Black turned up to 11. While I like rock, I’m far from being the kind of full-time metalhead that the film is aimed for. Taking the frequent pre-fame band narrative and infusing it with fantastical elements such as a demonic guitar pick, the film grabs every excuse to hail the power of rock, indulge in drug culture, cram as many cameos as possible (Satan as played by Dave Grohl? Well, why not?) and swear copiously. It’s all immensely immature … and it works. I mean: it’s reasonably funny, plotted with some competence beyond episodic sequences, and the climax feels like a culmination. It’s clearly meant to be a cult movie (making the box-office disappointment of the film a forgone conclusion) and with that must come a large dose of indulgence as Black and partner Kyle Gass clearly have the times of their lives headlining their own film. It may be a case of exceeding expectations rather than a successful film, but I found The Pick of Destiny amusing enough to warrant a good review, and that’s not something I considered likely when I started watching the film.

  • The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

    The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) I really like engineering fiction, and The Flight of the Phoenix is clearly a landmark of the genre. The setup is a classic, as a plane goes down in the desert and the survivors must rebuild a second plane out of the wreckage of the first to fly back to civilization. The sequences in which the crashed plane is taken apart and rebuilt in a different are delicious, and even having seen the 2004 remake doesn’t quite take away the fun of the original.   But if you take a closer look, little of the plot’s middle section has to do with engineering, though: humans are their own worst enemies, and the film’s second act eventually becomes a lot of bickering between those who think the plan will work and those who don’t. Happily, the last act tightens around the effort to rebuild the plane, and the results of those efforts. While a bit too early to be considered a disaster movie, The Flight of the Phoenix’s director Robert Aldrich does anticipate one thing: the use of an ensemble cast in portraying responses to a life-threatening event. Here, the cast is better than most in having James Stewart (as a pilot, naturally) but also notables such as Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Dan Duryea and George Kennedy. The desert cinematography will make you thirsty, but the reconstruction of the second plane is credibly portrayed. The film wasn’t without difficulties, though: ace aviator (and legendary stuntman pioneer) Paul Mantz died while filming, ironically because he was replacing his flying partner in shooting the scene. The result, however, is a film that pays good tribute to those aviation pioneers and daredevils of flying—and a captivating thriller to boot.

  • Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo (2019)

    Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Few people need convincing that Danny Trejo is quite a character, but Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo will do the job anyway. Trejo, a distinctive presence that has somehow amassed over three hundred acting credits, did not follow the traditional path to fame. Born in poor circumstances, he quickly became a drug addict and petty criminal, ending up incarcerated for much of the 1960s. By the time the decade ended, he found faith, got clean, renounced the criminal life and started working odd jobs. His first screen credit dates from 1985, but it took decades of inglorious third-string roles (as the titular “Inmate #1”) before getting more prestigious assignments, culminating in leading-man roles by 2000 and then, increasingly, prestige cameos to capitalize on his notoriety. Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo is a tour of this storied life, interspaced by a look at the intervention and motivating work he somehow manages to do in-between acting jobs, and a look at a man who’s far more approachable than most of his tough-guy roles. It’s an inspiring story, and one of the most unlikely road-to-fame narratives that Hollywood has ever produced. For Trejo fans, the film is confirmation—for everyone else, it will be a revelation.

  • Down and out in Beverly Hills (1986)

    Down and out in Beverly Hills (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) There’s something quite provincial in Hollywood making a movie about class differences in Beverly Hills—I can’t figure out whether Down and out in Beverly Hills is hypocritical or self-flagellating, although with writer-director Paul Mazursky at the helm, it’s closer to a gentle critique than outright satire. The plot gets moving once a bum nearly drowns in a rich family’s house, and they welcome him out of a sense of guilt. But the bum (as is tradition) sees clearer and thinks farther than his new dysfunctional family and before long sorts out all kinds of big and small problems. The plot schematics are obvious, but the film does a little bit better on moment-to-moment viewing thanks to a capable cast. In between Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Richard Dreyfuss and a young Elizabeth Peña (plus Little Richard as a neighbour), the film does have its charms, and recognizably aims for more than just the laughs. Thematically, I’m bothered by how the film doesn’t seem to have the courage of its convictions—I’m not sure that the dysfunctional family won’t be back to dysfunction within the week. This may be a consequence of Mazursky not quite going for comedy and not quite going for drama—Down and Out in Beverly Hills ends up being a less-than-satisfying hybrid, watchable but not admirable.

