Movie Review

  • The Hummingbird Project (2018)

    The Hummingbird Project (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) It’s amazing how many highly specialized spheres of our modern world end up being featured in mass-market entertainment. It may be even more amazing to see how French-Canadian writer-director Kim Nguyen has gone from elliptical fantasy debut Le Marais to Hollywood-grade techno-thriller The Hummingbird Project. Here, Nguyen tackles the business of laying cables from one financial power centre to the other to facilitate High-Frequency Trading, a business in which millions or billions can ride on fractions of a second. Any conceivable way to shaving a fraction of a millisecond in between transactions can be a massive market advantage, and so the film focuses on a pair of entrepreneurs (Alexander Skarsgård playing someone on the autistic spectrum, and Jesse Eisenberg in his familiar alpha-nerd persona), leaving behind their previous company to build a fibre-optic line. Hollywood used to make grandiose movies about building railroads, and The Hummingbird Project could have headed in that direction … alas, this being the enlightened no-fun 2010s, Nguyen isn’t about to let us have any civilization-building fun: The film takes great pain not only to point out that this fibre line is going to be used for rainforest-killing lucrative purposes, but goes out of its way to punish its characters through various ailments and ultimately make their efforts redundant. That’s really too bad, because for a while The Hummingbird Project does create a powerful illusion of an upbeat big-infrastructure project. Nguyen effectively uses his budget to give us a glimpse of what it takes to create the modern infrastructure upon which the Internet rests, and the scope of the film feels vertiginous at times as our characters negotiate with homeowners for property rights, head into swamps to lay down the fibre despite natural obstacles, and overcomes many difficult odds along their way. That’s the kind of triumph I would have liked to see along the lines of railway-building epics, but that’s not what the film is interested in. I still had a decently good time along the way. While I think that Skarsgård’s character is overexposed, I’m comfortable with the kind of fast-talking smart guy played by Eisenberg, and Michael Mando is a bit of a revelation as the level-headed one in the lead cable-layer trio. (French-Canadian actress Ayisha Issa also shows up in a small but striking role—I hope this turn promises more from her.)  This being said, I can’t deny that much of The Hummingbird Project’s appeal rests with a vengeful character magnificently played by Salma Hayek in a white-haired bespectacled performance oscillating between sexiness and pure evil—no matter her age, she’s still got it. Still, Hayek can’t be in all of the film’s scenes and so I’m left with a disappointment—a film that has about three-quarter of what it takes to deliver something exceptional, but seem content to retreat in anti-technological platitudes about slowing down.

  • Bumblebee (2018)

    Bumblebee (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, September 2019) I have a vivid imagination, but even I wouldn’t have predicted that the sixth entry in the modern Transformers franchise would be a teen-oriented back-to-basics “a girl and her robot” period piece that is a marked step upward for the franchise. Having finally acknowledged the inherent awfulness of the franchise and managed to sedate Michael Bay long enough to put Travis Knight in the director’s chair, the series producers surprisingly shifted gears to a smaller-scale story and Bumblebee is better than its predecessors. I wouldn’t exactly call it a good movie, but it fits together better than the other entries and doesn’t quite insult the audience in the process. Taking place in 1980s northwestern America, Bumblebee details how robots land on Earth and one of them is deactivated long enough for a teenage girl to discover him in car mode and get to work in getting it to work. Much to her surprise, she discovers the robot and you can write the rest of the film yourself as both the eeeevil Decepticons and human military forces take an interest in her yellow robot friend. Liberally borrowing from many 1980s coming-of-age movies, Bumblebee does manage to understand and portray a broader emotional range than the rest of the series, and to create some attachment to the film as more than a series of grandiose blurry impressionistic action sequences. Knight slows down the pace, lengthens the average shot and ends up showing more than random colours and movement for five minutes. It’s not quite satisfying—what with its dropped subplots, inconclusive relationship with the rest of the series, and overly precious moments, but I enjoyed it a bit more than the increasingly punitive series so far. Even the visual design of the robots has undercome a much-needed streamlining, bringing them closer to my own formative G1 ideal of what they should look like. Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena are quite sympathetic in generic roles, but generic is far better than cliché. While I’m more reserved about the result than many other reviewers (I do love Bay-made explosions), the result is encouraging in showing the way the inevitable future instalments should be headed. I’m still not a fan, but I’m open to further developments.

