Movie Review

  • Jennifer Eight (1992)

    Jennifer Eight (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2020) The 1990s were a good-to-great decade for thrillers, and while Jennifer Eight isn’t that good of an example of the form, it’s not without a strong atmosphere throughout. It does feature an interesting cast as well, what with a young Uma Thurman playing a blind woman targeted by a serial killer, Andy Garcia as a burnt-out police detective, Lance Henriksen as a policeman colleague and John Malkovich in a supporting turn as an FBI agent. The story has to do with the hunt for a serial killer, but as usual the film is more interesting for the details than the plot—the conclusion seems particularly disappointing in its rush to present something different. A touch too long at two hours, Jennifer Eight doesn’t really manage to wring all of the possibilities out of its premise and setting, but it’s a workable-enough thriller if taken at face value.

  • Fast Color (2018)

    Fast Color (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) I like a few things about Fast Color—a starring role for Gugu Mbatha-Raw, for instance, or writer-director Julia Hart’s intention to get away from traditional comic book plot devices to feature a rural matriarchal setting with unusual superpowers. It’s enough to make the film interesting to watch. On the other hand, it’s not enough to overcome a growing disappointment with the film’s threadbare worldbuilding, languid pacing, scattered effectiveness and shrug-inducing finale. While the intention to get away from familiarity works in some cases, it hurts the film in others because the familiar works. While I’ll bristle at anyone calling this a superhero film rather than a science fiction one, they do have a point: Fast Color is designed for effect first, with logical plausibility or coherence running a distant second — Little in the film makes any sense unless you accept the premise and stop wondering about it. On the other hand, it does have chances of reaching an audience that doesn’t usually find itself compelled by more traditional Science Fiction films. As with all things, opinions will vary.

  • Babettes gæstebud [Babette’s Feast] (1987)

    Babettes gæstebud [Babette’s Feast] (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Casually asked what I think of Babette’s Feast, I’ll probably answer with the usual platitudes: Great movie, won an Oscar and offers an interesting vision of how to reconcile pious self-sacrifice with epicurean delight, stripped-down cinematography and unusual story. I’ll even throw in a plot summary, as a servant spends her newfound fortune preparing a sumptuous meal for people used to food-as-fuel. Pressed further and I’ll dig into the film’s subtleties, its complex lessons, its delight for eating and its intentional intention to set everything against a bleak setting. But if you really want to know, I’m liable to become less complimentary—the words “unbearable” and “interminable” are going to show up, as well as an overall desire to never revisit this specific area in time and space. Sure, Babette’s Feast is made for easy liking: the focus on food, the jabs at mirthless life and the extraordinary monetary sacrifice from its protagonist are made to attract attention. But it’s also a slow-paced subtitled film made with artistic intent and voluntarily alienating devices. Some people really do love it, but not everyone has to.

  • A Life of Her Own (1950)

    A Life of Her Own (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) There are so many examples of how the Production Code undermined the substance of films told between 1934 and the 1960s that it’s hardly useful to throw another example on the pile. Still, there’s A Life of Her Own as yet another example—a visibly toothless portrait of a young woman trying to make it in New York City that flirts with a more mature outlook than other 1930s films, yet can’t quite have the creative freedom to really make any kind of point. (It’s even worse when you measure the film against the original novel, which is remarkably darker.) Lana Turner stars as a Midwestern girl coming to Manhattan, meeting an older woman who didn’t make it (and who then kills herself), becomes successful, gets involved in an affair with a married man, and—well, this is where the film gets particularly fuzzy. The original ending had her kill herself in a cyclical commentary on the process that grinds young hopefuls into washed-up husks (and as evidence that under the Production Code, no one gets away with adultery); the rewritten ending is an unsatisfying step back from the ledge without much meaning to it. Clearly, A Life of Her Own isn’t one of director George Cukor’s finest works—but then again, the film’s production history suggests that he knew that the project was doomed under the Production Code.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, February 2021) Thanks to a large-capacity DVR, I record movies indiscriminately and while my memory (and record of movies watched) is good enough that I don’t accidentally end up re-watching too many things by accident, there’s an entire class of not-too-memorable movies that I don’t necessarily recall watching in the first place. (Also: The pandemic lockdown is playing tricks with my perception of time.) A Life of Her Own ended up (again) on my DVR based on it being directed by George Cukor, but it turns out that I didn’t have too many memories of my first viewing. The somewhat well-worn plot probably explains much of a lack of recollection: As a small-town beauty leaves town to enter the bustling world of Manhattan modelling, it quickly turns to melodramatic romance as she embarks on an affair with a man married to a paraplegic. It’s all quite dull, and my lack of particular affection for star Lana Turner probably further explains why the film washed over me a second time without registering anything specific. Not all of Hollywood’s golden-age movies were good, and even fewer of them were memorable: now that I’ve seen the top films of that era, it’s no accident if I’m going to end up seeing more and more forgettable ones, and be condemned to watch them again if I don’t cross-check my lists at some point.