  • Us (2019)

    Us (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) As an outspoken fan of writer-director Jordan Peele’s Get Out, my hopes were high for his follow-up Us … and they were dashed. There are a few things I like here: Lupita Nyong’o’s performance, a clever framing of mysterious underground places, a character inversion that, on paper, sounds good, and a provocative metaphor about (among other things) class revolution. The problems, however, start from what I seem is a fundamental mishandling of genre fiction. To put it simply (and you can look elsewhere on this site for the analysis of genre devices), the advantage that genres such as Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror have over other kinds of fiction is in literalizing the metaphor: You can take tough-to-portray concepts and make them into a monster and it works both at the literal level (the monster is chasing them!) and the metaphorical level (they are being chased by their anxieties!)  But the fundamental requirement of that approach is that it must work on the basic level before the metaphor comes into play. If it doesn’t, the best-case scenario is that the haughty neighbourhood nitpicker (like me!) will tear the story apart without figuring out the metaphor; the worst-case scenario is that even base viewers will squint their eyes and sense the disconnect, often saying, “Wait, that doesn’t make sense.”  Disbelief not being suspended, the film fails. This is exactly what happens with Us, in which an underground conspiracy that has surface appeal as a metaphor for wider social issues falls apart on examination of the most basic justification. The amount of “No, wait, that doesn’t make sense” is so obvious and frequent that it obscures whatever Peele was trying to say here—a fatal failing in trying for ambitious commentary. Get Out had that perfect union of literal and thematic—but Us (or rather, maybe, U.S.) loses its way and never makes it back. By the time the final scene rolls, it does so in pure incomprehension of what it hasn’t earned. What a disappointment. I’m sure Pelle will rebound.

  • Who’s That Girl (1987)

    Who’s That Girl (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2019) I strongly suspect that anyone seeing Who’s That Girl today, with no real knowledge of Madonna, would have a very different experience than those who saw it in the late 1980s in a pop-culture environment saturated with Madonna in films and song. The film was badly received at the time, with critics piling on to decry its modern reimagining of screwball comedy tropes, and delivering mixed opinions on Madonna’s acting skills. It’s not necessarily a better movie today—the schematic nerd-meets-firebrand plot premise is overly familiar, the attempts to recreate screwball madness are not quite successful, and James Foley’s direction is not what the film needs. (Don’t worry—he’d direct much better movies later.)  But one element of Who’s That Girl may have improved, and that’s Madonna’s go-for-broke comic performance as The Girl. While she’s hardly a good actress (I’ve often said, truthfully, that she’s a far better performer in French than in English—because her voice dubbers do much better line-reading) and her self-styling after Marilyn Monroe often fall short, she’s not too bad here. Her comic timing is pretty good, she commits to a very specific performance and she eventually creates a character that’s not Madonna. What twenty-first century viewers have that late-1980s viewer don’t is the ability to differentiate between Madonna-the-persona and the not-so-ditzy ball of energy she plays here. She’s not that good—but as with the film itself, she’s watchable, and the Razzies people once again made idiots of themselves by band-wagoning into “worst of the year” nominations for the result. Have a look at Who’s That Girl: it’s not that bad, but more than that it’s interesting.

  • Emma (1996)

    Emma (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2019) Travel back to an earlier, simpler time with Emma—no, not 19th-century England (although yes), but rather the mid-1990s when Austen adaptations were the rage, and Gwyneth Paltrow was a rising star rather than a woo-woo businesswoman. You can’t say that writer-director Douglas McGrath hopped on the Austen bandwagon when he helped build that bandwagon—and at this point, we’re now in the second generation of Austen remakes and so able to call the 1996 a source of inspiration for newer takes. Suffice to say that this one gets most things right—it sticks close to the material, benefits from a lavish costume budget, keeps things charming, and plays it straight. Re-interpretations would come in the same year (as Clueless) and in further films more eager to differentiate themselves. But if you’re looking for a straight-ahead take that remains faithful to the original novel, you can certainly do worse: Paltrow is quite likable, actors such as Ewan McGregor, Toni Collette and Alan Cumming all pop up in supporting roles, and McGrath puts everything together in competent fashion. There’s not a whole lot more to say about Emma, but sometimes that’s the charm of it.

  • Frozen II (2019)