  • Our Hospitality (1923)

    Our Hospitality (1923)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, September 2019) I generally like Buster Keaton’s film, but even I have to admit that many of his movies are slow burns to great finales. Our Hospitality is a bit different in that it does have a few highlights to offer along the way to its big finish, perhaps the most fascinating being a mostly accurate rendition of the earliest railways. Even to those with only the mildest interest in railway technical development, this sequence seems almost impossibly folkloric, with open-air carriage wagons being used as railcars, and a track that can be moved at will. (We shouldn’t see this section as a documentary, but Keaton was a confirmed rail enthusiast and portions of what was built for the movie ended up in a museum.)  Otherwise, Our Hospitality does have a solid story, as the survivor of a murderous family feud comes back to town to discover that he has fallen in love with the daughter of the rival clan. There’s drama enough to power the plot (there’s a seriously violent death and escape in the first few minutes of the film, setting up the rest), but the comic conceit comes from the other clan refusing to kill him while he’s in their house, leading to increasingly absurd situations. It all leads to some spectacular stunts later in the film, but at a more sustained pace than many other Keaton features. As a result, Our Hospitality remains one of his most steadily enjoyable movies, and a nice change of pace from some of his more urban-centred features.

  • Little Big Man (1970)

    Little Big Man (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) One of the problems for modern viewers in delving too deep in the classical Hollywood western catalogue is the depiction of Natives in the subgenre. At best they’re ignored or acknowledged as sympathetic but secondary figures with valid viewpoints. At worse (and oh boy does it get worse), they’re mindless killing hordes to be destroyed in order to secure white colonialism and manifest destiny. It took, as with so many other things, the New Hollywood to start shifting things, even if in a matter of degrees. In portraying the picaresque life of a white man equally at ease in the white and Native worlds, Little Big Man is not, today, the most exemplary of films: The hero definitely remains a white man, the native characters are sympathetic but not developed to the extent that Custer, even as an antagonist, is characterized. But for a 1970 movie, it’s a welcome change of pace compared to film made even ten years earlier. The result, partially motivated by the growing affirmation of native populations that found a receptive ear in the late 1960s, does spend a lot of time depicting the late-1800s native lifestyle sympathetically. Our protagonist is adopted in a tribe after tragedy, then sent back to the white world thanks to massacres, and spends the rest of his life going back and forth between the two universes, often motivated to shift due to while people massacring native populations and revenge for those massacres. Custer featuring increasingly often in the story, and not in a sympathetic light. Dustin Hoffman stars as a then-unusual kind of protagonist. The tone, despite the seemingly endless slaughter, is often unusually funny, all the way to a final sequence meant to lead to an elegiac moment that, finally, doesn’t happen. Little Big Man is not always very fast-paced, the framing device is disappointing and the constant back-and-forth of the protagonist can be heartbreaking. Still, it has survived far better than one would expect, and much of this lasting good impression is based on a core of compassion that is entirely missing from earlier westerns.

  • Fantasia (1940)

    Fantasia (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) It’s easy, while watching Fantasia, to imagine an alternative reality in which Disney Animation Studios would have gone in a very, very different direction. Disney historians will be happy to tell you how WW2 nearly put the studio out of business: not only was the Disney business affected by the United States’ entrance in the war (taking away employees, cutting attendance, focusing popular entertainment toward propaganda which included some Disney films), but their own office spaces were used as barracks for military personnel. It took years for the studio to come back from this near-death experience, and it quickly focused on children-focused entertainment as a way back. (There’s an eight-year gap between feature-length Bambi and Cinderella, and that gap was filled by compilations of short films.) We know the rest: Disney’s post-war production was clearly aimed at kids, but that’s not so obvious in pre-war Fantasia, which is a conscious attempt to vulgarize and make accessible the high art of classical music. Integrating live-action footage of orchestra conductors and musicians, Fantasia spells out how general audiences can enjoy orchestral music, starting with visual accompaniment that can be either playful or eerie depending on the music. Everyone knows “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” of course, but there’s a lot more to the film. Segments range from abstract art to quasi-narrative pieces, with varying but generally high levels of quality. “The Pastoral Symphony” is an interesting take on mythology, with a bit more nudity than expected. “Night on Bald Mountain / Ave Maria” ends the film on a high note, with nightmarish imagery as harsh as seen in a Disney film leading to a gloriously upbeat finale. Fantasia does remain—and I don’t say this about many films, let alone Disney films—a primarily sensorial experience, designed to wash over viewers rather than being scrutinized throughout. Ironically enough, it may have been designed to bring orchestras to movie theatres, but it’s now ideally suited in the streaming era to be played on a loop as background atmosphere. It remains a very different experience (even its semi-sequel Fantasia 2000 feels far more conventional and dated twenty years later) than other Disney movies, and any cinephile can’t help but wonder what would have happened to the studio had the Fantasia experiment had more traction in the years immediately following its release.

  • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

    The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) I come to the 1977 version of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh a bit late, having seen and enjoyed the 2011 Winnie the Pooh much earlier. As it happens, both movies share the same kind of gentle fun, strong characterization, meta-fictional devices, and fix-up nature. The 1977 film is more obvious as to its nature as a collection: All three segments had appeared separately as short films before being bundled together as a feature-length movie. Still, the tone is very consistent from one to the other, and the whole thing does feel of a piece. Of course, some familiarity and liking of A.A. Milne’s universe helps—it’s easy and darkly amusing to describe the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood in derogatory terms (a bear with a serious substance addiction, a tiger without personal boundaries, a donkey with clinical depression) but that’s missing the point by a hundred kilometres: it’s a charming family movie, gentle and fun and clever at the same time. As an adult, I’m perhaps more interested by the film’s metafictional tricks as the characters and narrator know that they’re in a book and sometimes take advantage of the fact. Still, the kids are likely to like the result without fuss: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is as likable as children’s stories come, and the film faithfully adapt its literary inspiration.

  • The Thin Man (1934)

    The Thin Man (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) I’d heard very nice things about The Thin Man, but it took a long while before I was able to see it. For reasons I still haven’t figured out, it looks as if the Canadian distribution rights of the film are snarled in something—whenever it’s scheduled to play on Turner Classic Movies, the Canadian simulcast substitutes something else; the latest DVD is unavailable through official Canadian channels; and it never plays anywhere else on TV (trust me, I’ve been checking for the past three years). Ultimately, I gifted myself with a pricey gray-market import from amazon.com, and it was worth it: The Thin Man is indeed a charming mixture of complex whodunit, strong characters, married-couple romance and 1930s period feel. It features Nick and Norah Charles, a witty leisure-class married couple with a strong interest in alcohol, parties and recreational murder investigations. The plot is complex enough to be interesting, but the heart of the film is in the repartee between the leads, the unflappable Charles, the unusually strong Norah and the sophisticated comedy that comes from seeing such characters conduct their own investigations. It all naturally culminates around a dinner table when villains are unmasked and police rushes in to arrest the killer. Despite pushing eighty-five-years old, The Thin Man doesn’t feel old: While the script has its structural issues (serving far too long an introduction, only fully exploiting its own possibilities in its later half), much of the (barely) pre-code script adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel contains great snippets of dialogue, delivered with debonair aplomb by William Powell and Myra Loy, with some assistance from Skippy the dog. Director W. S. Van Dyke takes a while to get things moving, but once he does it’s all straightforward to the end. The Thin Man may take a bit of work to see up here in the North, but it’s worth the trouble.

  • The Mouse That Roared (1959)

    The Mouse That Roared (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2019) I have very fond memories of reading the comic novel on which The Mouse That Roared is based—a romp in which a small impoverished European country, having learned the wrong lessons from the Marshall Plan, deliberately sets out to lose a war against the United States in order to be richly rewarded by a reconstruction plan. But the plan fails when the country unexpectedly wins the war, inadvertently capturing a doomsday device. The film does deviate a bit from its source, most notably by casting Peter Sellers in multiple roles, including that of the country’s reigning queen. It’s all quite amusing in a clipped British-humour way, although the opening minutes of the film feel remarkably modern given the density of the editing, the deadpan jokes and the way it quickly gets the exposition business out of the way. Things do slow down after that, once we’re past the grand concepts and into the character humour—it never gets as funny as in the opening moments, but it does wrap things up nicely. The Mouse That Roared in not a great film, but it’s one that does still have its share of pleasures even today—albeit perhaps more as an affectionate look at Cold War issues.

