Movie Review

  • 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.

  • F- You All: The Uwe Boll Story (2018)

    F- You All: The Uwe Boll Story (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) It’s still a bit early to definitively state that Uwe Boll will never direct another movie, but even in youthful retirement he leaves behind a distinctive filmography rich in fascinating material. In case you don’t know Boll, let us be clear: His films are terrible, but he was able to make a lot of them (twenty-two of them in ten years) thanks to savvy use of financing opportunities and a casual disregard for quality. For the generation of movie reviewers working between 2004 and 2015, Boll was a punchline until he became the one doing the punching—literally: in 2006, he dared movie reviewers to a boxing match. Some of them, forgetting that Boll had a semi-professional pugilistic background, accepted … and got beaten up. Stories like that are legion about Boll, who easily takes a spot on anyone’s list of pugnacious directors. He exploited tax loopholes; he shot in miserable conditions; he shot first drafts of scripts against the screenwriters’ wishes; he rarely spent more than a few takes before deciding to move on. This documentary’s biggest contribution, besides capturing the insanity of Boll’s career in easily digestible format, is to explain why Boll’s films were so terrible. It’s all about the money, of course. Or, if you want to be more precise, that Boll had a gift for getting money, but as a producer of his own films often sacrificed any artistic ambition in order to further his agenda as a budget-conscious producer. Unusually enough, Boll himself is not always his best advocate in interview segments filmed for this documentary—often, the best insights come from collaborators and friends trying to figure out what they saw or felt on the set. Boll himself is often argumentative, unrepentant, apparently unwilling to provide answers. It makes for good footage, obviously: Boll is a consummate showman in his own way, and he has chosen combativeness as a way of getting attention. Still, anyone looking for definitive answers may have to wait longer: As of the film’s shooting, Boll was still somewhat in the entertainment business, now being a successful Vancouver-area restaurateur. Both the movie and the restaurant world are better for it. Writer-director Sean Patrick Shaul should be proud of having explored the mystique behind the character, even if the answers he gets are tentative at best and not quite supported by the man himself. Anyone who has bemoaned the lack of grander-than-life directors after the passing of Howard Hawks, John Ford, or Joseph Von Sternberg (this being the last time Boll will be compared to those three) should have a look at this documentary—his movies are still not good, but now we have a record of Boll himself.

  • Punchline (1988)

    Punchline (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) Tom Hanks has been America’s everyman since the late 1990s, but before then he spent a decade playing highly dramatic roles and before then he spent much of the 1980s in straight-up comic films. One of the least known of them must be Punchline, a film I didn’t even know existed before it showed up on my TV schedule. Here, Hanks play a hungry young stand-up comic who meets and develops a crush on a housewife (played by Sally Field) who tries her hand at stand-up. Much of the film is meant as an examination of the lives of comics on and off the stage, pressured into making it big, reassuring family and friends that they’re still sane and trying not to crack under the pressure. It’s not a comedy in the most conventional sense of the word, although we do get to see a few comic routines along the way. (The final routine by Hanks’ character is a killer set, but amazingly enough it doesn’t seem to be transcribed anywhere on the web at the moment.)  I’ve long been fascinated by stand-up comedians, so Punchline had an extra resonance that may not find a grip on other viewers. Still, it’s not a bad movie: it may disappoint those expecting a funnier tone, but it’s quite watchable, and I suspect that some viewers may be just as amazed as I am to find an early Tom Hanks movie they didn’t know about.

  • Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993)

    Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) The Story of Bruce Lee is so interesting, so dramatic that it would have made little sense for a biopic to follow a strictly factual style. (Leave those to the books, I say!) So it is that director Rob Cohen’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story wisely chooses a far more fantastic framework in which to tell us about Bruce Lee, complete with martial-arts fights almost as good as the ones in his films. Going from Hong Kong to the United States and back again, Dragon follows Lee as a young man on the way up (as portrayed quite convincingly by Jason Scott Lee), but elides much of his stardom years in favour of dramatizing the events surrounding his death. As befit the subject, it’s not merely a chronicle of Lee’s life as an occasion to talk—in the early 1990s—about stereotypes, prejudice and the idea of manliness as portrayed by Asian actors. (Which has me wondering if Dragon had any impact on the brief but real influx of Asian talent, themes and techniques in the later half of the 1990s.)  This being a heroic biographical portrait of Bruce Lee, do not expect much distance or critique of the man—this is meant as a celebration rather than a serious biopic. Still, it’s fun—the first fight scene alone is almost comical and the later sequences keep the entertainment factor high. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we may be ripe for another project looking at Lee’s life from a more realistic perspective—and ideally one from filmmakers closer to Lee’s background.

  • Saat po long 2 [Kill Zone 2 aka SPL II: A Time for Consequences] (2015)

    Saat po long 2 [Kill Zone 2 aka SPL II: A Time for Consequences] (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) I have probably been looking in the wrong places, but it seems to me that it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to see a Hong Kong martial-arts action movie. (Are they even making as many as they once did?)  While Kill Zone 2 isn’t all that great a film, at least it’s good enough to satisfy that specific craving. A sombre story about undercover cops, drugs, and organ harvesting, this is not a fun or funny action movie: it’s generally glum, shot in sombre black-and-blue by director Soi Cheang, and has characters going through histrionics on a predictable arc. It’s unusually gory (something that the organ transplant subplot only heightens) and the script frankly isn’t all that easy to follow. But Kill Zone 2 does get better as soon as the fight sequences begin: Having Tony Jaa as a headliner would be meaningless without being able to take advantage of his physical talents. I’m not sure that it’s all that interesting if you’re not looking for a stereotypical action film, but I was hungering for exactly that, and was more satisfied than not.