  • Men of Boys Town (1941)

    Men of Boys Town (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Hollywood’s infatuation with sequels is pretty much a century-old tradition by this point, and so are the most common factors why sequels disappoint. An artifact of relevance: Men of Boys Town, sequel to 1938’s Boys Town, once again finds Spencer Tracy finely playing the wise helpful priest heading an educational establishment for troubled boys. Meanwhile, Mickey Rooney is once again the youthful sort-of-delinquent getting in trouble (but not too much trouble). Both could play those roles in their sleep, but that’s not important if the point of the film is repeating a formula. In this aspect, then, Men of Boys Town is a success—it delivers more of the same in the way viewers of the first film would expect. It’s shameless about emotional manipulation, dead dog and all—but the entire film careens from one big emotional register to another, whether it’s comedy in the form of a slow-motion fight sequence, or much darker suggestions of abuse when delinquents are sent to a reform school, quite unlike Boys Town. Of course, the film’s flaws will be magnified if you had no interest in Boys Town in the first place—repetition, manipulation and actors not challenging themselves being the most visible of them. Still, Men of Boys Town is traditional Hollywood filmmaking at its most exemplary, for better or for worse.

  • Broadcast News (1987)

    Broadcast News (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) This almost counts as a second viewing of Broadcast News for me—I distinctly recall seeing the last half of it sometime during the 1990s and being both impressed by the film’s intelligence and disappointed at the somewhat sad ending. But half a film isn’t the same as the entire one, and watching this in middle age doesn’t hit quite the same as an older teen. One thing remains constant, and it’s that Broadcast News still captures the organized madness of TV news like few other films: writer-director James L. Brooks uses the medium’s fundamental tension (entertainment versus substance) as an engine through which to propel a romantic triangle and a series of thorny ethical crises. Holly Hunter is the rock on which the film rests, as a news producer attracted to two very different reporters—William Hurt as the pretty-boy anchor, and Albert Brooks as the solid but prickly expert. (Meanwhile, Joan Cusack is very cute in a supporting role, and owns a flashy action sequence in the first act. Oh, and Jack Nicholson has a cameo as, well, pretty much that universe’s equivalent to God.) It’s all very clever and witty—filmmaking for middlebrow adults able to tolerate a bit of theatrics in order to illustrate a more subtle point. I liked Broadcast News even more this almost-second-time around now that the ending doesn’t strike me as particularly sad, just appropriate.

  • Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans (2019)

    Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) It certainly had to happen at some point—The overly serious Teen Titans being confronted by their parodic offsprings in Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans. It’s not quite a melding of form: This being produced through the current Teen Titans Go! property, it’s a Go-ification of the earlier series, as its characters are brought into the comic universe for a few laughs. This is not a bad thing: I find the Go! series hilarious, and I’m not sure the dramatic intensity of the first Teen Titans series would have meshed well in a half-and-half scenario. To its credit, this straight-to-DVD film does have the good sense of escalating the stakes as befits an event story: By the end of the film, several teams of Teen Titans of various influences are plucked from the multiverse for the final battle. While Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans clearly doesn’t have the budget or refinement of a theatrical animated film like Teen Titan Go to the Movies, it’s loopy and entertaining enough for fans of the Go! series and delivers enough epic metafiction for viewers to enjoy.