  • When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

    When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) What was that? No, seriously, what was that? Some kind of prehistoric adventure with dinosaurs and women in fur bikini? With invented-language dialogue? And … the formation of the Moon? Did I dream all of this? OK, let me go take a nap. [Later:] Wikipedia tells me I wasn’t dreaming: When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is not only real, but one of four “Cave Girl” movies made by Great Britain’s Hammer Studios between 1966 and 1971. Clearly, verisimilitude took a distant back seat to titillation considering the well-toned people in skimpy outfits and the presence of actual dinosaurs (and six-foot crabs) in the plot. Amazingly, the story comes from artsy SF writer J.G. Ballard, even if it was later scripted and directed by not-artsy-at-all Val Guest.  To be fair, I only watched the film because it was referenced in Jurassic Park and won an Oscar for Best Special Effects—and in this regard the film delivers in spades: the stop-motion animation of the creatures in staggeringly good even today. Alas, that’s not what I’m going to remember about the film considering the brain-breaking suspension of disbelief required to see attractive cave people fighting dinosaurs. Despite the Oscar win and Spielberg shout-out, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth isn’t frequently seen today and I’m not going to argue against the wisdom (or at least the indifference) of the masses. Some movies are best shamefully forgotten.

  • Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001)

    Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) As much as I liked 1988’s Elvira: Mistress of the Dark beyond expectations, I find myself curiously underwhelmed by belated follow-up Elvira’s Haunted Hills. Maybe you can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice, or maybe there’s a limit to how much of Cassandra Peterson’s very specific charm one can absorb. Or maybe it’s an inferior follow-up, choosing to take the very contemporary Elvira to a historical setting, cutting corners and speaking roles in an attempt to deliver on a small budget. (Mistress of the Dark wasn’t an expensive production by Hollywood standard, but at least it had the means to tell the story it wanted to tell—there’s a sense in Haunted Hills that it’s a film that compromises a lot.)  The story is familiar, what with Elvira ending up at a haunted east European castle where her likeness adorns the wall: obviously, this is a take-off on well-worn horror tropes except with the Elvira blend of sassiness and sexiness. It works, but not always—some of the dialogue is forced (even in dubbed French, which usually smoothens out those issues), some of the attitude is overdone and the plot itself can’t sustain scrutiny beyond being a snark-delivering mechanism. It keeps going surprisingly long after it should start wrapping things up. Elvira herself is the reason to watch the film or not, and the point of the story should be to place her in situations where the character can do amusing things. Alas, Haunted Hills only does the bare minimum—it’s amusing without being as likable as the earlier film. Elvira spends so much time spouting anachronistic jokes that she should have been in a contemporary setting. The rest is merely piling up lame jokes over familiar plot points and while it’s entertaining, it’s not quite enough.

  • Trois couleurs: Blanc [Three Colours: White] (1994)

    Trois couleurs: Blanc [Three Colours: White] (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) Second entry writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s intriguingly titled Trois couleurs trilogy, Trois couleurs: Blanc once against takes an off-beat approach to what could have been a stock premise, by blending a post-love story with a revenge fantasy taken to the hilt. Zbigniew Zamachowski headlines as a protagonist who loses everything once his wife (Julie Delpy, suitably repulsive) divorces him for impotence, but soon lands back on his feet with an ambitious plan to get back on top … and ruin her forever. The plot takes twists and turns that are at once funny and sad, with neither of the main two characters feeling like someone we can cheer for. There’s a clever use of uplifting plot devices in service of a downbeat moral trajectory (clearly, our protagonist has never heard of “the best revenge is living well”) and while the result is interesting, I can’t imagine revisiting this film for fun anytime soon.

  • Trois couleurs: Bleu [Three Colours: Blue] (1993)

    Trois couleurs: Bleu [Three Colours: Blue] (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) I’ve been fascinated by the Trois couleurs trilogy (on titling alone) for a quarter of a decade, so now was the time to see what the fuss was about. The trilogy apparently sends familiar premises spinning in new directions and I can certainly see it at play in Trois couleurs: Bleu, a film in which a familiar dramatic situation—a woman devastated by grief after having her husband and son die in a car crash that she survived—is given an unusual turn. Here our grieving protagonist decides to retreat from the world, leaving no address even to friends and family. Juliette Binoche anchors the film in a complex performance, portraying a character freed by her grief, yet not entirely able to give in to self-destruction. Trois couleurs: Bleu may be heavy at times, but there’s an off-beat quality to its story that makes it compelling. It’s not the kind of film that I’d readily re-watch again, but there’s a careful balance of cinematography (focusing on, yes, the colour blue) and music that adds a lot to the purely narrative drive of the film. This is, clearly, a film with clear artistic intentions and writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski has the skills to execute the result to his satisfaction.

