Movie Review

  • Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)

    Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) The character of Elvira (as played by Cassandra Peterson) is best known as a pin-up, a naughty icon or a highly successful brand blending gentle horror tropes with curvaceous sex-appeal. Considering that the character was created as a horror-movie hostess, it makes sense that she would have at least one movie to her credit. Actually, there are two once you throw in 2001’s Elvira’s Haunted Hills, but the first 1988 film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is as good a representative sample of the character than we could have wished for. Firmly executed in the 1980s B-movie tradition, the film features Peterson in character as Elvira travelling from Los Angeles to a small town in Massachusetts to claim an inheritance. Naturally, once over there she gets to shock the mundanes, bring city attitudes to the small town and (naturally) fight evil supernatural forces. The film is a bit more cohesive than the string of quick gags that viewers may apprehend after the first few moments of the film—there’s a real script here, even if it’s focused on comedy and misses no opportunity to play off Elvira’s form-fitting cleavage-showcasing outfit, sarcastic personality, and witty one-liners. Peterson isn’t the world’s best actress, but she inhabits the character with self-aware ferociousness even if the film can’t always keep an even tone. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is unabashedly silly, but crucially it works: it earns its wolf whistles, its laughs and its good humour—not to mention an enduring piece of work to present Elvira to future generations.

  • Beat Street (1984)

    Beat Street (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) There isn’t a lot to the plot or characters of Beat Street that we haven’t seen since then—this weakly plotted musical comedy follows the adventures of a few Bronx teenagers as they dance, beat box, DJ, tag and create music. But the plot or characters aren’t the point—the point is to showcase early-New York rap and breakdancing, as the film’s plot is structured in a way to feature such sequences. The result is a wonderful time capsule of early hip-hop, featuring plenty of names that even casual fans such as myself can recognize: Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, Kool Moe Dee. There’s a lot here that prefigures later looks at hip-hop—including a dance battle sequence that feels like the prototype for the entire Step Up series. The actors themselves are passable—although Rae Dawn Chong looks great here. Not every moment works (I’m not so happy about the graffiti sequences, for instance, and the more conventional dramatic beats feel overwhelmed by the dance and music sequences) but as a time capsule movie, Beat Street is definitely worth a look.

  • Chung Hing sam lam [Chungking Express] (1994)

    Chung Hing sam lam [Chungking Express] (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion streaming, September 2019) Considering that I had a look at Chungking Express solely because it showed up on several (longer) “best movies of all time” lists, I’m left a bit nonplussed at its critical acclaim. Oh, I do think it’s a good movie: As an unconventional romantic comedy following one policeman, then another as they recover from painful breakups, it’s stylishly executed, often very likable and portrays mid-1990s Hong Kong effectively. Both male leads are depicted with disarming detail—it’s one thing to see Takeshi Kaneshiro eat thirty cans of pineapples in romantic grief, but have one lived until seeing Tony Leung talking affectionately to inanimate objects in his underwear? In comparison, the female characters are far less approachable: Brigitte Lin comes from a Hong Kong crime drama as a blonde underworld assassin, while Faye Wong pushes the quirky-girl thing up to eleven. But there’s a fair case to be made that this is a film of mood and atmosphere, as the two stories revolve around a small fast-food restaurant (the eponymous “Express”) in a busy Hong Kong area. Writer-director Wong Kar-Wai is typically careful with his use of colour, film speed, mood and reflections—there’s a lot to see here in his use of the camera, and the film remains interesting to watch even if some of what he was doing in 1994 has now fallen into cliché or dated material. As an atmospheric piece, it remains quite good (reminding me of the two dozen HK films I watched at the end of the 1990s)—and it feels faster paced than many of Kar-Wai’s later features. Still, there’s a leap from good to great movie that I don’t quite see when Chungking Express shows up on those best-movies-ever lists. But that’s just expectations management—the film remains worth a look even without inflated expectations.

  • The Circus (1928)

    The Circus (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) Charlie Chaplin sketches at the circus—sure, there is a plot to The Circus, but it’s really an excuse for Chaplin to string along one circus-related routine after another. Fortunately, a lot of them are funny—the climactic tightrope sequence, in particular, gets crazier and crazier the longer it goes on. While it’s not as heavy on the melodrama as other Chaplin films, The Circus does have its bittersweet ending. Notable for being the one Chaplin film made through the epochal change from silent cinema to sound, The Circus is also known for having been exceptionally difficult to complete, with considerable turmoil in Chaplin’s life during production, and other difficulties on set (when the sets weren’t burning down, that is). The result is a film that Chaplin himself didn’t acknowledge very often, but one that shows his comic genius in clearly identified sketches loosely connected by plot. As a result, The Circus may be appreciable for its set-pieces, but doesn’t quite hold a candle to Chaplin’s most successful efforts both before and after this one.