  • Lifeforce (1985)

    Lifeforce (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) There’s a surprising mixture of elements at play in Lifeforce, an erotic apocalyptic horror-SF hybrid featuring alien shape-shifters laying waste to Earth. It starts in somewhat convincing science fictional mode, as an expedition discovers an alien ship and brings back a suspiciously well-preserved (and naked) “human” woman. Then it shifts into laboratory horror as the alien wakes up on Earth and starts sucking off the life-force of its human victims, often doing do in the nude. Much of the middle portion of the film is about scientists racing to find answers, discovering that aliens have originated the vampire mythos, and unsuccessfully trying to prevent an epidemic-like contagion of vampires-created zombies. The third act, remarkably enough, presents a portrait of London devastated by the turning of much of its population and gets back to the SF-horror hybrid in its climax. It’s all pleasantly watchable and perhaps the last unimpeachable film from director Tobe Hooper. A young Patrick Stewart has a supporting role, the special effects are pretty good for their time, and the echoes of Quatermass and the Pit are not unpleasant. While not a great film, nor a flawless B-movie, Lifeforce is nonetheless a big thrill ride with enough unusual twists and turns to warrant a look.

  • Menace II Society (1993)

    Menace II Society (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Some movie-watching mediums are completely ill-suited to some kinds of films. Watching an action epic on a tiny screen makes no sense, and neither does watching a hard-R urban drama like Menace II Society on a regular TV channel considering how much muting the editors have to do in order to tone down the language. Which is a shame, because there’s quite a bit to admire in writer-directors The Hugues Brothers’ film. Historically, it’s part of an important movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s to put cameras into the hands of black filmmakers and let them tell a story of their own. What is now a cliché (inner-city drama of young people tempted by a life of crime) was new, provocative and fascinating at the time: there’s a fair case to be made that Menace II Society, along with such notable titles as Boyz n the Hood, Juice, South Central and others, codified an entire subgenre. The story is familiar stuff if you’re used to these kinds of films, but the Hugues Brothers, taking advantage of their experience shooting music videos, bring some additional style to a straight-up social drama. The position it stakes for its characters, stuck halfway between law and crime, is hardly revolutionary now but presumably hit harder at the time. This does, however, make character identification harder than in most films: it’s so dour that, at times, it’s not clear why I should be watching at all. Still, Menace II Society is not a bad movie—the situation hasn’t changed all that much in some strata of American society, and the film’s cinematic verve is a cut above others of the same ilk. Still, don’t make the mistake of trying to watch it on AMC—every other word is muted out in an ineffective attempt at censorship.

  • L.A. Story (1991)

    L.A. Story (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Sweet and occasionally absurd, Steve Martin’s L.A. Story is what happens when a comedian decides to satirize his Los Angeles experience. Martin stars and wrote the script, and his specific touch can be found in the silly scenes that depart from reality (a communicating billboard, highway shootout scenes) in order to back up the film’s romantic comedy. It’s a lot like Martin’s Roxanne in some ways. It’s romantic in a somewhat unusual register of wisecracks accompanied by magical realism and disarmingly cute sentimentalism: Martin earns the right to do one by doing the other. The cinematography is evocative of a semi-fantastic Los Angeles, and Martin gets plenty of co-stars, supporting players of cameos to strengthen the film—with a nod toward Sarah Jessica Parker and Victoria Tennant. One suspects that L.A. Story is filled with inside jokes that will only make sense to actors working in circa-1990 Los Angeles, but those feel like depth rather than whooshing references. Sure, the early-1990s fashions, jokes and visuals can be outdated—but they’re now equally apt to be charming, much like the rest of this wonderful film.