  • A Soldier’s Story (1984)

    A Soldier’s Story (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) From the ever-dependable director Norman Jewison (Canadian!), here comes A Soldier’s Story, a canny examination of racism in the 1944 US Army. The story begins as an officer, a black man, is sent to investigate a murder on a southern military base. Structured as an old-fashioned whodunit, A Soldier’s Story does have the propulsive plot element of a murder mystery, but in doing so does manage to touch upon an impressive number of themes revolving around the black experience. Here we have characters with profound differences of opinions pushed to their limits, in a setting not exactly renowned for its embrace of diversity. A Soldier’s Story remains interesting both as a genre thriller and as a social commentary (echoing Jewison’s earlier epochal In The Heat of the Night), making it a solid film recommendation. Nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, it has aged quite well. While Denzel Washington has one of his earliest roles here, much of the film’s attention deservedly goes to Howard E. Rollins Jr. as the protagonist investigator and Adolph Caesar as the victim seen in flashbacks. The theatrical origins of the story don’t restrict the film from being feeling free to go where it pleases, keeping the quality of the dialogues intact. Often forgotten in favour of more spectacular fare from the era, A Soldier’s Story remains a solid criminal thriller and a good entertaining time with additional social value.

  • Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

    Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (TubiTV Streaming, September 2019) Wow, that was terrible. Given the choice of watching Manos: The Hands of Fate in its original version or MST3K mocking, I chose the original. That was a mistake. From the very beginning, we’re clearly at the mercy of amateur filmmakers: the grainy images are ineptly captured without apparent cinematography, the overdubbed dialogue features unconvincing acting and awkward pauses, the actors are not good and the special effects are laughable. And the story, well, the story could be written on a napkin with enough space left to wipe your anxious brow—there’s an incredible amount of padding in this 77-minute film. (Rarely heard but fair critical reaction: “Oh no, they’re cat-fighting again!”) The only way to survive is to mock the experience, which accounts for the film enjoying a comparatively high number of votes on IMDB (although I strongly suspect that most of those votes have seen the MST3K mockery rather than the real deal). Anyone who claims with a straight face that one of the latest Hollywood blockbuster is “the worst movie ever” seriously needs to recalibrate their senses by watching Manos: Hands of Fate or something similar—it’s a glimpse into how bad filmmaking can be. As such, this film isn’t exactly normal: Most such atrocities are buried and never seen again (no, not even on cable TV)—it’s a fluke of history that MST3K took an interest in the film and almost single-handedly revived it. As for me, I’m in the camp that Manos: The Hands of Fate is so bad that it’s bad—as in, there are few reasons to even see it as anything but incompetent cinema.

  • Der müde Tod [Destiny] (1921)

    Der müde Tod [Destiny] (1921)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, September 2019) There are a few ways to approach Fritz Lang’s Destiny, and some of them are more exasperating than others. As a film for contemporary viewers, it’s sometimes a struggle to watch—it’s not only silent cinema, it’s mid-period silent cinema, meaning that it doesn’t have the best technical qualities, staging, effects or acting. It’s frequently interrupted by loquacious title cards, and even at 99 minutes feels like a much longer sit. As such, it’s not the kind of film to recommend to a casual viewer, or even a silent-curious viewer—there are far better introductory movies of that era for contemporary viewers. Even compared to its contemporaries, Destiny is an odd duck—it’s a collection of four romantic stories loosely held together by a framing device revolving around death personified. All four stories take place in radically different settings: a medieval European town for the framing story, then in Arabic, Venetian and Chinese backdrops. As such, Destiny becomes a marginally better pick for those who are interested in the history of fantasy films—its openness to the world is intriguing, and you can see here the first attempts to present a fantastical vision on screen with something approaching a thematic unity in its depiction of love and death. The special effects are primitive, but they’re in service of the story, and they led to further development—rights to the film were purchased by Douglas Fairbanks, leading to the better-known 1924 version of The Thief of Bagdad. Destiny is definitely film history 201 material (well, maybe 301), but it does have its qualities even when it’s borderline-boring for modern viewers.