  • The Witches (1990)

    The Witches (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) The thought of Nicholas Roeg—a director better known for elliptical, atmospheric, often violent movies—handling a children’s film is odd, but it may explain why The Witches often plays harder and harsher than other kids’ movies. Those sequences in which the witches reveal their form, or their plans to kill every kid in England, go substantially farther than most other such films. Roeg obviously plays well with the source material, Roald Dahl’s famously misanthropic novel. Still, the film is very competently handled, and can benefit from the very well-cast Angelica Huston as the head witch. There’s some interesting pre-CGI animal work in the second half of the film as our protagonist is transformed into a mouse. The final sequence is suitably chaotic, with plenty of revenge delivered unto the antagonists. It does amount to an occasionally off-putting but successful film for older kids—you can credit Roeg for using his veteran’s skills to deliver the result.

  • Za granyu realnosti [Beyond the Edge] (2018)

    Za granyu realnosti [Beyond the Edge] (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2018) It’s not that Beyond the Edge is a terrible film, but it will work much better if you have some indulgence to spare. There’s definitely a novelty in seeing a Russian action/fantasy film executed with the visual slickness and decent budgets we associate with Hollywood productions. Alas, this is undermined somewhat by the dubbing effect—the Anglosphere doesn’t have much expertise in movie dubbing (at least compared to the francophone world), and the vocal talent hired here aren’t always the most convincing, which compounds the somewhat amateurish acting skills also on display. (Except for Antonio Banderas — he’s out of his element, but he’s all right.)  But those are minor issues compared to a script with fundamental issues: The pacing is off, the plot points are frequently obscured and it’s as if the screenwriter has little idea how to structure sequences so that they lead to dramatic payoffs—time and time again, Beyond the Edge is fuzzy on what’s going on or disappointing in the execution of its plotting. While the film uses a generous number of special effects and its own brand of fantastical mythology, they don’t cohere into a satisfying whole—the visuals are nice, but their integration is underwhelming. (The way the superpowers are depicted particularly seems like a wasted opportunity.)  The plot itself is a blender mix of other better movies: While I don’t usually enjoy rattling off movie titles as references, think Ocean’s Eleven with X-Men with Inception and you’ll be on your way to the blend of influences here—albeit with the forewarning that it never gets close to these influences in terms of effectiveness. Still, I don’t feel as if I lost my time watching Beyond the Edge—as annoying as it can be in stringing its sequences together, there are a few stronger moments here, especially when writers-directors Aleksandr Boguslavskiy and Francesco Cinquemani can dispense with that complicated dialogue stuff and just let loose with the special effects or the cool directing tricks pulled from those influences. The end of the film is a bit better than its beginning (although that ending is far too abrupt), but a hypothetical Hollywood remake (note: this is not a request) would have a lot of work to do to fix those issues in order to make the entire thing flow better.

  • Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

    Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2018) On paper, Mary Queen of Scots sounds like those movies made for Oscar glory—two terrific actresses, and a historical subject matter that allows for Very Serious Business through plenty of costumes, palaces, and drama. Here we have none other than Saoirse Ronan as Mary Queen of Scots and Margot Robbie as Queen Elizabeth I, each of them trying to find a place where they aren’t rivals. Don’t read too much in historical facts, though—the film would be sued for libel if any of the principal characters were alive, delving as deeply into counterfactuals and conspiracy theories. The visual polish of the film is astonishing, mind you—showing how far modern moviemaking can be from the stuffed stage drama of earlier decades. Alas, none of those qualities fully explain why the film feels so overwhelmingly dull, especially in its first two thirds where we should be engaged. Instead, the characters feel like puppets going through motions that are very important to them and not to us. (It doesn’t help that Ronan, for all of her acting skills, can’t manage more than passable mushy French—her dialogue scenes with French actresses are particularly sobering as they emote far better around her pieces of dialogue.)  There are flashes of drama, violence and battles that should make the film more interesting but don’t. It gets slightly better toward the end as we move toward a forgone conclusion and a scene in which the two actresses finally get to share some screen time, but it’s too late to make an appreciable difference. It’s interesting to measure Mary Queen of Scots to The Favourite, the one period drama film featuring female protagonists that did get plenty of Oscar attention—Mary Queen of Scots feels like a stultified throwback to the worst historical biopics of yore rather than reinvigorate the subgenre. In the end, there’s little wonder why this eagerly anticipated film ended up in commercial near-obscurity, critical doldrums and Oscar invisibility: It’s just not terribly good, and somewhat even annoying along the way.