  • Yin bao zhe [Explosion] (2017)

    Yin bao zhe [Explosion] (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Movies are often just as much about their context than about themselves, and that makes assessing out-of-culture films like Explosion more difficult. So, allow me to report a bit of trivia that will help focus this film. China’s movie industry is on a rapid incline lately, repackaging Hollywood-style lessons in order to pump pro-Chinese propaganda for worldwide audiences. Fair enough; the United States has been doing so for a century by now. But like Classic Hollywood filmmakers, Chinese screenwriters and directors are working in a creative environment rife with thematic limitations. What is good as propaganda cannot be used for social criticism, and it’s in that frame that Explosion is more interesting than the thriller it claims to be. The plot itself is solid but conventional: a mining explosive expert must find who killed four miners… and who framed him for it. But here’s the thing: Explosion is best approached as a Chinese mainland film noir, and that carries expectations eerily similar to 1950s Hollywood examples of the form. The mood is grim and dramatic (although the script can’t help but crank up the action late in the movie), and the film manages, under cover of “just telling a murder mystery,” to gently poke and prod at the limits of Chinese propaganda. Taking place far from the industrialized cities that best represent the amazing progress of China over the past few decades, Explosion focuses on a nearly abandoned community and thus can tell a story where the Chinese miracle isn’t working for everyone. Some built-in tension can help focus the attention of viewers (and censors) toward the genre crime mystery and deemphasize the social criticism aspect of the film. Explosion may not be considered a particularly great or spectacular film, but it’s serious and solid (which is already more than what we can say about many Chinese exports to the west) and it’s got this really interesting context around it that adds to the straightforward thriller of its presentation.

  • -30- (1959)

    -30- (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) At this point in my exploration of Classic Hollywood, I almost live for those hidden gems in the margins of the official canon we remember from past decades. Something very much like -30-, a thoroughly satisfying newsroom thriller that nonetheless feels practically unknown these days. I think that some of this may be due to a title (Dash three zero dash, newspaper shorthand for “end of story”) that’s nearly impossible to search online; some of it to a less-than-stellar box-office performance; and maybe also because it’s a somewhat average film that just happens to hit a lot of my buttons. I mourn, for instance, the disappearance of newsroom dramas—I like that subgenre a lot, and anything even feeling like one automatically gets a few points from me. I’m also a sucker for time-compressed films, and this film barely fits within a single nighttime shift with a cavalcade of subplots to fill the running time. Jack Webb stars, directs and produces the film in a very efficient fashion: despite the fast pacing of the film, there are few stylistic flourishes even if the script crackles with pretty good repartee. Looking at some of the film’s contemporary reviews, I see that many critics dismissed the film’s outdated throwback to 1930s newsroom tropes despite taking place in the late 1950s. That kind of criticism is virtually irrelevant today, as one period blurs into another and we don’t really care as much as to whether it’s twenty years out of date or just an entertaining-enough script. The soundtrack isn’t bad, and the entire narrative has enough energy to make it to the morning. It reminded me a lot of 1994’s The Paper, and that’s another plus-for-me aspect of the film that may not work as well on others. But who cares about the others? -30- is my TCM discovery of the week, and one more reason to keep watching even if I think I’ve seen most of the classics.

  • Dark Phoenix (2019)