  • King Solomon’s Mines (1950)

    King Solomon’s Mines (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Anyone watching a 1950s MGM Technicolor adventure film and expecting a sensitive, respectful take on its African setting is not going to have a good time—much like its 1937 film forebearer and 1885 original H Rider Haggard novel, this is a straight-up adventure in the time of colonialism, with buried treasure and hostile natives. (Although this, like the previous film, does add a female character—and an excuse to see Deborah Kerr in the jungle.)  Largely shot on location and meant as a big MGM spectacle, this version of King Solomon’s Mines generally delivers on its premise, even if this premise can be repugnant to modern audiences (I really could have done without the elephant shooting, for one thing). There’s some spark to the relationship between the two lead characters, with Kerr playing opposite Stewart Granger as Allan Quatermain. The nature landscape photography alone can be spectacular. You’ll have to ignore some heavy-duty colonialism along the way, though, especially considering how this version minimizes some of the more heroic African characters. While this King Solomon’s Mines is, as a whole, slightly better than the earlier film version, it’s still not quite satisfying—with the underwhelming ending not helping with the dissatisfaction.

  • King Solomon’s Mines (1937)

    King Solomon’s Mines (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) As much as the stench of colonialism is strong in this first version of King Solomon’s Mines, it’s actually kind of fascinating to see such an unabashed African adventure at an early stage of cinema. Partially filmed on location, this film rather faithfully adapts H. Rider Haggard’s adventure novel with all the means available to big-budget cinema at the time. The plot elements are all well worn (all the way to natives being impressed at an eclipse, and a volcano-fuelled final escape) but it’s not impossible to suspend exasperation considering the age of the material. Black actor/singer Paul Robeson has an unusually high-profile role here as an exile chieftain coming back to take the throne—he even gets to sing the film’s final moments. Cedric Hardwicke is also compelling at lead adventurer Allan Quartermain, heading deep in Africa to find hidden treasure. There is still a bit of a kick to King Solomon’s Mines —a basic watchability to the result that transcends time and very different assumptions about how to portray Africa on-screen. It could have been much, much worse.

  • My Darling Clementine (1946)

    My Darling Clementine (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) I’m aware that My Darling Clementine is often praised as a western classic (it even gets a rare “1”—Masterpiece—rating from the influential Mediafilm service), and I’m partially nonplussed by the acclaim. I’m not going to make an argument that it’s a bad movie: with Henry Fonda playing Wyatt Earp in an early take on the O.K. Corral shootout, it’s a John Ford production executed with all of the skill that a big-budget western could muster in the 1940s. Even by Hollywood standards, it’s a very fanciful retelling of history that invents or combines (or kills) historical figures, rearranges the chronology of events and certainly imbues them with virtues or failings that makes the entire thing more accessible as a story. Actually, it goes even further than that: Watching My Darling Clementine, there’s a palpable desire to create a piece of American mythology. A desire fully fulfilled, in that the O.K. Corral shootout has been told and retold in movies even decades later. That, too, plays against My Darling Clementine: To modern viewers weaned on Tombstone, this early take feels unfocused, ham-fisted, and clichéd, bested by its own inheritors. Even at a relatively spry 103 minutes, it feels long, especially as it offers tangential material such as Shakespeare in the Wild West, and strange narrative choices such as building up a surgery sequence and then telling us in the next scene that the sick character (perhaps the most striking of them) has died. These little issues accumulate to the point that My Darling Clementine ends up feeling like a decent but underwhelming western, far from being all all-time classic even in Ford’s filmography, especially when there’s Stagecoach or The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence to pick from.   But now I’m reviewing the reviews rather than the film itself.

  • Made for Each Other (1939)

    Made for Each Other (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) I’ll watch James Stewart in just about everything he’s done, and the first few minutes of Made for Each Other certainly give us a good example of what was Stewart’s first memorable screen person—that of a romantic lead, eager and competent and sweet and likable at once. As he comes back from a trip to Boston with a new bride, his issues multiply at home and at work. His mom doesn’t like his new wife, his boss doesn’t like that he married someone other than his daughter and with a new baby and a Depression-era pay cut soon following, the romance, initially so charming, ends up turning sour. But if you thought there were two movies here, rest assured that there’s yet another one as the third act: a highly melodramatic conclusion which their baby can only be saved through a daredevil flight to deliver crucial medicine. Everything turns out to be OK, but the final result feels like three different movies crashing into each other: a quirky sweet romance that turns into domestic drama that turns into faintly ludicrous melodrama. Stewart remains good throughout—and having Carole Lombard as the female lead doesn’t hurt either. But Made for Each Other ends up feeling lesser than its parts, not quite managing the tonal shifts that the narrative’s swerves require. It’s still worth a look for the actors and the period atmosphere, but it’s not what it could have been. At least we have another movie showcasing Stewart as a dashing young man.

  • The Perils of Pauline (1947)

    The Perils of Pauline (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2019) I too-often record movies without quite being able to explain why, and that can lead to a few surprises later when I do get around to watching them. I’m still not too sure why I recorded The Perils of Pauline, but watching it a year later was like discovering a forgotten present. While it makes no sense to talk about this film in the same breath as Singin’ in the Rain, there are a few points of similitude between the two—it’s a satirical look at Hollywood history in the form of a musical, and it’s surprisingly funny as it recreates the era of the silent comedy. It has plenty of flaws—the pacing is uneven, the script is weak, and the suddenly maudlin ending isn’t all that satisfying … but an extraordinary performance from Betty Hutton compensates for much. Her brassy, high-energy portrayal of an equally noticeable character makes the film quite a bit better than it would have been on the page, although a number of funny sequences also help compensate for the lull in the overall narrative. The Perils of Pauline is in the public domain, meaning that it can be watched from even the film’s Wikipedia page … but the visual quality is disappointing even if the film is entertaining.