  • Toys (1992)

    Toys (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) Some movies are like surprise bags filled with things both cool and dull, and Toys fits squarely in this category. It’s visually sumptuous, filled with interesting actors and directed with a unique vision. Alas, it’s also juvenile when it shouldn’t, thematically wobbly and often not as witty as it thinks it is. Set in a world not quite like ours, it features a rich toymaker bequeathing his company to his military brother rather than his eccentric son. As we may expect, toy production soon takes a back seat to war machines, with the just-as-expected son fighting back. On paper, it’s not much and one of the worse aspects of the film is how it eventually becomes tiresome once the visuals become familiar. But that would be dismissing far too easily the power of those visuals, especially in the first act: For the art direction of the film (written and directed by Barry Levinson) is deliciously off-beat, inserting strange and whimsical visuals in contexts where we wouldn’t expect them. A lot of it harkens back to Magritte paintings, including an over-the-top spoof of MTV videos. The dynamo at the centre of it all is Robin Williams, in a curiously subdued performance. The supporting cast includes Joan Cusack, Robin Wright, L. L. Cool J as a hilariously overprepared military man and Jamie Foxx in his first (small) role … and Debi Mazar in a short but striking role as a libidinous nurse. Unfortunately, the result is less than its components: While the film isn’t exactly aimed at kids, it does feature a simplistic plot and an anti-war moral sense that eventually turns against itself when the heroes go to war against their opponents. There are several cute fillips in the plot, but it still comes across as a witty setting let down by a less-than-witty script. I’ll grant that the film was unusually prescient in some aspects: its discussion of swarms of “toy” war machines controlled by teenagers eerily prefigures the military drone era. But the disappointment with the rest of the script is real—it never transforms its fascinating weirdness into more than a merely satisfying narrative experience, and that’s a wasted opportunity. Still, let’s admire the audacity of the visuals, most of them achieved without CGI: I bet that a remake would look very, very different today.

  • The Favourite (2018)

    The Favourite (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) Just as I had given up on writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos after the exasperation of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, here comes The Favourite to make me think that I may have a bit too quick to judge. Reinvigorating the historical genre through a lesbian love triangle, crude language, and fisheye lenses, this is a costume drama like few others, and it has the qualities of its flaws and vice versa. Very loosely adapted from history (in which, yes, there was a weak queen served by a close strong-willed confidante who was eventually replaced by a younger and more servile favourite—the rest is conjecture), The Favourite doesn’t play by the rules of traditional royal court dramas. Our three lead characters (all women—also something unusual) eventually become involved in a love triangle, with the two royal confidantes sparing no underhanded tricks to try to eliminate the other from the queen’s affections. The dialogues feel modern with copious use of expletives, and the visual style uses aggressively wide-angle lenses to isolate the characters in the middle of immense rooms and landscapes. It’s definitely a deliberate aesthetics, and I can’t blame anyone for not hopping aboard. Even on a script level, The Favourite is not a mild-mannered film: it’s aggressive, crude, spectacularly bitchy at times. Rachel Weisman and Emma Stone are strong as the contenders to the title of the favourite, but it’s Olivia Coleman who impresses with a deliberately imperfect character, powerful yet impotent. I was gradually charmed by the result despite being not-that-happy with many of the choices on display here. My appreciation for the film even grew two sizes larger the next day, as a comparative viewing of the near-contemporary Mary Queen of Scots made me appreciate the daring nature of The Favourite even more. Okay, Lanthimos, you’re got me interested in your next film now.