    Dark Phoenix (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) The problems with Dark Phoenix are numerous and significant, but most of them stem from one particularly boneheaded decision: Redo the comics’ Dark Phoenix arc, merely thirteen years after it was (badly) done in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Sure, superhero films aren’t known for originality—but this is being insultingly blatant about it, especially since you have the same scribbler, Simon Kinberg, penning the second script. But then further missteps accumulate: the decision to put the dramatic weight of the film on Sophie Turner is baffling considering her limited range, the “X-Women” pandering misandry [2023: A problem specific to Kinberg, as further demonstrated by his work on The 355], the limp action scenes, the way characters act out of character, an irritating pair of lead performances from Turner and Jessica Chastain, the humdrum direction, the fuzzy writing… It’s a surprisingly incompetent film, especially given the large budget it has to play with. Kinberg specifically beclowns himself here—not only is it his second time at bat as screenwriter for that specific story, he also directs and produces meaning that he only has himself to blame for the limp result. It’s not that the film is completely dull, but whatever highlights it has (from the opening shuttle sequence to the train-set final mayhem) are largely bits of special effects rather than character moments in a series that usually succeeded because of strong actors and dramatic highlights. The production history of the film suggests that it could have been worse—after multiple false starts and extensive reshoots to redo the entire third act (i.e.: the train sequence), the film was a box-office bomb that cut short any thoughts of a new trilogy launched by this film. Considering the tangled corporate restructuring that came with Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox (which cut off planned plotlines all over the place), there’s a very good chance that this is the last of the Fox-lineage X-Men movies and if so, it’s a deeply unimpressive finish—all thanks to Kinberg, who (after writing the previous two instalments) turns out to be the final villain of the series.

  • Overboard (2018)

    Overboard (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) If there’s a 1980s comedy that warranted the indignity of being heavily changed for its remake, it’s 1987’s Overboard—not every comic conceit is comfortable, and the earlier film’s depiction of an amnesia victim being gaslit into domestic life is faaar less amusing now than in the wild and coarse 1980s. Alas, thirty years later, the new Overboard’s idea for making this less creepy is to… gender flip it? As if, I guess, the male gender deserves deception? As an exhibit for the 2010s′ internalized misandry, this remake isn’t the worst, but it’s remarkably up there. Granted, this may be overanalyzing things when it comes to a fluffy romantic comedy—despite the dodgy premise, Overboard is really sweet, unthreatening and forgettable. You can even make a case that it’s about class rather than gender—but I don’t entirely buy that. Anna Farris in the lead role helps further defang it, even if Eugenio Derbez ends up stealing most scenes. This being said, the lacklustre execution of the film may be its most vexing aspect: there’s little here that’s not the original plot filtered through familiar screenwriter tics, and some unremarkable direction from Rob Greenberg doesn’t elevate the material. In the end, this version of Overboard is either something you’ll watch casually and shrug, or watch more closely and find increasingly disappointing.

  • Royal Wedding (1951)

    Royal Wedding (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) For fans of classic films, it’s a bit of a generational shock to realize that the Royal Wedding in 1951’s Royal Wedding has to do with Queen Elizabeth II—another piece of evidence about her incredibly long reign. Otherwise, though, I suspect that most viewers will focus on the one thing in the film that hasn’t aged—Fred Astaire’s performance and he tap-dances and sings his way through this movie musical. Astaire was a practised professional at that time and the film sports most of the specific trademarks of his performances—the quirky solo number (this time dancing with a hatrack), the funny duet (as the ship’s deck rolls under them), the innovative special-effects dance number (the film’s most famous sequence, as Astaire dances on the walls and ceiling of the room, filmed from within a rotating set), a sequence coming from a show (with Jane Powell), a big ensemble song-and-dance finale (“I let my hat in Haiti”) and so on—the only notable omission being a romantic dance duet, somewhat explained by how the only dancing partner Astaire has here, Powell, plays his character’s sister. The other thing missing is a big finale: After the ensemble song-and-dance, Royal Wedding still has five minutes filled with stock footage of Elizabeth II’s ceremony and a perfunctory double wedding to wrap things up. In the pantheon of Astaire’s musical comedies, this is solidly middle-tier material even if two of the sequences (the hatrack and revolving-room sequences) are literally anthology pieces in the That’s Entertainment series. Compared to the average movie musical of the period, though, Royal Wedding is still very much worth a watch: Director Stanley Donnen and Astaire are old hands at what they do best here, and if Jane Powell is a bit bland here, she does fill the shoes required of an Astaire screen partner (although, significantly, she’s not featured very much in the dancing). I liked Royal Wedding quite a bit (it helps that Astaire’s caddish persona is toned down slightly, as is his no-means-try-later persistence) but I can definitely think of many better entry points to his filmography.