    Frozen II (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, In Theaters, November 2019) Considering the massive success of 2013’s Frozen, it’s almost inevitable that any sequel would be scrutinized, dismantled and ultimately judged as not as worthy as the first film. Which is not quite an outright dismissal considering that the original Frozen remains, despite its overexposure, exceptionally good. This sequel doesn’t have the element of surprise going for it—in fact, its plot mechanics (especially its conclusion) are coincidentally reminiscent of other recent animated movies. Still, as a follow-up, it’s decent enough: the integrity of the characters is preserved, the plot revelations smooth out some of the original’s rougher edges and there’s more than enough here to keep fans happy. Still, this sequel is, in a word, messier than the original. The plot doesn’t flow as smoothly, there are noticeable lulls in the first half and a few characters are blatantly sidelined during the second half. (“Oh, they’re already gone; you can’t catch up with them” is not a very good argument for a guy with a reindeer looking for two women on foot.)  The songs also don’t feel as catchy, although a definitive judgment about that will have to wait until the inevitable fourth and fifth viewings. Still, Disney’s standard these days are high enough that even a middling effort is still worth a look. In technical terms, the animation here is often nothing short of stunning, with practically photorealistic water effects, and plenty of opportunities for the animators to take advantage of the possibilities of the form with lighting effects and thousands of elements in each sequence. With its Nordic setting, maple leaf imagery and theme of reconciliation with the native population, Frozen II also feels especially Canadian, although that’s probably just a coincidence. Given the choice, I’d rather have Disney turn out new universes rather than sequels, but Frozen II is not a bad watch, and judging from the opinion of this household’s residence Frozen expert, it works even better with younger female audiences.

  • Xtro (1982)

    Xtro (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) I’d call Xtro a big bag of yuck, but a “bag” presupposes an arrangement of elements into a container and that’s an awfully generous description for a film without much of a coherent plot. Well, that’s not true: The plot of Xtro is quite simple and has to do with an alien killing humans. It’s what’s around the plot that scarcely makes sense, as we go from a standard monster movie plot (far more violent and gross than the 1950s ones, but not any more sophisticated) to a fever dream of homicidal life-sized action figures, homicidal toy tanks, homicidal cougars and homicidal … well, you get the point. The special effects are filled with goo, forced incubation, nightmarish vaginal imagery and other visuals designed to make you queasy. And if I must acknowledge any effectiveness to writer-director Harry Bromley Davenport’s mess, it’s in those nightmarish images, potent without being admirable. It’s all in the service of an intensely nihilistic, meaningless story, so don’t be surprised to hate Xtro even while acknowledging its visual strengths. I half-suspect that the film, like many 1980s horror movies, was more about freaking the mundanes (and pleasing the gore-hounds) than delivering a coherent story with something to say. You can see numerous lifts from the first Alien movie, for instance, and pushing the parasitic face-hugger cycle as far as anyone can stand. I still loathe the result, and I can’t imagine watching Xtro another time—it was bad enough that I fell asleep midwatch through and had to rewind to catch its demented second half. I shouldn’t have.

  • The Karate Kid Part III (1989)

    The Karate Kid Part III (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) It’s possible that one of the greatest skills a filmmaker can have is to recognize when they’re about to tell a useless story … and then not doing it. I have a feeling that The Karate Kid Part III would have been greeted better had it been the second instalment of the series, taking care of tying up loose ends from the first film rather than heading over to Okinawa right away. But that’s not what happened, and so this third instalment feels like going over already-explored territory as our protagonist once again faces the first film’s antagonist. It’s a return to home, but it’s also smaller, less meaningful and far less memorable than the second film. The dramatic subplots are intensely predictable, and the conclusion is never in doubt. Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita are still good as the lead pair, but the film around them has nowhere to go and seems as stunted as its featured bonsai trees. (Quite a bit of the weirdness around the film—the impossible timeline, the farming-out of the revenge plot to someone else—can be explained by lucrative intent and production constraints, but that’s not an excuse.) There’s not a whole lot more to say about The Karate Kid Part III because it’s such a slight film. In retrospect, they should have stopped after the second one.

  • Four Daughters (1938)

    Four Daughters (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) It’s an exaggeration (perhaps blasphemy) to call out similarities between Four Daughters and Little Women, but both offer middle-American small-town drama involving sisters living in a house with a single parent (here: Claude Rains as the patriarch of a musical family), with suitors popping up and a story that plays over many years. Everything else is different, but from the 2010s all we see are stories with a similar feel. What’s distinctive here is that three of the four sisters were real-life sisters as well—the Lane sisters, who went on to play as a family in other films. But the highlight here is John Garfield as the young beau who sends the daughters aflutter, through some less successful suitors who come and go. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the film was regarded well enough to warrant an Academy Award nomination for best picture—but while it’s still reasonably good, it does feel a bit like a self-imposed ordeal if you’re trying to complete the Best Picture nominees marathon. There’s nothing wrong with Four Daughters—but if your mind wanders to find comparisons with Little Women, it may be because it’s not engaging enough by itself.