  • Climax (2018)

    Climax (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) There are two movies in Gaspar Noé’s Climax, and while one of them feels like a pale copy of his more transgressive work, the other movie is probably the happiest, most purely enjoyable thing he’s ever done. But let’s go back to the beginning: Climax begins with a few TV interviews, the full credits and then moves on to a fantastic one-take dance number featuring the film’s very large ensemble cast. (Part of it reminded me of the krumping dance documentary Rize, which turns out to have been an acknowledged influence.)  It’s an unusually joyous moment in the Noé oeuvre, and viewers are advised to cherish it because everything then predictably takes a turn for the much, much worse. But not before some more not-so-horrible moments as the twenty-some characters set a few subplots in motion: We eventually establish that we’re in an abandoned school in the middle of nowhere during the winter, with a troupe of dancers successfully practising their choreography. At the end-of-rehearsal party, members of the troupe dance, celebrate and drink some sangria that turns out to have been spiked with a heroic quantity of LSD. It takes roughly forty minutes for the LSD to kick in … and for the other movie to start. Because in Noé’s world, LSD reactions are pushed to eleven in all directions: before long, we’ve got paranoid characters beating each other up, forcing others outside in the cold, having sex, locking kids in dangerous places and generally running amok. The showcase of the film is what looks like a forty-minute-long take of pure drug-fuelled nightmare. It’s delirious … and yet disappointing. Knowing that (save for the choreographed dance sequence) the film was largely improvised by performers specializing in dance more than in acting may serve to explain the narrative disappointment of the film—while it does lead somewhere with a clear conclusion, it’s annoyingly loose in how it gets there. Compared to some other Noé film, the worse parts of Climax don’t quite reach the bad parts of his other movies, an inevitable sign that Noé has outplayed himself in shock value. Still, I’m not willing to discount Climax despite its directorial self-indulgence: As with most other Noé movies, there are many interesting moments, hard-hitting sequences, great unusual performances and clever use of music. The ever-enjoyable Sofia Boutella has a good role as one of the few trained actors in the mix, while Noé seems to pull back (even if by a tiny and almost unnoticeable degree) from his usual nihilism. As a “let’s try something new” kind of movie, it’s quite a bit of fun for viewers interested in formal experimentalism. But I can’t help but hope that some of the new things tried here could be re-used in a different and more controlled setting. Also: I’d be down for an upbeat Noé musical. Just saying.

  • Private School (1983)

    Private School (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) It’s one thing to know, in the abstract, that the early 1980s were filled with cheap sexploitation comedies made in the wake of Porky’s success. It’s quite another to experience a wholly average example of the genre such as Private School, which reliably features naked breasts (never male nudity) once every 5–10 minutes. The plot is as basic at it gets for the genre: teenagers looking to lose their virginity, and the lengths to which they’ll go in order to even see naked women. I’m sure that at some point (probably when I was 13), I would have thought this was the best movie ever. Now, it feels more than vaguely puerile, with a side order of misogyny considering way the female characters are treated as nothing more than targets to be tricked or surreptitiously leered at. (The best moments of Private School occur when the female characters take back some agency, although the film is often frustratingly indecisive as to whether they’re playing along or actively being deceived.)  Phoebe Cates is the biggest name here, and as such does not have to disrobe. But even if you take aside the obnoxious premise and obvious intention to revolve around naked set-pieces, it really doesn’t help that the film is truly, exceptionally, unarguably dumb. The jokes can be seen coming minutes in advance, the characters don’t notice things that any half-wit would, Noel Black’s direction is as basic at it comes—nobody’s smart in this film, including the writers (one of them a woman). The set-pieces are familiar to the point of being exasperating in how long they’re drawn-out. It’s bad enough that it actively undermines the reason why the film exists—for all of my favourable predisposition toward female nudity, I found my patience sorely taxed by the dumb filmmaking and worse writing. Private School sounds like a good time but really isn’t—don’t make the same mistake.

  • Of Mice and Men (1939)

    Of Mice and Men (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) In some ways, there’s very little to say about the 1939 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men—It’s a solid drama, an adaptation tailored to the big screen (in altering some plot elements for easier consumption) and an actor’s showcase as well. It’s very much like the novel you likely read in high school. One of the advantages of the film adaptation is how it depicts the migrant worker life in the 1930s, adding another layer of interest to the story of its two protagonists. Burgess Meredith has the lead role as George, but Lon Chaney Jr. has probably his finest dramatic role as the hulking Lennie. Competently shot in black-and-white and with admirable restraint when it comes to the depiction of its most violent moments, Of Mice and Men hasn’t aged all that much—it’s firmly set in the 1930s and has become a period piece along the way. It’s one more piece of evidence for 1939 as one of the finest years for cinema, and an engrossing film in its own right.