  • La belle et la bête [Beauty and the Beast] (1946)

    La belle et la bête [Beauty and the Beast] (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) If you approach writer-director Jean Cocteau’s La belle et la bête expecting a rougher version of the Disney film … wow, you’re going to have an interesting time. Here he adapts the poetic realism trend of 1930s French cinema to the classic fairytale and the result feels as if it was captured from dreams—hazy, lyrical, nonsensical and yet with a logic of its own. The basic problems of the beauty and the beast fairytale are still very much present—the Stockholm syndrome, the ending that mocks the “ugliness is superficial” message—but executed in such a way that it’s easy to let the style triumph over substance. Which isn’t to say that La belle et la bête skirts its fantastic roots—the makeup of the beast remains deeply impressive, and the film doesn’t dance around the literalization of the metaphor. It’s often surprising, sometimes ethereal, and more compelling than you’d expect. Still, Cocteau overplays his hand and the film is easily a bit too long even at 96 minutes—there’s only so much setup you can tolerate before demanding some progress, after all. Still, this is one of the strongest 1940s French films (and it wasn’t a slough of a decade for French cinema)—still mesmerizing in its stated intention to deliver a true fairytale on the screen.

  • Dutch (1991)

    Dutch (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) It’s not hard to watch Dutch and wonder what screenwriter-producer John Hughes was thinking in putting together the story. As a buddy-comedy road movie on the eve of Thanksgiving, it clearly apes his own Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It does crank up the drama by featuring not two strangers brought together by circumstances, but a gruff construction man trying to bond with a bratty teenager who may become his step-son. At that point, the film could have gone anywhere as a zany farce or a manipulative offering … and it does. Meaning that we get people shot in the groin with a BB gun, plenty of crazy adventures, quite a bit of personal property destruction, and the heartwarming aw-they-really-love-each-other maudlin moments in the end. The tonal control isn’t there from one moment to another, and if Dutch hangs together, it’s thanks to Ed O’Neill doing his best in a role that asks him to be both a credible middle-aged man and a cartoonish butt of physical comedy. Intensely predictable in structure but chaotic in a scene-to-scene scope, Dutch should work in the end but doesn’t feel as if it has a middle.

  • The Invisible Man (1933)

    The Invisible Man (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (archive.org streaming, November 2019) Compared to other inaugural titles from the classic Universal Monsters stable, it has proved surprisingly difficult to find a way to watch The Invisible Man—it doesn’t play and isn’t as available as the other monster movies. But there’s always a way, and I’m almost glad I waited a bit because it’s perhaps the film that strays furthest from what we expect from classic movie monsters. With Dracula, The Werewolf, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon or Frankenstein, the story is the one you remember from other adaptations and the characters all have redeeming moments of humanity, restraint or compassion. But The Invisible Man is different: he’s certifiably a homicidal maniac, and that bonkers quality is honestly unnerving. Unlike the other monsters, this one doesn’t blink at causing mass death—invisibility has removed his moral compass, and that makes him far more dangerous than his contemporaries. (Accordingly, it may help explain why it’s a monster often skipped or entirely redefined by Halloween myth-making and other comic takes on the characters such as the Hotel Transylvania films—well, that and the lack of any visual identifiers, I suppose.) This 1933 original film doesn’t hold back when it’s necessary to clearly depict what a monster he is—as a Pre-Code production, the film becomes surprisingly intense at times and having Claude Rains in the main role is an undeniable asset even if only for his voice. (Then there’s a funny performance by Una O’Connor, who also shows up in the same director’s Bride of Frankenstein and exemplifies this film’s brand of dark comedy.)  Some good directing from James Whale and still-amazing special effects complete the package. If you think you don’t need to see The Invisible Man because you think you know (from the Wells novel, from later adaptations, from popular mythology) how it’s going to go or it’s going to be stale material from the 1930s—please reconsider: it turns out that Paul Verhoeven’s crazy-psycho take on The Hollow Man was a lot closer to the original than anyone remembered.

  • Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed [The Adventures of Prince Achmed] (1926)

    Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed [The Adventures of Prince Achmed] (1926)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, November 2019) Now here’s a fascinating discovery — The Adventures of Prince Achmed is known as the oldest surviving animated feature film, and it predates the more familiar Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by a good eleven years. The animation style makes clever use of limited technical means by consisting of moving cardboard/lead sheets over an illuminated background—a technique that has a lot more to do with modern Flash animation than more traditional drawn techniques. The story is inspired by Arabic-influenced One Thousand and One Nights tales, proving that the association between animation and fantasy fairytales impossible to render in live-action is really not a new one. By accident or design, you can find similarities between this film and many successors, whether it’s Disney films like The Sword and the Stone (with a climactic battle between shapeshifting sorcerers), Aladdin (which explicitly pays homage to it through a “Prince Achmed” character) or newer use of silhouette-style animation in films such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. It’s understandably rough as a movie considering the primitive means at writer-director Lotte Reiniger’s disposal, but the film is still beautiful, intricate and absorbing. It’s well worth tracking down—The Adventures of Prince Achmed hasn’t aged nearly as much as most other films from the 1920s.