  • The Freshman (1925)

    The Freshman (1925)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) It’s sometimes amazing to watch much older movies and discover that some narrative forms are near-universal. You could, for instance, see in The Freshman a blueprint for the entire college comedy subgenre, as our hero (Harold Lloyd, playing a younger variation of his usual nebbish bespectacled character) heads to college and throws himself in a desperate quest for popularity … through football. Of course, he has no visible talent for the sport, which leads him to be retained as a joke as a water boy, and then expectedly pushed onto the field for a desperate game-winning moment. Thanks to countless imitators, it’s all very familiar even if you’ve never seen the film itself—and what is not so familiar is fascinating due to the way that college is portrayed in the early 1920s. This is a time of respectable learning institutions (although, noticeably, the film never features the inside of a classroom) being portrayed as places where social standing takes precedence: our hero buys everybody ice cream after making a fool of himself in front of a stage. The comedy is generally successful, although as an early example of a comedy of humiliation, viewers who may not enjoy cringing in sympathy may find those moments of the film limited in effectiveness. Still, Harold Lloyd is his usual likable self, and Jobyna Ralston is quite endearing as the romantic lead. The Freshman revolves around a handful of comic set-pieces, even if some of them drag on for a bit too long. Still, it’s a fun film and an easy watch compared to other silent movies of the era—the comedy and likability of the stars ensure at least a level of interest to the result. Plus, you can see where generations of later college comedies took their inspiration: there isn’t that much of a difference between The Freshman and Old School.

  • Ordinary People (1980)

    Ordinary People (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, September 2019) I approached Ordinary People reluctantly for several reasons: Historically, I suppose I still have a grudge about it winning the Best Picture Oscar over Raging Bull. But then there’s the subject matter, taking a long look at a typical American family coming unglued after the death of the eldest son—grieving over a child’s death is high on my list of unbearable topics at the moment, and that’s only adding to the dreadful prospect of a two-hour-plus mimetic drama (adapted from a mainstream novel) that succeeded in its Oscar-baiting ambitions. But even with this baggage, I have to admit that Ordinary People worked better than I expected—I still don’t love it, but I did develop a grudging respect for it throughout its lengthy duration. It does a few things far better than expected: for one thing, it picks up months after the funeral of the family’s eldest son, sparing us many of the expected clichés about the immediate days after the death. For another, Ordinary People features one of the best and most likable cinematic portraits I can recall of the therapy process, featuring a clever but empathetic psychotherapist (Judd Hirsch, in a career-best role) helping the teenage protagonist work his way through the grieving process. Timothy Hutton is the star of the film, but Donald Sutherland is a good supporting player as a father who gets to grow out of his wife’s influence, while Mary Tyler Moore is cast against type as a sociopathic wife who acts as the film’s villain. It’s interesting mixture of elements, and one that still feels unusually against the grain of such family dramas even forty years later. Robert Redford’s direction isn’t flashy (visually, the film is … fine), but it gets the message across with a great deal of restraint and subtlety. I still think that the film is too long, occasionally very predictable (yes, like we couldn’t see that suicide coming…), unevenly interesting and perhaps lacking a further handful of hard-hitting scenes, but I still found it quite a bit better than expected. Ordinary People does remain in the lower tier of Oscar-Winning Pictures, though—there’s a limit to how pleasantly surprised I can be in this case.

  • The Three Musketeers (1921)

    The Three Musketeers (1921)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) The nice thing about Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers is that it’s a well-known novel with a lot of material in it, and plenty of opportunities to shape it to become the film you want it to be. Whether you want swashbuckling, imposing acting performances, action sequences or historical recreations, it’s an evergreen classic. This early silent-cinema version of The Three Musketeers featuring Douglas Fairbanks hews more or less closely to the text (with many simplifications, some of them similar to what later films would do), but doesn’t feature nearly as many swordfights than you’d expect. Which may be for the better, as the art of combat cinematography hadn’t been perfected at that point—what fights are included do look wild and chaotic, swords flying everywhere in a way that makes no sense either in sword-fighting or movie spectacle. (But then there are reports that the actors disregarded their fencing choreography and simply went wild.)  In any case, this version of The Three Musketeers may disappoint from a contemporary point of view: while not terribly long by silent film standards, there’s a lot of plot and characters in here that will tax even patient viewers. I much prefer Fairbanks’ own The Mask of Zorro from a year earlier, but The Three Musketeers was the actor’s passion project—he even kept the character’s mustache for the rest of his life. It’s a fair piece of history that anticipates action filmmaking, but it’s not exactly wall-to-wall fun viewing.